The CIA's Secret War in Laos
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 2 December 2017
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Radio producer Peter Lang-Stanton thought his father was a paper-pushing bureaucrat in the State Department. Then one day, his father revealed his double- life as a spy. Much of his father’s past was a lie; he never fought in the Vietnam War, as he said. Instead, he was involved in a covert mission in 1960s Laos under his codename: Pig-Pen. Through deep interviews with ex-CIA and a former Laotian soldier, Peter Lang-Stanton tells a story of lies and half-truths, of pride and regret.
Produced by Peter Lang-Stanton and Nick Farago.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello from the BBC World Service and welcome to the latest edition of the |
| 0:05.0 | documentary podcast. Every week we bring you a range of stories from our |
| 0:09.8 | presenters and reporters across the world. If you have the time, please rate the documentary on your podcast app and leave us a comment. |
| 0:17.8 | Let us know what you think. Yeah, I just landed in Myrtle Beach. |
| 0:29.0 | It was about an hour delayed, so, um... We saw that. We've been tracking you. |
| 0:34.4 | I'm being tracked. And when you get in range of Dylan County, you just ask anybody |
| 0:41.8 | where the CIA guy lives on the brother. |
| 0:44.0 | Your cover has been blown for a while. |
| 0:50.0 | Well, I went out undercover when I retired. and I don't want to go to my grave and some kind of contrived story. |
| 0:58.0 | Yeah, all right, well, if you're sure it's still not too late for you all, then I'll see you in a few hours. |
| 1:04.4 | No, I usually don't go to bed until about one or two in the morning. |
| 1:08.0 | Okay. |
| 1:09.0 | Or you watch, you're watching YouTube? |
| 1:11.6 | No, I'm just usually messing around with... |
| 1:15.0 | No, you're right, it's YouTube. |
| 1:20.0 | Okay. All right, bye. You're listening to the documentary on BBC World Service. I'm Peter Lang Stanton. This is the CIA's Secret War in Laos. |
| 1:35.0 | The summer before I went off to college, my dad and I were sitting in the living room on a Sunday morning, |
| 1:49.0 | and he turned to me and he said, |
| 1:51.0 | Peter, let's go for a drive. |
| 1:55.0 | This was not something that he ever said to me. |
| 1:58.3 | He wasn't usually so old-timey and leave it to Beaver-esque. |
| 2:04.0 | Ugh. |
... |
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