Hog’s Exit by Gayle L. Morrison | Books in Review

“Hog” was the call sign of CIA operative Jerry Daniels, portrayed as a beloved, though rather mysterious, hero by Gayle L. Morrison in her able oral history, Hog’s Exit: Jerry Daniels, the Hmong, and the CIA (Texas Tech University Press, 496 pp, $85, hardcover; $39.95 paper). “Exit” turns out to a key word because of the strange events surrounding Daniels’ death.

Jerry Daniels was an adventurous young man from Missoula, Montana, a country boy who loved to hunt and fish. He became a smoke jumper, and that skill in particular interested the CIA. Through their clandestine airline, Air America, the CIA ran the secret war in Laos from the late 1960s through the early 1970s, training and providing logistical support for Hmong tribesman against the Pathet Lao and the NVA. Operatives were called “cargo kickers” because they pushed cargo out of C-130s. But they also were experts at rigging the cargo for parachutes.

Daniels operated with the Hmong tribes directly, at a place called Lima Site 36 and later at a headquarters operation, Long Cheng, the “secret city” that turned out to be the last stand for the CIA and General Vang Pao’s Hmong. Daniels learned the Hmong language and lived among them as a supply liaison. And before it was over, he directed combat operations as well.

Jerry Daniels, left, with two Hmong colonels

He became the general’s favorite, and was beloved among the Hmong fighters as an American who always told the truth. When the U.S. operation in Laos finally went down, Daniels was the key man in evacuating the decimated Hmong to Bangkok, and then, with many of them, to his home town of Missoula. The Hmong, a mountain people, were superstitious about living at any elevation below 3, 000 feet, so Missoula had some appeal.

As if what Daniels did for a living  wasn’t  mysterious enough, the circumstances of his death spawned a conspiracy theory among Daniels’ friends and cohorts—American and Hmong alike. Daniels came home to Missoula in a sealed casket. Official accounts had it that he was found in his Bangkok apartment, three days after last being seen, with his body so black and bloated that it could only be identified through forensic means.

The official cause of death was asphyxiation from a faulty water heater. The apartment’s two air conditioners, which might have sucked out the bad air, were off. Daniels was a heavy drinker. He very well could have passed out, and then succumbed. But were three days long enough for such deterioration?

Adding to the strange circumstances, a young Thai man was found in an adjoining room, barely alive, also the victim of carbon monoxide poisoning. His account accompanied the police report, but later he couldn’t be found. One speculation, heartily discounted by Daniels’ friends, was that the young man was a lover. In any case, how did the young man survive, when Daniels didn’t?

Daniels being a CIA spook, perhaps his was an appropriate exit. Morrison’s many contributors speculate, however, whether Daniels’ remains are even in the casket.

All that aside, Morrison, who has worked many years among the Hmong, has put together quite a documentary. The oral history format is repetitive, but the many voices are well-edited, with individual styles left intact. Photographs from personal collections add a great deal.

Morrison has given us a lively look back at a secret war—and a mystery as well.

—John Mort




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