CIA activities in Cambodia

The Central Intelligence Agency of the United States conducted secret operations in Cambodia and in Laos for eight years as part of the conflict against Communist North Vietnam.

They believed it would take effort away from operations in South Vietnam, and also would have questionable effectiveness but high cost against the large North Vietnamese forces in Cambodia.

With such a base, they would have a better chance to convince Prince Sihanouk that it is in his best interest to make an honest effort to reduce or halt the arms traffic.

At an 11 October 1969 meeting with Nixon, Kissinger, United States Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, Attorney General John Mitchell and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (i.e., no CIA personnel),[13] several pertinent observations were made.

[14] The overthrow followed Cambodia's constitutional process following a vote of no confidence in the country's National Assembly and most accounts emphasize the primacy of Cambodian actors in Sihanouk's removal.

Historians are divided about the extent of U.S. involvement in or foreknowledge of the ouster, but an emerging consensus posits some culpability on the part of U.S. military intelligence.

[16] Senator Clifford P. Case sponsored a law effective December 1972 cutting off funds for CIA and private military company operations in Cambodia (see the Case–Church Amendment).

[18] The Reagan administration authorized the provision of aid to a coalition called the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF),[19] run by Son Sann as well as the royalists loyal to Norodom Sihanouk.

This aid was then "funneled through Thailand" in the hopes of strengthening "the two noncommunist resistance groups' position in their loose coalition with the communist Khmer Rouge.