>I am open to persuasion here--not being formally a Buddhist myself--but
>what exactly is up with the matter-of-fact Dalai Lama bashing? His alleged
>comment on forgiving Pinochet sounds weird (as many note, it is probably
>taken out of context) but where are people getting the rest of this left
>folk wisdom that the Dalai Lama a) supports slavery b) is against 'lust' c)
>suports nuclear war d) is an imperialist-backed stooge leading a
>reactionary peasant religion? I mean, other than from the writings of
>Christopher Hitchens, who ridicules all forms of religious belief out of
>principle? Can anyone provide quotes from the horses mouth?
from A. Tom Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet (M.E. Sharpe, 1996)
[pp. 8-17] THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE
If there is one point of agreement among scholars it is that Tibet's original social order has been irreversibly altered by the influence of Chinese communism and the upheavals of 1959. The attempt to rapidly socialize and modernize the Tibetan way of life after 1959 doomed to failure any hope of preserving the unique lifestyle of these people. But that is where agreement ends, for there are two sharply differing views: one holds that the change was beneficial, the other that it was disastrous.
The changes in Tibetan society since 1959 have certainly made it impossible for anthropologists fully to reconstruct what life was previously like. There were some scholars, such as the American anthropologist/missionary Robert Ekvall and the American-trained Chinese scholar Li Anzhe (Li An-che), who lived among the Tibetans before 1950; but for the most part scholars have been forced to study necessarily inexact replications of that society in the communities of exiles in Nepal and India. In the past decade two American anthropologists have been allowed to conduct fieldwork in Tibet while other Tibetan-speaking Western scholars have traveled freely throughout Tibet.
The best single description of pre-1950 Tibetan society is "feudal." The word is in quotes here only because it has been a catchword in the seemingly neverending political battles over what Tibetan life used to be like. The Chinese tend to use the term in their popular media in a pejorative sense (although many Chinese academic journals have used it more descriptively), and naturally the knee-jerk reaction of China's opponents has been to deny that feudalism ever existed in Tibet or even to go so far as to argue that it was beneficial. The term is used here simply because it is the adjective which comes closest to describing Tibetan society; the parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking.
The Elites
Tibetans were ruled by an unusual form of feudal theocracy that was both centralized-in a government in Lhasa headed by a man known, outside of Tibet, as the Dalai Lama-and also decentralized, giving local control to the countless monastic and aristocratic estates. The central government maintained a military force, issued currency and postage stamps, negotiated with other governments and acted as a final court of appeal. The heads of the feudal estates maintained a monopoly of power over all local matters; the central government normally intervened only when the flow of taxes was disrupted. All the officials in Tibet, both lay and ecclesiastic, in Lhasa and on the estates, came from the same small pool of noble families.
At the very top of the social structure was the Dalai Lama, who was both the secular and ecclesiastical ruler of Tibet. Then came the ger-ba, or aristocratic lords, numbering anywhere from 150 to 300 families. These families could be arranged in four distinct groupings. The most exclusive were the de-bon, or families descended from the ancient kings of Tibet. They were followed closely by the yab-shi, or families descended from previous Dalai Lamas. When a new Dalai Lama is found, or chosen (in a manner described below), his family is immediately ennobled, a custom that
<block quote> served to anchor the Dalai Lama to the existing system and must be viewed as a strong restraint against his altering the structural status quo since any changes would negatively affect his parents and siblings also. </block quote>
The third group of aristocracy were called mi-dra; they were families who had been rewarded with ennoblement as a result of some meritorious service by one of their members. These three were the elites of the elite and made up only twenty-five to thirty families. They were extremely wealthy and almost all government officials were drawn from their ranks.
The final group of aristocracy were known as gyu-ma, or "common." These hereditary families were the majority of the nobility, although they were only moderately well-off, some were even poor enough to be forced to carry on trade to Supplement their incomes. Despite claims to the contrary, heredity and ennoblement were the only avenues for joining the nobility. The rest of the population were serfs and, in much smaller numbers, slaves and outcasts.
As in all agricultural societies, the source of power and wealth was not titles but land. Land was divided among the three ruling groups: the monasteries, the lay nobility, and the Lhasa government (whose village members were known as "the ones who serve the government"). Although there is some dispute over how much of the arable land each group held, it is generally agreed that the monasteries and the lay nobility controlled well over 50 percent-and the best land at that.
