Jerry Daniels

Daniels died in Bangkok in 1982 of asphyxiation caused by a leaking water heater.

On April 29, 1982, age 40, Daniels died in Bangkok, Thailand. The official report stated that he died of asphyxiation from a leaking propane water heater in his apartment. A decomposed body was found in his apartment, said to have been dead for a few days. The body was declared by the U. S. Embassy to be that of Jerry Daniels. The casket was sealed with explicit instructions and security to guarantee it not be opened. The family was told Daniels’ body was in the casket but no verifiable proof was submitted. Upon the casket arriving in Missoula, the Hmong were allowed to honor Daniels with a formal three-day traditional Hmong funeral celebration. Never had any non-Hmong been paid such tribute. Hmong around the world claimed to have seen Jerry in Laos, the United States, and Europe after the time of his proclaimed death. Many of the Hmong believed Daniels had been placed into protective custody and continued his work.

The results of Daniels’ work were that 53,700 Hmong and other highland peoples of Laos were resettled in the United States between 1975 and 1982. Several thousand were also settled in other countries. Also by 1982, another 104,000 Lao refugees, including Hmong, had fled Laos and were living in refugee camps, mostly in Ban Vinai, in Thailand. Many of them would also be resettled over the next 25 years.

The Paris Peace Accords in 1973 ended U.S. direct involvement in the Vietnam War and restrictions on U.S. military aid imposed by the Lao government doomed the Hmong. The American presence in Long Tieng declined. In April 1975, the United States rapidly began airlifting Americans and Vietnamese employees out of South Vietnam prior to the fall of Saigon to Communist forces. In Laos at the same time, communist forces were poised to capture Long Tieng. Daniels was the only American still working full-time at Long Tieng and he organized the evacuation of Hmong from Laos to Thailand May 12–14, 1975. Daniels and several American civilian pilots evacuated Vang Pao and 2,500 Hmong leaders and their families from Laos to northeastern Thailand where they were placed in hastily created refugee camps.

In 1970, Jerry “Hog” Daniels became the primary PMOO for General Vang Pao and worked closely with him on front-line military operations, advising and coordinating U.S. material and financial support for the army, largely made up of Hmong, that Vang Pao commanded. Daniels was based at Vang Pao’s headquarters at Long Tieng, located in a secluded mountain valley. The code name for the CIA in Long Tieng and the compound in which CIA personnel worked was “Sky,’ named after Daniels’ home state of Montana, “Big Sky Country.” The Long Tieng valley consisted mostly of a 4,400 feet (1,300 m) runway surrounded by a Hmong settlement of several thousand people. At its peak about 1970, 40 to 50 Laotian and U.S. aircraft were stationed at Long Tieng. Frequent flights from Thailand brought in ammunition and supplies to Vang Pao’s 30,000 soldiers. The only access to this area was via this airstrip. The airstrip handled C130, C47, and C46 cargo planes. This airstrip was a top-secret joint operation between Laos and the United States.

In 1960, while Daniels was a smokejumper, the CIA recruited him as a loadmaster or “kicker” for air operations based in Thailand. Kickers were often smokejumpers as they had familiarity with parachutes and jumping and surviving in rough terrain. Airplanes were loaded with cargo, flown into areas accessible only by air, and cargo was then “kicked” out the door and dropped or parachuted to locations on the ground. The CIA’s assistance to the Hmong who lived in the mountains of Laos was largely delivered by air. The Hmong forces supported the Royal Lao government against the communist Pathet Lao rebels and the North Vietnamese Army which supplied its troops in South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

In 1960, Daniels enrolled as a student at the University of Montana. He divided time between classes and working as a kicker for CIA affiliates in Laos and other countries until 1965 when he was assigned duties as a CIA Junior PMOO in Laos among the Hmong. He graduated from college in 1969, and then was promoted to a full PMOO in Laos and the Chief of Station.

Jerrold B. Daniels or Jerry Daniels (June 11, 1941 – April 29, 1982) was a CIA Paramilitary Operations Officer (PMOO) in their Special Activities Center who worked in Laos and Thailand from the early 1960s to the early 1980s. He was known by his self-chosen CIA call-sign of “Hog.” In the early 1960s, he was recruited by the CIA as a liaison officer between Hmong General Vang Pao and the CIA. He worked with the Hmong people for the CIA’s operation in Laos commonly called the “Secret War” as it was little known at the time. In 1975, as the communist Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese Army advanced on the Hmong base at Long Tieng, Daniels organized the air evacuation of Vang Pao and more than two thousand of his officers, soldiers, and their families to Thailand. Immediately after the departure of Daniels and Vang Pao, thousands more Hmong fled across the Mekong river to Thailand, where they lived in refugee camps. From 1975 to 1982 Daniels worked among Hmong refugees in Thailand facilitating the resettlement of more than 50,000 of them in the United States and other countries.

Daniels was born on June 11, 1941 in Palo Alto, California. His parents were Bob and Louise Daniels. He had three brothers: Ronald, Jack, and Kent. The family moved to Helmville, Montana in 1951, where he graduated from Missoula County High School in 1959. When he was 17 years old, Daniels became one of the youngest smokejumpers in Missoula’s history. He parachuted to fires in Montana, New Mexico, and California.