Episode #198: Wes Kingsley
For most people, spending years working for the CIA in Burma at a time when Ne Win ruled the country with an iron fist would not be considered a calm or quiet period of time. But then, Wes Kingsley is not “most people.” His years in the Golden Land were but a brief respite from a very full life that included missions against foes ranging from Simba rebels in the Congo to the Vietcong in Southeast Asia… and even assassins in Jamaica.
So looking back, he remembers Burma fondly amid all the compelling danger and adventure of his life, perhaps because it’s where he met his future wife, Sunda Khin. She is the daughter of U Chan Htoon, the former Attorney General and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Burma, who some may remember was the one who recommended that a young S.N. Goenka take a meditation course from U Ba Khin to help cure his migraines.
Wes’ story kicks off just after he completed training at Fort Bragg, when he was assigned to a 16-month tour of duty as a military policeman in South Korea. Upon his release from the military, Wes returned to his hometown of Plymouth, Massachusetts, unsure of his next steps. But one of Wes's brothers, who worked for the CIA, encouraged him to join the Agency and sent him an application. Although Wes lacked the ability to type Morse code, a requirement for the position, he managed to convince the recruiter to give him a couple of months to teach himself. With determination and practice, Wes became proficient enough to be accepted into the Agency, and after going through a year of background investigations to obtain the necessary security clearance, he received an offer of employment in April 1963.
Wes was given an abbreviated communications officer course, based on the government's need to enhance its communication capabilities in Latin America following the Bay of Pigs incident. In spite of that training, however, he was assigned to Eritrea, specifically Asmara, where he worked on a US Army base providing relay services for US embassies across the African continent. It was not an easy assignment. “I remember times walking in the evenings to the embassy, and there would be buildings burning on both sides of the streets,” he recalls during his first temporary duty assignment (TDY), to Khartoum. On one occasion he and his co-worker even had to lock themselves in a vault for several days with all the classified documents and equipment, ready to destroy them if it became necessary.
Around that time, with the Cold War as a backdrop, Communist-inspired and supported rebels—known as the Simba—were trying to topple the US-backed government in the Republic of the Congo (later Zaire, and now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), which until only recently had been a Belgian colony. The Simba had abducted a number of US Consulate staff employees and a few other US citizens in Stanleyville (now Kisangani), a key town in the northeastern part of the country, in one of the first international hostage situations ever faced by the US government. They were planning to execute the hostages. Wes was sent there as communicator for three-man team to try and reconstitute the agent network, and relays what happened next: “[Belgian] paratroopers dropped into Stanleyville and secured the town [code named Operation Dragon Rogue]... The hostages were in a town square, waiting to be executed. The commotion from the paratroopers caused so much excitement that they were able to run away from this place where they were being held,” though one American was killed trying to escape. Wes and the team stayed on for several weeks in Stanleyville, billeting at an evacuated apartment complex. The team shared mess facilities with various mercenaries, led by South African Michael Hoare, infamously known as Mad Mike. These were a mix of South African, Rhodesian, French, German and other Europeans known as the “5 Commando.”
Wes shares another experience that took place in the northeast corner of the Congo. Some Cuban pilots that had taken part in the failed US invasion of the Bay of Pigs a couple of years earlier came to fly T-28 flight trainer aircraft, now modified as fighter planes, to attack Simba supply chains. Wes celebrated his 25th birthday by going up on a mission in one of the T-28s. Unfortunately, two others crashed after getting lost in a freak storm and running out of fuel. Rumors soon spread that they were shot down by the Ugandan Air Force, in advance of an imminent ground operation, which alarmed everyone. Though the reports proved unfounded, Wes was told to leave as a precaution, anyway, taking classified material with him.
After all these events, Wes realized he was beginning to suffer from PTSD, exacerbated in particular by having witnessed the summary executions of Simba prisoners. “I was having trouble keeping my mind on what I was doing,” he admits. “I had a few security violations, which entailed sending out classified information over an unclassified circuit, and a few other things that happened because I wasn't completely focused on what I was doing.” And so he eventually finished his first tour, and then set out on his next posting: Hong Kong.