For the lay nobility there were two types of estates. One was the traditional family seat, which was owned outright and could not be sold. It could be confiscated for acts of treason, although this was rare. The other, and more important form, was estates given to the families by the government in exchange for certain obligations such as government service, the orderly collection of taxes, and the supplying of serfs to the Tibetan army. It was this type of estate that promoted the cohesion of the political structure ruling Tibet.
Appointment to government office necessitated the allocation of an estate to cover expenses. There were however very few movable estates. "Family seats" and monastic estates were rarely confiscated. New arable land was hardly ever reclaimed because of the lack of both technical expertise and entrepreneurial motivation. Many of the nobility had only one estate, and single estates were rarely confiscated; the number of estates that were rotated were, therefore, few.
These estates were extremely lucrative. One former aristocrat noted that a "small" estate would typically consist of a few thousand sheep, a thousand yaks, an undetermined number of nomads and two hundred agricultural serfs. The yearly output would consist of over 36,000 kg. (80,000 lb.) of grain over 1,800 kg. (4,000 lb.) of wool and almost 500 kg. (1,200 lb.) of butter. To the estate's proceeds must be added the various perquisites that came with holding office in Tibet.
The nobles' main functions as government officials were quite straightforward: to collect taxes, settle disputes, punish criminals, and act as a liaison between the central government and the area of Tibet they were administering. For this they received little or no formal salary. But this was not a deterrent; on the contrary, there was stiff competition for governmental posts-gifts were even given to obtain one. This was a direct result of the perquisites that accompanied the job. A government official had "unlimited powers of extortion" and could make a fortune from his powers to extract bribes not to imprison and punish people. In some cases the nobles themselves would not even bother going to their posts but would send one of their stewards who, by all accounts, tended to be harsher than the masters. There was also the matter of extracting monies from the peasantry beyond the necessary taxes. Their abuse of privileges, their lack of concern for the bulk of the population, and even their practice of taking "temporary wives" while stationed away from Lhasa, meant that "very few nobles [had] a reputation for integrity."
One of the most unusual aspects of the Tibetan polity was the dual system whereby every lay official had a clerical counterpart. Usually there was a total of 340 officials, evenly divided, although for a brief period in the 1930s and 1940s there were 200 lay officials and 230 clerical. The monk officials were all from the predominant Gelugpa sect and usually from one of the three major Gelugpa monasteries, all situated in the environs of Lhasa: Drepung, Ganden, and Sera. These monk officials were considered more reliable than their lay counterparts for they had fewer vested interests. They did not individually own estates that they had to worry about losing, nor did they have to worry about offending powerful interests since their clerical status gave them protection. This aspect of the system was sometimes abused when a noble family sent their son to a monastery to acquire monkhood (one night in a monastery was sufficient) solely to make him eligible for one of the official clerical positions.
At the top of the pyramid was one man-the Dalai Lama. Tibetans believe that he is an incarnation of the patron deity of Tibet, Chenrezig (known in Indian Buddhism as Avaloketi'svara). Buddhists believe that individuals go through repeated incarnations until they have performed enough meritorious deeds to free themselves from this cycle and propel them into a state of heavenly bliss called nirvana. Buddhists further believe that there are bodhisattvas who, having reached the very gates of nirvana, have unselfishly denied themselves that release and instead have elected to return to earth in a human form in order to help others achieve that state. The Dalai Lama is believed to be an incarnation of Chenrezig, just such a bodhisattva.
Confusion begins with the very name itself. The Dalai Lama is referred to in non-Tibetan literature as the "Living Buddha" or the "God King." Neither of these descriptions is apt. A Buddha is one who enters nirvana; therefore a living Buddha is a contradiction. Moreover, the Dalai Lama is neither a "God," nor a representative of a supreme deity, but rather the deity's manifestation on earth. The very term Dalai Lama is not Tibetan but Mongolian. Since Dalai translates as "oceans of wisdom," the entire term could translate as "a lama with oceans of wisdom." In Tibet, however, this term is unknown; there he is refer-red to as Gyalwa Rinpoche (Victorious One) or Kyabngon Rinpoche (Precious Protector).
