When Captain Kong Le impressed the American officials underwriting Laos as a potential communist, they backed Phoumi's return to power in November and December 1960.
Beginning on 23 December 1950, the United States began military aid to the French administration of the Kingdom of Laos as they fought the First Indochina War.
[3] As Bernard Fall noted from personal observation, the support of the Lao military was for political reasons, and not necessarily for self-defense.
[8] Camp Sikhay offered the paras a choice of battered wooden shacks or decaying French colonial housing on the banks of the Mekong River.
[9] While the commanding officer of BP 2 was in the United States, leaving Kong Le in charge of the battalion,[7] he was approached by his uncle-in-law, General Ouane Rattikone.
The paras secured their airfield, captured the city's radio station, the national bank, municipal power plant, and various ministries without firing a single shot.
The Pathet Lao lost to such unfair tactics as gerrymandered election districts, payoffs, and stuffed ballot boxes.
The same crucial points were seized as in the 1959 coup, with the addition of the seizure of Vientiane's docks at Tha Deua and the arrest of General Sounthone Pathammavong, the army commander in chief.
[18] In a blunt broadcast, he claimed: What leads us to carry out this revolution is our desire to stop the bloody civil war; eliminate grasping public servants and military commanders...whose property amounts to much more than their monthly salaries can afford....
[18] On 10 August, Phoumi was flown by Thao Ma[16] to Bangkok to solicit support from his first cousin, Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat, the dictator of the Kingdom of Thailand.
[20] On 13 August, the National Assembly met under the guns of the mutineers; under duress, they dismissed the cabinet members stranded in Luang Prabang.
[22] However, in Vientiane on 17 August, the National Assembly, while held captive by Kong Le's forces, formed a new Royal Lao Government, naming Souvanna Phouma as Prime Minister.
[22] When Thai Border Patrol Police commandos from Phoumi's side shelled Vientiane on both 1 and 4 September, Kong Le's troops drove them off.
The staff at Military Region 1 in Luang Prabang plumped for him, as did Lieutenant Colonel Khamouane Boupha and his troops in farflung Phongsaly Province.
[27] Lao commanding officers such as Generals Amkha Soukhavong, Kouprasith Abhay, Ouane Rattikone, Oudone Sananikone, and Sing Rattanasamy backed him with various levels of enthusiasm.
[15] On 10 September 1960, Phoumi and Prince Boun Oum formed a Revolutionary Committee to oppose Souvanna Phouma's rule.
The Americans, who had been indecisive, now plumped for aerial resupply of besieged Xam Neua; they stressed that the action was purely defensive.
[33][34] The Royal Lao Army lacking its own airlift capacity, Air America was contracted to use its two C-46s and two C-47s to resupply the RLA from 17 to 27 September.
[29][33][34] On 6 October, American ambassador Winthrop G. Brown, in ongoing attempts at mending the national split, asked King Sisavang Vatthana to form a caretaker government that would include both sides.
[36] Former ambassador and serving Assistant Secretary of State J. Graham Parsons flew in to pressure Souvanna Phouma into breaking contact with the Soviets.
[39] Royalist forcesSupported by: United States With Central Intelligence Agency financial backing, and aided by CIA-trained commandos, at 0800 hours on 21 November 1960 Phoumi's troops launched their counter-coup to reclaim Vientiane.
[41] At this juncture, on 8 December, Colonel Kouprasith Abhay ventured forth from lurking in Camp Chinaimo to co-opt an air drop of paratroopers incoming from Luang Prabang.
He gathered a scratch force of two companies of airborne soldiers and 150 military clerks and moved them in to displace the few Kong Le paras left in the capital.
[41] Suspicious of Kouprasith's ambitions, Phoumi appointed Brigadier General Bounleut Sanichanh as commander-in-chief of the counter-coup forces.
[42] On 9 December, Souvanna Phouma appointed General Southone to head the nation, then fled to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
[44] Meanwhile, in Luang Prabang, a quorum of the National Assembly, having been flown in by U.S. Operations Mission aircraft, voted "no confidence" in Souvanna Phouma's regime, and endorsed Phoumi and his Revolutionary Committee.
By Lao law, the vote of "no confidence" left the country without a legal government until the king pronounced an ordinance establishing a new one.
[47] On 16 December, Kong Le loaded his troops onto vehicles and retreated northwards toward the Plain of Jars, leaving Phoumi's forces in control of the capital and country.
[44][46] On 27 December 1960, Phoumi lodged a protest with the United Nations because the Soviet Union was airlifting supplies to Kong Le's troops.
Once they passed a vote of no confidence, the King appointed Prince Boun Oum to head an interim government, although Souvanna had yet to resign as Prime Minister.