Originally established with an aim of opposing the invasion of Thailand by the People's Liberation Army of China, the new unit policed the Thai border areas until hostilities broke out in the neighboring Kingdom of Laos.
Acting in response to the Kong Le coup of 9 August 1960, Lair's unit secretively supplied the communications liaisons needed for the successful counter-coup of 14 December 1960.
In mid-1966, the new CIA Chief of Station Ted Shackley promulgated increased operations against the Ho Chi Minh Trail and commitment of more troops to the fight for northern Laos.
The use of airpower as mobile artillery to clear the path for guerrillas was successful in the short run; however, Lair believed it would lead to ultimate defeat for the Hmong, as they were used as light infantry in fixed positions.
He would score one last military intelligence coup, when his Thai brother-in-law visited the dying Mao Zedong and brought back information about the political maneuvering of potential successors.
And where, as an integral part of the plan, CIA and PARU members delved into gold, drugs (Opium), arms and artifact trafficking.
[13][14][15] As Kong Le consolidated his position in the northern capital of Vientiane, Phoumi's opposition to the coup began to coalesce around the southern panhandle town of Savannakhet.
Fitzgerald saw that the PARU's flawless performance in the counter-coup was based on reliable inside information, and decided that Lair and his special forces police should remain in Laos.
By coincidence, Desmond Fitzgerald, head of the CIA's Far East Division, was on an official visit to the Station Chief for Laos, Gordon Jorgenson.
In reality, Lair's control over supplies and his personal influence with Pranet and the PARU troops equalled de facto command of the unit.
In quiet discursive low-key fashion that modeled the behavior needed to impress Thai or Lao, he briefed the new agents with information on the local situation even as he steered his listeners toward inevitable conclusions about the subject.
Experienced hands arriving included Thomas Fosmire, Tony Poe, Pat Landry, Joe Hudachek, Jack Shirley, and William Young.
While Lair accepted the new helpers individually, he believed that Caucasians who did not speak a local language were both too visible and too linguistically handicapped for useful secret work.
Nor did they possess any military skills in short supply, as the PARU troopers had mastered the same parachute and training courses as the Green Berets[23] In summer 1962, Lair arranged USAID air drops of food, medicine, and other essentials to Hmong uprooted by the growing war.
In June, when The Saturday Evening Post ran an article on this program, Lair was content to let Edgar Buell be the public face of refugee relief, as a means of hiding CIA involvement.
He and Pat Landry, sitting at facing desks, monitored message and radio traffic from the 20 PARU teams and made their tactical and logistical decisions.
After Lair's training, PARU troopers, accompanying and directing 12 platoons of Hmong from their Special Guerrilla Units, infiltrated to a portion of Route 7 that ran along steep cliffs.
When questions arose concerning the significance of Vang Pao's leadership of his clandestine army, Lair was asked to give his opinion as the officer attached to it.
Lair countered with Project Hardnose, in which reconnaissance teams were dispatched from Savannakhet and Pakse to spy on the nascent logistics route between North and South Vietnam.
The Tonkin Gulf incident, as well as the expanding Ho Chi Minh Trail, moved the focus of US military action away from Laos and toward Vietnam.
He also believed that US troops would move from training into combat operations, and that the increasing US role would sap the fighting spirit of the South Vietnamese forces.
About the same time, Lair prompted Air America Helio Courier special-operations pilot Jim Rhyne's flight that documented the expansion and improvement of the Ho Chi Minh Trail network.
Once in flight, he rounded up an improvised force of an Air America helicopter for the rescue, a Caribou for radio relay duties, and US-piloted T-28s for firepower.
[39] See also Battle of Lima Site 85, Commando Club By mid-1966, Lair had worked successfully under three Chiefs of station, running his paramilitary operations with a relatively paltry annual budget of US$20 million.
His solution was to advocate more American involvement in Laos, whether in the Laotian panhandle against the Ho Chi Minh Trail, or in the north around the Plain of Jars.
The radar site was captured by Vietnamese sappers on 11 March 1968 even though Hmong guerrillas and Thai mercenaries remained on the mountain.
[45] At odds with both his station chief and Ambassador Sullivan, tagged with the loss of Lima Site 85, and diminished by the expanding American operations of the Laotian war, Bill Lair departed Laos in August 1968.
Lair would simply ask these officers for needed information, bypassing all the rigamarole of tasking undercover agents to spy upon the drug trade.
Both President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were thus made privy to details of the maneuvering of possible successors to the Great Helmsman.
On 4 July 2013, he was honored with an 89th birthday celebration by the Hmong-American community, including a reunion with the Hmong Laotian Civil War veterans with whom he had served.