Buddhists hold that all people are reincarnated many times until, if ever, they reach nirvana. In Tibet, reincarnation had a unique use-to determine heirs to leadership positions. This form of succession appears to have been institutionalized around the fifteenth century when the Gelugpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism began its rise to undisputed power although it predates this period. This practice Proved useful for the clerical elite; it kept control of the transition of power out of the hands of the lay nobility, for religious incarnations could only be identified by the clergy, By occasionally selecting "incarnations" from among nonaristocratic families, the clerical elite were able to prevent any one, or small group of, families from monopolizing power. So successful was the system that it resulted in dozens, if not hundreds, of incarnations at all levels of the ecclesiastic order.
The Dalai Lama was the highest position determined by incarnation. In reality it did not much matter which boy was chosen as the incarnation (only one female Was ever chosen) as long as he was bright and alert, for he would spend his lifefrom the age of anywhere from three to five years old-being socialized to whatever position was planned for him, cut off from all outside influences.
Since an incarnation was chosen young, there was a lengthy period until he reached his maturity when others had to rule. Given the low life expectancy in Tibet it was not uncommon for incarnations to die before, or soon after, their ascendancy to power. This resulted in long periods of rule by advisers, or, in the case of the Dalai Lama, regents. As a measure of the power that regents must, have wielded it is important to note that only three of the fourteen Dalai Lamas have actually ruled Tibet. From 1751 to 1960 regents ruled for 77 percent of the time (94 percent if we exclude the exceptionally long reign of the thirteenth Dalai Lama).
A description follows of the process by which the current Dalai Lama was discovered in 1938; it is similar to one described for finding earlier Dalai Lamas by European travelers in the seventeenth century and to the way in which the thirteenth Dalai Lama was "discovered" in the nineteenth century.
Before the thirteenth Dalai Lama died in 1933 he gave some clues as to where he might be reborn. These clues were then combined with a host of other "cosmic" signs to lead the authorities to a particular house. By 1937 official search parties traveled along various routes toward the east, investigating unusual births and rumors of strange phenomena. It was one of these parties that came upon a village in Amdo with a three-story monastery with golden roofs, situated just above a peasant house with carved gables. A boy of the right age was discovered living in the house.
First the lamas in the search party switched clothing with their servants so that the lamas could go into the kitchen and speak to the boy privately without arousing suspicion. The boy is said to have immediately identified the lamas as such despite their servants' clothing and to have been able to pick out objects that belonged to the previous Dalai Lama when presented with duplicates of each object, such as rosaries and canes. And finally he had the proper distinguishing marks: large ears and moles on his torso under his arms, indicating the place where his previous arms were supposed to have been. (Chenrezig is depicted as having large ears and four arms--the moles replaced the second pair.) It was also claimed, if further proof was needed, that the thirteenth Dalai Lama had at one time stayed at the monastery in the village and on passing the peasant house in question, paused and commented to his aides how pretty it was.
The People
The vast majority of the people of Tibet were serfs, or as they were known there, miser (literally "yellow person").
<block quote> Peasants in Tibet, particularly those on the estates belonging to the aristocracy and the monasteries, are in a sense serfs. A tenant peasant is bound to furnish the greater part of his agricultural produce for the use of his landlord, keeping only enough for the bare support of himself and his family. He is also bound to furnish ulag and supplies to his landlord and all government officials traveling through his village. A tenant cannot quit his land without the permission of his sGer pa lord. If he wants to go away he must first ask for what the Tibetans call Mi hkrol shu ba (petition for man separation). Normally such permission is not granted. </block quote>
Serfs were "tied' to their masters. They received the right to work the land in exchange for taxes and ulag, corvée labor. So powerless were they that they required permission to enter a monastery and even to marry. If two serfs of different lords married, male offspring reverted to the father's lord, while female offspring went to the mother's. Permission to leave the estate--even for the briefest periodfor such matters as family visits, pilgrimages, or for some sideline trading required the consent of the lord. Such consent was not readily given and usually came only after all the feudal obligations had been successfully completed.
