Operation Barrel Roll

It became an interdiction campaign against the Ho Chi Minh trail, North Vietnam's main logistical corridor, which ran from southwestern North Vietnam, through southeastern Laos, and into South Vietnam. The operation also increasingly provided close air support for Royal Lao Armed Forces, CIA-backed tribal allies, and Thai Volunteer Defense Corps in a covert ground war in northern and northeastern Laos. Barrel Roll and the "Secret Army" attempted to stem an increasing tide of People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and Pathet Lao offensives. Barrel Roll was one of the most closely held secrets of the American military commitment in Southeast Asia. Due to the ostensible neutrality of Laos, guaranteed by the Geneva Conference of 1954 and the Declaration on the Neutrality of Laos of 1962, both the U.S. and North Vietnam strove to maintain the secrecy of their operations and only slowly escalated military actions there. In 1975, Laos emerged from nine years of war as devastated as any of the other Asian participants in the Vietnam War. After a series of political and military machinations conducted by the U.S., the Pathet Lao, and the North Vietnamese in Laos that are described in the History of Laos since 1945, the Declaration on the Neutrality of Laos was signed in Geneva, Switzerland on 23 July 1962. The agreement, an attempt to end a civil war between the Communist-dominated (and North Vietnamese-directed) Pathet Lao, neutralists, and American-backed rightists, included provisions that required the removal of all foreign military forces and precluded the use of Lao territory for interfering in the internal affairs of another country – a blatant effort to shut down North Vietnam's growing logistical corridor through southeastern Laos that would become known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail.