HF 2260

as introduced - 87th Legislature (2011 - 2012) Posted on 03/01/2012 11:16am

A resolution
memorializing Congress and the President of the United States to amend federal
veterans cemetery law to expand eligibility for burial in state veterans cemeteries
developed with federal funding to include allied Hmong-American and Lao-American
veterans of America's Secret War in Laos.

WHEREAS, early in the Vietnam War the United States government discovered that
most enemy war materiel and many enemy combatants were being supplied by the Communist
government of North Vietnam and their allied Communist governments of the People's Republic
of China and the Soviet Union; and

WHEREAS, the United States government discovered that those enemy combatants and
war materiel were being routed from North Vietnam to the battlefields of South Vietnam via an
ever-more-expansive primitive road system through the mountains of Laos, which came to be
known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail System; and

WHEREAS, the United States government determined that it was of utmost urgency to
interrupt that enemy supply route through the use of targeted military action; and

WHEREAS, the United States government determined that it would be politically
inadvisable to widen the allied war effort through overt military intervention against the enemy
Ho Chi Minh Trail System, and concluded that any allied military action to that effect would need
to be implemented in great secrecy and stealth; and

WHEREAS, the United States government, beginning in 1961 and lasting through 1978,
recruited, trained, equipped, directed, resupplied, and paid Hmong and Lao people indigenous
to the mountain highlands of Laos to conduct, under the direction of the Special Activities
Division of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a Secret War in Laos against the
Communist invaders of South Vietnam; and

WHEREAS, the allied Hmong and Lao fighters were formally organized by the CIA into a
Special Guerrilla Unit (SGU) led by the principal allied Hmong leader, General Vang Pao; and

WHEREAS, the members of the CIA's allied Hmong SGU fought valiantly and persistently
in the American Secret War in Laos to interdict enemy supply lines on the Ho Chi Minh Trail
System, to rescue downed United States military pilots from within enemy territories, and to
defend key allied military outposts in Laos, such as the clandestine and vital U.S. emergency
military airport at Luang Prabang among others, and to draw away from the main war thousands
of enemy combatants to protect against allied Hmong SGU attacks against their own supply
lines in Laos; and

WHEREAS, by their valiant fighting and the monumental sacrifice of over 100,000 of their
own lives in the American Secret War in Laos, these allied Hmong and Lao SGU fighters were
able to directly and indirectly save the lives of many thousands of American service members
during the Vietnam War; and

WHEREAS, because of their friendship with and heroic efforts on behalf of the United
States military, the majority of our nation's allied Hmong and Lao SGU fighters in the American
Secret War in Laos and their family and community members were eventually ruthlessly
exterminated or driven from their homelands in Laos; and

WHEREAS, over 250,000 of those Hmong and Lao refugees have sought refugee status in
the United States and other nations, including nearly 80,000 who have resettled in Minnesota,
with most of those refugees having by now earned United States citizenship; and

WHEREAS, accurate records exist to validate the identities of that subset of refugees who
are veterans of the CIA's SGU of the American Secret War in Laos; and

WHEREAS, along with the majority of America's Vietnam War veterans, many of the
allied Hmong-American and Lao-American veterans of the American Secret War in Laos are now
nearing the end of their natural lives, with many others having already passed into eternity;
NOW, THEREFORE,

BE IT RESOLVED by the Governor and the Legislature of the State of Minnesota that
it urges the President and the Congress of the United States to amend federal law and policy to
allow the allied Hmong-American and Lao-American veterans of the American Secret War in
Laos, and their spouses and any dependents, to have the final, eternal honor of perpetual interment
alongside their fellow American veterans within state veterans cemeteries throughout the nation,
including the Minnesota State Veterans Cemetery at Little Falls, Minnesota.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Secretary of State of the State of Minnesota shall
transmit copies of this memorial to the President and the Secretary of the United States Senate, the
Speaker and the Clerk of the United States House of Representatives, the United States Secretary
of State, the presiding officers of both houses of the legislatures of each of the other states of the
union, and to Minnesota's Senators and Representatives in Congress.