But, just as there were different classes of aristocrats, so also were there different classes of serfs. Tre-ba and du-jung serfs were indentured to both monastic and lay nobility. The wealthiest serf group, tre-ba, were "taxpayer" serfs. These families held title to hereditary land that could be taken away from them only as a result of the most severe evasion of their feudal responsibilitiesa heavy burden of taxes and a transport corvée obligation. This latter tax was especially severe since it obliged the family to have ready animals, fodder, housing, provisions, and guides at all times in case government officials, or government-authorized individuals, happened to travel through their area. Since Tibet had no roads and no modem means of transportation, travel was by stages ranging from eight to twenty-three miles, depending on the difficulty of the terrain. At each stage a "taxpayer" family was to provide lodging and provisions for all the travelers and assure their transportation to the next stage, at which point the original "taxpayer" returned home and another "taxpayer" family took over. This responsibility was crucial for the government but onerous for the serf, it required a great deal of surplus income to be always ready, even if visitors came months or years apart. As befitted their status, these serfs had an influential say in village matters and at times were elected as headmen.
Another group of serfs was called du-jung, literally "small smoke" ("small households"). These serfs had no hereditary land, but held hereditary serf status for which they were compelled to pay taxes, perform corvée and other feudal obligations. This group had little power and usually rented land or worked as hired hands for the taxpayer serfs.
Yet another group of serfs belonged neither to the monasteries nor to the nobility, but directly to the government. They lived in government villages which they could not leave without permission. Their lands were held in nonhereditary family units. One of the major differences between this group and the Previous two is that the monasteries and nobility had their own land (demesne land), which the serfs were obliged to work as part of their corvée in addition to the land issued them. This situation did not exist in the government-owned villages.
Historically there was very little class mobility in Tibet, and, for the most apart, serfs were forced to accept the position they found themselves 'in upon birth. Recent statements such as "there is no class system and the mobility from class to class makes any class prejudice impossible" are inaccurate and reflect politics rather than fact. A serf might acquire wealth, but he would always remain a serf. There was, however, one avenue of escape that was possibly unique to Tibet--the practice of "human lease." It was possible for a serf to arrange with his/her lord to allow the serf to take out a "lease" on himself/herself This agreement allowed the serf to go anywhere and do anything as long as he or she continued to fulfill some mutually agreed yearly obligation. For example, a lord of a female serf could grant such a contract if she were marrying a male owned by another lord and wished to move to her husband's estate. Since the feudal obligation in this case consisted of a yearly sum of money or some open-ended corvée service, for which the serf could possibly hire someone, it was not a particularly onerous situation, It is not surprising that the lords did not favor these deals and did not enter into such arrangements willingly.
Statistics on the percentage of the population in each of these serf groups are difficult to obtain and those that do exist are not necessarily reliable. In 1959 the Chinese government estimated the social breakdown as follows:
nobility 5% clergy 15% herdsmen (nomads) 20% serfs 60% (of which 45% were taxpayer, 45% were
human lease, 10% other)
It is difficult to give figures about the tax structure in Tibet because it varied by region and even by year. We can conclude, however, that serfs paid three general types of taxes: one to the government in Lhasa, one to the monasteries, and one to their feudal lords. Of course, serfs in monastic estates did not pay the taxes required by the lay nobility; serfs in government villages were also freed from this obligation. Examples of taxes paid yearly to the government include:
tsampa (roasted barley) for monks prayer festival tax hay tax poisonous flower tax (flowers were used in the preparation of paper) utensil tax meat tax taxes held over from years gone by corvée tax (dam repair, building irrigation canals, etc.) military tax (wages and supplies for soldiers)
Taxes paid directly to the monasteries for the upkeep of religious functions include:
butter tax meat tax wool tax woolen cloth tax tsampa
Monasteries also had the right to take children to be initiated as monks if the voluntary supply was insufficient.
Note should be made of the existence of slavery in Tibet. Although vehemently denied by apologists for the old order, there is evidence that slaves existed - usually as private household servants. Since there were few families that could afford to feed and shelter them, they could not have been very numerous. Today, Chinese authorities cite a figure of 5 percent of the population having been slaves; this, however, may be too high.