This was considered a prized assignment, and Wes enjoyed his two years there, even though there were some problems caused by China’s Cultural Revolution. He also got to reconnect with his brother who was stationed in Vietnam at the time, with US involvement there just starting to heat up. After Hong Kong, he was sent to the small US embassy in Kigali, Rwanda. Despite periodic conflicts between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes, Wes found the country calm, peaceful, and beautiful, and enjoyed exploring the countryside and its wildlife. He remembers listening to the 1969 moon landing there on a radio broadcast, as there were no televisions to watch it on.
His tour in Rwanda over, Wes volunteered to go to Vietnam, by this point a full-blown, difficult war; in fact, the US military was already transitioning combat roles to the South Vietnamese military as part of their “Vietnamization” effort to untangle themselves from direct combat. He volunteered at that difficult time because he wanted to see with his own eyes how the reality there matched up against what he was hearing from the media. He still clearly remembers the plane starting to touch down, and seeing the pockmarked, damaged earth marred from recent bombings, and how it resembled a “moonscape.”
Wes worked with South Vietnamese paramilitary Rangers and others. But civil society was in total disarray, with frequent bombings and unrest. The country was also plagued by protests, including by an increasingly militant Buddhist population that was unhappy with the country’s largely Catholic administration. Wes recalls how demonstrations were met with brutality at the hands of the country’s very corrupt police force.
At the time, Wes was living off Tu Do Street in Saigon, which was not only infamous for its bars and nightclubs that attracted many American GIs, but it was close to some US military quarters, too, thus making a frequent target of Vietcong attacks. It was a common occurrence for motorbikes to speed by with the rider throwing bombs or other explosives into shops along the street. At one point, Wes discovered that the building he lived in was on a Vietcong hitlist for bombing. “One of our agents found that the Vietcong had this list of places that they wanted to target, and we didn't have any protection around the places where we lived.” The Vietcong also launched rocket and mortar attacks into residential areas with regularity, often in the early morning hours, inciting fear and resulting in casualties. “You would wake up after this horrendous loud crashing boom,” he says, “but the story was that if you woke up, you're okay!”
Choosing Rangoon as his next destination, Wes anticipated a quieter atmosphere, although he was well aware of Burma’s oppressive, military government. When Wes arrived in 1972, the US was largely focused on combating the country’s rampant narcotics trade. He remembers that the military government would make periodic displays of confiscating and burning drugs for propaganda purposes, even as many generals were profiting from the drug trade themselves.
In 1974, the former UN Secretary General U Thant, a well-respected Burmese diplomat, passed away. “The military government wanted to put him in a pauper's grave and do away with him and forget the whole thing,” Wes recalls. When students protested, Wes witnessed what happened next: troops and police surrounded the University of Rangoon campus, and violently attacked the students, resulting in numerous arrests and even deaths.
Yet overall, Wes enjoyed his time in Rangoon, particularly as he met his future wife, Sunda Khin, there. “I think because of the religion, I found that the people that worked within the embassy, and the people I met outside of the embassy, were just great people.”
His interest in Buddhism was also sparked in Burma, largely inspired by his father-in-law, U Chan Htoon, the man who had coincidentally steered S.N. Goenka towards the latter’s first meditation course with Sayagyi U Ba Khin. Wes also came to see through the “hocus-pocus” superstition that masqueraded as the military’s version of Buddhism, and contrasted against what he saw as “a very gentle, peaceful religion.”
“I can't consider myself a Buddhist because I don't know the language and I don't practice some of the ceremonies and the prayers and so on,” Wes explains. “But I believe in the principle of Buddhism, I believe in the rules that guide the religion, and I find some peace with it. To see it in practice, it's pretty amazing.”
During his time in Burma, Wes was asked to go to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to assist with training amid the deteriorating situation there, as he had done some training there before. He went first to Saigon, where a small, two-seater, Air America jet was arranged, which flew along the scenic Mekong River. But as they approached Phnom Penh, the pilot warned Wes to be ready because they would probably need to descend quickly. Sure enough, they had to land through a Khmer Rouge mortar attack, after which they were quickly loaded into a truck and taken to a bunker for safety. Two days later, the embassy was closed and all Americans were evacuated. Wes was given the choice of going to a US base in Thailand, or returning to Saigon. He chose Saigon.
He arrived at a very tense and uncertain time. He joined a mission to set up a communications link in Bien Hoa, an airbase that was under attack. It was a dangerous mission, but they were successful. However, soon after, the general in charge of the airbase decided to abandon it and withdraw to Saigon, so all their work was all for naught. By now, the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong were advancing on the city, and by that point, the US feared the city would be overrun. Wes participated in the emergency destruction of the Agency’s communications classified facility at the embassy, which included burning classified materials with sodium nitrate in a large drums on the roof. This resulted in such massive flames and rumors began spreading that the embassy was under attack!
