Civil Air Transport

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Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

They flew for the ·c1A, but not really Ex-Air America crews are trying to gain recognition - and pensions. By GREG MILLER Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON ~ In 1961 Sam Jordan had just finished 'a six-year stint flying helicopters in the Marine Corps when he saw a . want ad for an upstart airline called Air America. "They said they wanted pi-lots," he rec~ed. "They didn't say anything about where the flying would be." Within months Jordan was important missions but were never officially brought into the agency. The distinction is important to the agency, where contractors now outnumber the official workforce. Officials fear that granting CIA status to Air America retirees would open the gates to thousands of similar claims. Until recently, the Air Ameri-ca effort had seemed futile. A lawsuit filed in the 1980s was tossed out, and efforts to enlist quarters, never even got a gov-ernment paycheck: Nevertheless, those leading the effort point to government rulings in its efforts to persuadE . lawmakers to drop their pursui1 of Air America legislation. But ir some ways, it has been an awK flying helicopters in Laos, carry-ing medical equipment and other supplies to refugees in re-mote mountain villages. In sub-sequent years, he flew airplanes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, scanning for radio signals from the ground and dropping provi-sions from the SkY. He and other pilots devel-oped code words for their cargo: "Soft rice" meant food and "hard . rice" meant arms. , In 14 years working for Air America, Jordan was never for-mally told who was footing the bill for his often-harrowing flights. But he and the other Air America pilots knew. They called their mystery client "the cus-tomer," Jordan said. ''And the CIA was always the _ customer." Few Americans know it, but Air America is embedded in some of the most iconic images of the Vietnam War. In the fa-mous photo of the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, the helicopters lifting stranded di-plomats off the rooftop belonged not to the military but to Air America. The company was shut down after the fall of Saigon in 1975, and the U.S. government sub-sequently acknowledged that Air America was a wholly owned subsidiary of the CIA. But more than 30 years later, the government is still grappling with where that leaves Air America's former employees. They worked for Air America, but does that mean they worked for the CIA? Jordan and hundreds of other Air America pilots, mechrulics, executives and workers. have spent the last two decades bat-tling to will recognition as CIA employees - or at least federal employees - a designation that would entitle them to pensions and other benefits. The CIA has fought the effort, arguing that Air America em-ployees were hired to take part in help from members of Congress never got off the ground. But re-cent developments in Washing- · ton have given Air America workers new hope. When Democrats won control of Congress in the fall, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) became I Sen~te majority leader. Reid's · state is home to some of the most vocal Air America retirees, and he has used his position to push legislation that would require the nation's top spy officials to take· another look at the Air America case. · Though the legislation has yet to pass, the director of na-tional intelligence - a position created after the Sept. 11 attacks to oversee all 16 U.S. spy agencies - has launched a review of whether Air America employees should win their claim and how much it would cost the govern-ment if they did. A legendary .role . It's hard to imagine that any other group of CIA contractors would get such consideration. But Air America occupies a leg-endary position in the annals of U.S. espionage. · For nearly three decades, Air America and its CIA sibling, Civil Air Transport, served as the cir-~ulat9ry system for clandestine U.S. operations in Southeast Asia. They moved supplies, weapons and spies across the treacherous terrain of China, Vi-etnam and Laos. The CIA's air fleet was as large as those of major commer-cial airlines at the time. At their peak in the mid-1960s, the CIA "proprietaries" employed more than 15,000 people - most of them foreign nationals - and operated about 200 planes. Pilots often had to fly without navigation systems, elude enemy , fire, and land on tiny airstrips cut into the sides of mountains. At the same time, as part of its cover, the CIA operated a suc-cessful commercial airline, offer-I IN THE 1950s: Watts helped deliver supplies toFrenchforces pinned down by North Vietnamese troops in Dien Bien Phu in 1954. ing regular passenger service on flights to Bangkok, TokYo and other destinations. ' For 10 years, Air America sup- . plied a secret ·army in Laos that pinned down tens of thousands of communist guerrillas who otherwise would have joined, the fighting in Vietnam. And by the time Air America was Clisman-tled, more than 230 of its pilots and crew members