Air America has been accused of running weapons and even, according to the historian Alfred McCoy, drugs in Southeast Asia — charges that the CIA and Air America veterans denied so vigorously that it set off a First Amendment battle between the agency and McCoy.
During the Vietnam War, Air America played a vital but murky role in supporting CIA activities in Laos, a staging ground for operations against the North Vietnamese and, along with Cambodia, the site of an extensive, secret war led by the agency against Communists in both countries.
If ever there was a time when the intelligence community resembled something like a “deep state” — an unaccountable security state made up of unelected officials — it would have been in the Vietnam years, before congressional investigations reined in the CIA.
Tim Weiner, author of the National Book Award-winning “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA,” told The Intercept, “The whole point of Air America was to kill Communists.”
Before Church
Owned and operated by the CIA until 1976, Air America was used as cover for agency operations in the agency’s wild west days. Until 1975, when the late Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, set up his famous investigative committee, the intelligence community ran amok, facing few outside checks.
“There was no congressional oversight of the CIA before the Church Committee,” said Weiner. “What would happen is that the director of central intelligence — Allen Dulles, for example — would come before Congress and talk to the chairman of the armed services committee and the chairman would say, ‘Y’all have everything you need?’ And Dulles would say, ‘Yes sir, it’s alright.’”
With practically nonexistent oversight, this era saw some of the CIA’s worst scandals, from attempts to assassinate foreign leaders like Fidel Castro to involvement in coups. The period coincided with the heyday of Air America operations until its dissolution in 1976, the same year that the Church Committee established the House and Senate Intelligence committees.