Sir Charles Bell, a British colonial official in India and a renowned Tibet scholar, acknowledged the existence of slaves:
<block quote> Slaves are sometimes stolen, when small children, from their parents. Or the father or mother being too poor to support their child would sell it to a man, who paid them "sho-ring," "price of mothers' milk," brought up the child and kept it or sold it as a slave ....
Two slaves whom I saw ... had been stolen from their parents when five years old, and sold in Lhasa for about seven pounds each." </block quote>
In spite of the overwhelming evidence of a highly stratified society with a huge gulf between the classes, writers continue to ignore this or attempt to justify it on the grounds that it was benevolent. But not all residents of Tibet were blind to the slights around them. One Western-educated Tibetan, writing about the differences between the rich and poor, wrote that they "could have been different races." A foreign resident who lived in Tibet for over two decades admitted that "nobles regard the common people as inferior." Others were simply unable, or unwilling, to face the realities, writing that "the difference between the rich and poor in Tibet really was a very small one," or the "Tibetan peasant's way of life seemed enviable, for he possessed what all men desire-ample time to enjoy his leisure independently."
The best examples of the upper strata view of Tibet---that Tibet's social structure was benevolent to the people-can be found in a book by Mary Taring, who was born into one of the wealthiest families in Tibet and married into another.
<block quote> We thought the government kind to let us have estates. The people were so contented although the difference between their livelihood and their master's was so great. In the light of Buddhism all people are equal. In Tibet everything was done alike for rich and poor. No one can imagine how gay life was in Tibet. </block quote>
In spite of these views, however, and seemingly without seeing any contradiction, she also mentions that there were outcasts whom no one would consider marrying; that while the poor subsisted on tsampa and butter tea, the wealthy also ate rice and an additional four to five dishes at every meal; that her family had fifteen to twenty servants (one of whom would always carry her up and down stairs when she was a child because she was "lazy"); that the rich used Western-trained doctors at the British Mission or traveled to India for medical care; and that the servants were so ill-trusted that every morning they were only given the food required for one day out of a locked storehouse.
The life of the vast majority of the Tibetans was not "enviable" by any stretch of the imagination. They lived "in small, badly lighted, cold hovels" and ate a mixture of tsampa, butter, and tea, and if they were lucky, some meat. Indeed, the low productivity resulting from the bad diet was a problem. One refugee reports that when his family lived in Tibet, at a level that could be considered lower-middle class in Tibetan terms, they could experience, at most, "two food crises a year." The nomad diet was slightly better in that it had a high concentration of protein (meant, cheese, milk, yogurt); but it lacked vegetables and grains.
In spite of the claim made not long ago that "before the Chinese crackdown in March 1959, the normal Tibetan diet included an inexhaustible flow of buttertea, large amounts of meat and various vegetables," a survey made in 1940 in eastern Tibet came to a somewhat different conclusion. It found that 38 percent of the households never got any tea but either collected herbs that grew wild or drank "white tea,"-boiled water. It found that 51 percent could not afford to use butter, and that 75 percent of the households were forced at times to resort to eating grass cooked with cow bones and mixed with oat or pea flour.
The wealthy, on the other hand, lived in opulent splendor. This, of course, has to be understood in relative terms; because of Tibet's isolation, even the upper strata suffered somewhat from being cut off from the world. Nevertheless, they lived in large, thick-walled houses--a matter of no small importance in a climate as changeable as Tibet's. There was little work for them to do, since many government functions and even the running of their estates were often handled by stewards. Women, in particular, did little but prepare for parties that lasted entire days and were filled with such pastimes as gambling with dice or playing mahjong. Among the populace, a common appellation for the rich was "ones whose lips are always moistened by tea." The rich, of course, were quick to deny any interest in earthly wealth.
One of the main reasons for the creation of the Buddhist religion was the Buddha's abhorrence of the caste system in the Hindu religion. Equality of human beings was an important element in Buddhist dogma. Unfortunately, this did not deter Tibetans from developing their own caste system. A number of professions were considered "unclean"; and while the Buddhist caste system was not as rigid as the Hindu, Tibetan lower castes were ostracized. There were
professional, hereditary beggars, metal workers, fishermen and women, musicians, smiths, actors, butchers and undertakers. While attitudes toward these groups varied widely, it is safe to say that the populace was disdainful toward them, and there was little, if any, intermarriage. In some cases these individuals were forced to live on the outskirts of the villages.