had been killed. A plaque honoring Air Ameri-ca hangs in the main corridor at CIA headquarters. During the dedication ceremony, Jim Gle-rum, who had been one of the top CIA officers in Laos in the 1970s, gave a speech in which he got to the heart of the debate. .Ail' America crews "were not CIA employees in the technical/ legal sense of that word," shld Glerum, who went on to serve as head of personnel at the agency. "Yet we routinely asked them to undertake missions that we could not conduct ourselves, and to accept hardship and hazards we have only rarely asked our own people to face." Air America traces its origin to 1946, when U.S. Army Gen. Claire Chennault signed a con-tract with the Chinese govern-ment to create a new airline. When the communist revolution forced the nationalist govern-ment to flee to Taiwan, Chen-nault's airline became a key sup-ply link to loyalist villages on the mainland. It was the start of a clandes-tine anti-communist campaign spearheaded by the CIA that would carry on for the next quar-ter-century. · There are about 500 former Air America and Civil Air Trans-port employees living in the United States, ranging in age from the 50s into the 90s. They . keep in touch through a website, a newsletter and occasional re-unions, including one in Dallas in October that drew about 40 for-mer pilots and crew members. For most of them, the effort to win CIA status is not a consum-~ing cause. After 20 years of try-ing, few expect to see any money. And most acknowledge the tenu-ous nature of their claim. They never had any official connection to the agency - never signed an employment contract, never got sworn in at agency head-regulations datmg to he 1 30s that they say support their con-tention that working for a gov-ernment-owned corporation makes you a. federal employee. They also consider it an issue of fairness, arguing that they de-serve special consideration from Congress because of what they did for-their·countcy. There is no reliable estimate of what it would cost the govern-ment to retroactively grant the former workers retirement ben-efits. And expectatio.ns vary among those pressingthe claim. Jordan, 75, figures he would stand to collect about $1,000 a month. "I don't think it would be very much," he said. "I'm not go-ing to jump off a cliff if I don't get 'it.'" Hazardous duty Others think their stakes are greate~ ' Roy Watts, 83, who was one of the fir:')t Air America pilots, said · he thought he would be entitled to as much as half a million dol-lars in back retirement and dis-ability pay. In 1954, Watts took part in perhaps the most storied mo-ment in Air America history, when he and two dozen other pi-lots made hundreds of desperate deliveries to French forces pinned down by North Vietnam-ese troops in Dien Bien Phu. De-spite 682 airdrops of artillery and other supplies, the communists crushed the French in a battle that marked the end of colonial rule. Watts and six other surviving pilots were awarded the French Legion of Honor for their flights. In a 1987 ruling, a federal ap-[>eals court said . Watts hadn't met several basic requirements of being a federal employee: He had never signed a contract with the government, was never given · an oath of office, and therefore was never "appointed" to the civil service. The CIA has relied on such war ig or e agency, w c doesn't want to be seen as cal-lous. CIA spokesman Paul Gimi-gliano said the agency honored the pilots and crew members. "The courts, however, have ruled that they were not federal em-ployees and thus are not eligible for federal retirement benefits " 'he said. ' CIA officials also emphasize that Air America did not short-change employees on the ' pa~ and benefits they were promised when they went to work for the company. During Air America's heyda the pay wasn't bad. Pilots typi caRy got $1,200 or more eac month, tax free. And if the ben efits weren't federal-govern-ment-caliber, the company di offer retirement accounts. Most employees contributed a sm percentage of their paychecks and cashed out when they quit. By the early 1970s, the CIA's secret air empire wasn't so.secret anymore. Amid growing scrutin] from Congress and the media CIA Director Richard Helms de cided to shut it down. As Saigon fell, Jordan an . other pilots ferried as man)! planes as they could out o Vietnam. The aircraft, airfields · an other property were sub sequently sold off, leavin $25 million for the CIA to return to the U.S. Treasury. The pilots and other ere members were summoned to th€ company's offices in Hong Kong. ' "They gave us what we ha9 coming and an airline ticket ano that was it, that was the end,' said Jordan, who is almost am bivalent about the prospect o getting a boost in retirement Pa 30 years later. "It would be nice, of course, he said. "It would make my old age a little more comfortable But I'll survive." greg.miller@latimes.com 

They Flew for the CIA but not Really

https://commons.erau.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1097&context=aviation-pioneers-association

They Flew for the CIA but not Really

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