At the end of April 1975, and Saigon was on the verge of collapse. “It was such a sad sight,” he recalls. “The Embassy was just completely surrounded by Vietnamese people trying to get out, trying to find a way to leave. That sticks with me.” On the evening before the last day, with only his passport in hand, Wes boarded a helicopter on the roof of the embassy, witnessing the chaotic scene around the city, with fires breaking out all over. He was transported to the USS Blue Ridge, the command ship. The helicopters shuttling back and forth were overworked and unreliable, and many were pushed overboard once they landed. Wes stayed on the ship for about a week, and witnessed the frantic scramble of a Vietnamese military trying to get away as fast as they could. Overused US helicopters were being pitched overboard and Vietnamese C-130 planes were looking to land and helicopters being ditched into the sea, with the pilots jumping out. There were fishing boats overcrowded with people seeking to escape bobbing in the sea all around the ship. “You close your eyes, and you can still see yourself lifting off and looking out the back and seeing those people down there,” he remembers. “Small fishing boats, crammed with people, they couldn't even faint! They wouldn't collapse because there's wasn't enough room, with all the people standing on the deck.”
After returning to Rangoon in May, Wes was assigned to La Paz, Bolivia in July. He first stopped in Washington, and informed the Agency of his coming marriage. This was a momentous decision for Wes, because by marrying a foreign national, he would need to submit his resignation, as this was one of the original terms of his CIA employment. During that time he was awarded the CIA’s Intelligence Medal of Merit by the then Director, William Colby, for his work during the fall of Saigon.
This was also very challenging for his wife-to-be, Sunda Khin, who was unable to obtain a Burmese passport due to some complicated bureaucratic issues. As a result, she had to leave clandestinely, which took the form of a grueling trek from Rangoon across the border into Thailand with gem smugglers. All she had as “documentation” was a handwritten note by a Thai princess promising help should she ever require it, which became something of a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.
Their saga was not over by any means, however. It turns out that Immigration had lost the paperwork Wes had filed about Sunda Khin to allow her to enter the US legally, and from the Burmese side all her problems about getting proper documentation had not disappeared. Ultimately, Wes flew to Bangkok, where he had to bribe a Thai official to marry them…which still didn’t solve all the bureaucratic obstacles. But finally, after another series of hurdles, they were finally able to enter America legally, as husband and wife.
After leaving the CIA, Wes started work for the Sultan of Oman’s government for a year while his wife stayed behind continuing her work as a school teacher. After that contract, he joined the State Department, and was assigned to Kingston, Jamaica. During his assignment there, however, a book came out that doxed him as having worked for the CIA in Africa. This kicked off a chaotic period for him, which included several assassination attempts of people named in the book. Also there was a grenade thrown and automatic weapons fired at the Agency COS’ house down the street from where he lived. Given the danger, Wes sent his wife and family to Florida. Not long after, he even nearly shot two plainclothes policemen by accident who he mistook for intruders.
The next several years were filled with a variety of assignments. First, Wes was assigned Moscow, but he requested they reconsider as he had already been outed as a having been a CIA agent, and so he was redirected to Paris. This was a very welcome change of scenery, and a posting that he and his wife enjoyed thoroughly. There was still some danger, however, with the targeted assassinations of American officials by the Muslim extremist group, Black September. Following the Paris tour he requested assignment to Washington, DC and spent a year waiting to rejoin the CIA. Then following the 1980 military coup in Liberia, Wes was sent there, and he later volunteered for a posting to Central America. “There was a war going on, so they were looking for people to volunteer to go,” explaining that his Monrovia post was overworking him, and he wanted out. Instead of going to Central America, he was assigned to CIA Headquarters where he spent the next few years. His last overseas assignment was a three-year assignment to Manila.
In the end, amid his incredibly adventurous and even danger-filled life, it was Wes’ short time in Burma— and his continuing connection to the region through his marriage and interest in Buddhism— that has stood out in a career that spanned the globe, wars and personal danger. “I found the Burmese people to be different in the sense that they were calm, they were pleasant, they were peaceful. They were just generally nice folks.”