Word: tailwind
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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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...
...document--military order, after-action report, briefing paper or official military history--mentions pursuit of U.S. defectors as Tailwind's mission," Cohen said at a Pentagon briefing. "While sarin was stored in Okinawa in 1970, we found no evidence that sarin nerve gas was ever sent to or used in Vietnam or Laos." The pilots who dropped the bombs, as well as those who loaded them into the planes, said the weapons contained tear gas, the Pentagon said. Two Tailwind veterans and a pair of their commanders looked on as Cohen praised their bravery and ordered a review to ensure...
Cohen declared the story "irresponsible" because it leveled such grave charges against the U.S. and its troops without the "overpowering evidence" such explosive allegations require. The Pentagon probe found that Robert Van Buskirk, a Tailwind platoon leader and a prime source for the original story, never mentioned sarin or defectors in an after-action briefing he gave. Retired Captain Michael Rose, the Tailwind medic, told Pentagon investigators that he had no doubt the fumes he inhaled were tear gas, just like the whiffs he got in basic training. "It's like skunk," he said. "Once you smell it, you never...
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...