A particularly intriguing group of outcasts lived in Lhasa and were known as Ragyap-pa. They lived in a ghetto, in houses built of animal horns and their monopoly over certain jobs made them relatively well off. It was their function to rid the city of corpses, human and otherwise, and dispose of the night soil. Before 1912 they were also in charge of convicts.
By all accounts, the task of keeping Lhasa clean must have been herculean, for the city could have rivaled the worst present-day metropolis for its filthiness. Garbage was strewn everywhere, and it was common practice for people to relieve themselves anywhere they pleased. Dead animals were said to be a familiar sight. So bad was it that the thirteenth Dalai Lama was "almost always" sick from the smell and the dirt. The nobility routinely carried around scented handkerchiefs for their noses as they rode through the capital's streets.
[pp. 153-158] THE CIA
Understanding the involvement of the CIA is really the key to understanding the rebellion. While the rebellion was purely a Tibetan matter launched in hopes of
Preserving the traditional culture and lifestyle, when the CIA became interested and involved, as it did in countless rebellions around the world, its goal, everywhere, was to manipulate the rebellion to serve American foreign policy interests. Because the CIA provided the resources, and because the rebels hoped that the CIA would bring all of the power of the United States to bear on the Chinese,
CIA officers were able to manipulate the progress of the rebellion. The CIA's involvement began in earnest either in 1955 (with the meeting George Patterson referred to above) or shortly after, in 1956. One rebel leader, Wangdu, recalls leaving Tibet in 1956 and being trained by the Americans somewhere overseas. Later, he was secretly dropped back into Tibet, in the Kham region, where he began organizing rebel activity until his departure for Nepal in 1966.22
It was Gyalo Thondup who arranged the first CIA training missions, picking six Tibetans for that purpose. Their story reads like a typical spy novel. They were told to walk out of Kalimpong individually; they were then picked up by Thondup outside the town and driven to Siliguri. There, they were given compasses and told to walk toward East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)-a few hours away. On the frontier they were met by two Pakistani officers, a Chinesespeaking American, and a Tibetan interpreter. They were given turbans and Punjabi pajamas and told to walk to Dhaka. From there they were taken on a five-hour flight (perhaps to Taiwan) and told to don American military uniforms. At this location they were joined by Thubten Norbu; they spent the next four months learning how to read maps and how to use a radio transmitter, a parachute and weapons. They were then parachuted back into Tibet in the autumn. of 1957, from a plane flown by an American pilot. They each carried with them a pistol, a small machine gun, an old Japanese radio that had to be wound by hand, U.S.$132 worth in Tibetan currency, and two small vials of poison to swallow if captured. Their mission was to urge the Dalai Lama to publicly appeal for U.S. assistance.
Upon landing they spread out and contacted Gompo Tashi Andrugstang, the rebel leader. In January 1958 they spoke to the Dalai Lama's Chamberlain, Thubten Woyden Phala, in the Norbulingka. The Chamberlain offered no help, telling the rebels that half the cabinet was supportive of the Chinese. He advised them that rebellion was useless and that they should give it up. But Andrugstang was not one to be deterred. He appealed to Washington for further assistance, only to be told that such help would be provided only if the Dalai Lama requested it directly. In May 1958 two of the foreign-trained agents and Andrugstang tried to see the Chamberlain again. This time their lack of success prompted the rebels to move out of Lhasa to the Loka region. The Americans were said to be furious, since they expected the rebels to stay in Lhasa, keeping in close contact with the government officials.
The Khampas wanted to mobilize their people against the Han. The Lhasan bureaucracy wanted to preserve their lifestyle through compromise with the Han. The Lhasans were fearful of what would happen if a rebel force, led by Kharnpas, was ever successful enough to force the Han out. There was the real threat that the Khampas might very well decide to rule Tibet themselves. It is unclear how much of these internal politics were understood in Washington. What is obvious is that Washington did not want to appear to be aiding rebel forces in Tibet when they did not even have the official approval of their own religious and secular leader-the Dalai Lama. Such aid would almost certainly precipitate a war with China and its ally the Soviet Union. Hence, there was a dogged determination on the part of American intelligence officers to obtain official approval for their activities from the Dalai Lama himself. The rebels' inability to get that approval through peaceful means may very well have been the impetus for the events of March 1959, described below.
