Word: tailwind
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...Pentagon concluded that the key goal of the once secret Operation Tailwind mission was to divert enemy attention from a CIA operation inside Laos. The Pentagon said planning for the operation never mentioned hunting down U.S. turncoats. And while Air Force warplanes dropped a "personnel-incapacitating agent" on enemy troops to help rescue the 16 Americans and more than 100 of their Montagnard allies under hostile fire, it was a potent form of tear gas that was used, not sarin...
WASHINGTON: With soldiers from Operation Tailwind in the room as living corroboration, Secretary of Defense William Cohen spoke slowly and clearly: "We have found absolutely no evidence to support CNN-TIME's assertions" that the operation involved the use of deadly sarin nerve gas on American defectors. The statement was hardly surprising -- the Pentagon has denied the substance of the report ever since it originally aired on CNN on June 7 -- but a defensive Cohen acknowledged the difficulty of stuffing the report back in its Pandora...
...case? Probably not," Cohen said from the Pentagon. But "the retractions of both CNN and TIME should say it all." After mentioning pointedly that the story was welcome grist for Saddam Hussein in his propaganda campaign against the U.S., Cohen repeatedly praised the participants of Operation Tailwind for their valor and said that he hoped their reputations could be fully restored. Cohen looked relieved when the questioning moved on to other topics -- and he is certainly not alone in that sentiment...
Other people subsequently interviewed made a compelling case that some form of tear gas, rather than a lethal nerve gas, was used in Tailwind. Gary Michael Rose, who was the medic on Tailwind, spoke quietly but determinedly to TIME about his version of events. "At no time was the word deserter or any type of thing that could be alluded to as poison or toxic ever briefed during the mission briefings that we had," he said. When the U.S. planes dropped the gas, Rose said he knew that it was tear gas rather than a nerve gas. "It burned like...
...burned slightly, and maybe a little bit difficult to breathe, but not so it should have rendered anyone ineffective," he says. "We did not use lethal gas, and we did not kill any defectors, men, women or children." John Plaster, who served in the Studies and Observation Group during Tailwind, says, "Nerve agent never was used, and it was not available on call even if we'd wanted to use it." Denver Minton, who as a sergeant first class was second-in-command of one of the three platoons involved in Tailwind, told the St. Petersburg Times, "We weren...