Toward the end of 1958 the CIA decided to make its first air-drop of arms, ordering the Khampas to a designated spot with thirty mules and only one trusted individual. When the Khampas pointed out that the spot was directly over a nomad camp (thereby threatening the secrecy of the operation) and that one person could not possibly control thirty mules, the CIA ignored their objections and proceeded with the drop. This shipment included 100 British-made rifles, 20 submachine guns, two 55mm mortars, 60 hand grenades, and 300 rounds of ammunition for each weapon. While the Dalai Lama continues to downplay the significance of the aid provided by the CIA, between October 1958 and February 1959, Civil Air Transport (CAT), one of the CIA's airlines, dropped almost ten tons of weapons and supplies to the rebels.
Meanwhile, training operations for the Tibetans had been shifted from Taiwan to Saipan and finally to Camp Hale, Colorado, although the Tibetans were never told where they were. This last site was a natural: 2,800m (9,300 ft.) above sealevel and far more similar to the Khampas natural environment than the other sites. One of the instructors was World War II marine veteran and legendary guerrilla instructor Anthony Poe--an indication that Washington, at least, felt this operation to be significant.
Despite the cries of innocence on the part of the Dalai Lama, officials in Washington were planning for the events months before that fateful March in 1959. George Patterson maintains that he was told long before then, by his Khampa friends, that there were plans to spirit the Dalai out of Lhasa. The Dalai's denials are scoffed at by an American who was involved in the planning operation, arguing that the logistics of the operation were too complex for the relatively unsophisticated Khampas to have planned and carried out alone. This attitude, widely held within the CIA and government circles in Washington, is a good example of American attitudes of the time, which were a generous mixture of romanticization of the Khampas, disparagement of those not as materially advanced, and a fervent belief that only Americans are capable of performing such tasks.
Not only were Tibetans trained in the use of radio transmitters, but the Dalai Lama was accompanied by a Khampa who had been trained and equipped with a movie camera and sufficient color film to preserve a visual record of the flight. The Americans used a Lockheed C130 aircraftmodified especially for flight over the thin air of Tibet-to drop food and fodder for the Dalai's party and were able to do so thanks to the training other Khampas had in learning how to place distinctive panels in the snow as targets for the pilots. The radio operator joined up with the Dalai's entourage about halfway to India and from that point on was in constant radio communication with the CIA station in Dhaka. One view is that "this fantastic escape and its major significance have been buried in the lore of the CIA as one of the successes that are not talked about. The Dalai Lama would never have been saved without the CIA."
This view is confirmed by Richard Bissell, the former head of clandestine operations for the CIA, who also believed that the Dalai Lama could not have made his escape good without the CIA-trained operatives who accompanied him. As to the Dalai Lama himself, he confirms the constant activity of the Khampas "who came and went, keeping in touch with all the isolated bands who were living in the mountains." this rather interesting admission raises the possibility that the Khampas were also picking up air-dropped supplies in their wanderings and that the Dalai Lama, as on so many other occasions, was not kept fully infonned--given his previous aversion to the rebel activity. The Khampas rightly thought they would be better off not telling him. When this interpretation was presented to the Dalai Lama he denied it adamantly, affirming his earlier position that there were no air-drops and that he was only accompanied by a Khampa who had a radio.
Although hints appeared about covert aid-such as a Washington Post story that "guerrillas are said to have been well supplied by some mysterious agency with necessary light weapons and ammunition"--most prominent American leaders and the major news media representatives did not believe it. American leaders also, for the most part, publicly urged their government not to make the Tibet issue another front in the Cold War. Mike Mansfield, an Asia scholar and thenDemocratic Senator from Montana, was one of the few prominent officials in Washington advocating the recognition of the Dalai Lama's administration as the only rightful one for Tibet. An Indian scholar summed up American opinion:
<block quote> Although the United States was not involved in the Tibetan revolt ... it was frequently mentioned by the Chinese Communists, as well as by the Communist Party of India, as one of its main instigators.... However, on no occasion did they bring in any evidence to substantiate their charge. The American press did not take the charge seriously and made no effort to refute it. </block quote>
But others, like L. Fletcher Prouty, an officer in the air force who worked with the CIA during the late 1950s and early 1960s, point out that physical evidence is not always necessary.
<block quote> Although we may have cloaked our activity on the border of India in the deepest secrecy, who in India and who in Russia would believe that such activity was being supported and directed by anyone else than the covert peacetime operational forces of the United States? ... If the Dalai Lama is spirited out of Tibet in the face of an overwhelming Chinese army of conquerors, are the Chinese going to think he found his support in heaven? </block quote>
The Chinese never produced any evidence--because they did not have anything concrete to produce. Before the Khampas were dropped back into Tibet their clothes and equipment were carefully searched to dispose of any markings hat may have identified them with the United States. Even the labels of their medicine bottles were removed. But, as Prouty correctly pointed out, it would be foolhardy to believe that the Chinese were not highly suspicious and that their public statements were not simply rote condemnations, but were rather based on some sense of what was actually happening.
In May of 1959 a mysterious Canadian citizen approached the American government, asking to discuss with them covert operations in Laos. He was granted a meeting--ostensibly with only the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but actually with CIA personnel too. As this Canadian talked he proved to be highly knowledgeable about the back roads of Laos and infiltration routes into China from that region. He also began talking about Tibet and how easy he thought it would be to sabotage road transportation there since most of the arteries were built precariously on the mountainsides and that, once sabotaged, it would take weeks or months to repair even the slightest damage. The following month, in a meeting with then Deputy Secretary of Defense Thomas S. Gates, the decision was made to begin concerted covert operations against the Chinese in Tibet. Three C130s were modified by the Lockheed Corporation to withstand the rarefied air and make the long, round-trip journey from their bases in Thailand. Camp Hale was put into full operations (from 1959 to 1962 about 170 Khampas were trained there). The activities were divided in two: one was to take place largely in the north near Lake Koko Nor, designed to sabotage roads and gather information; while the other operation was to take place in the south, designed to keep the Khampas supplied in order to preserve them as a fighting force in selected areas of Tibet.
This major recruiting effort yielded 14,000 Tibetans and some additional tribal people in the field, "entirely dependent on long-range transport and infiltration," and "armed, equipped, and fed by the Agency." By early 1960, however, efforts in this arena began to wane as preparations for the invasion of Cuba and growing involvement in Vietnam and Laos drained CIA resources. Then, suddenly, on President Dwight D. Eisenhower's orders, all clandestine operationsincluding the flights over Tibet--came to an abrupt halt after the downing of an American U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers. According to Prouty, the CIA people involved in the Tibetan operation were "very bitter" about this turn of events, feeling that the crisis with the USSR had nothing to do with their activities (although U-2s had been flying over Tibet as well as from bases in Pakistan). Soon after, a less satisfactory alternative land route was immediately established. So ended phase one of the CIA's post-1959 plans for Tibet.
After the Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco, President John F. Kennedy issued two memoranda: National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 55 and National Security Action Memorandum 57. These documents announced a presidential decision to change the rules by which intelligence operations were governed. From that point on, all major military operations (clandestine and otherwise) would be under the direct supervision of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). However, the possibility was left open that small, covert operations "may be assigned" directly to the CIA. Since at this time it was Prouty's job to brief the Chair of the JCS, General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, on these memoranda, he is a good source on how they were interpreted. He is convinced that both Lemnitzer and Kennedy believed this meant an end to the type of operations the CIA was conducting in Tibet, Cuba, Laos, and elsewhere. After Kennedy's death in November 1963, the CIA interpreted the memos to mean that they were free to begin small, covert operations; if these became--advertently or inadvertentlymajor operations, the military would bail them out.
Major operations, such as flights into Tibet, were no longer possible; the CIA was now restricted to ground operations. The Camp Hale (Colorado) training continued through 1964, with the exception of the year 1962 when the camp was closed down for unspecified reasons. In December 1961, the Colorado effort was almost exposed when a bus transporting Khampas to an airport outside the base had an accident, consequently missing a predawn flight. Workers at the airport arrived to find the place swarming with armed troops; some caught sight of the Tibetans. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara successfully persuaded the Washington bureau of the New York Times to kill the story, which was not published until twelve years later.