Hundreds of Tibetan warriors who doggedly fought a 15-year guerrilla war against the Chinese in Tibet after being trained and armed by the US Central Intelligence Agency now have a memorial that is likely to ruffle Beijing. The US has, for the first time, paid tribute to the resistance forces and acknowledged the CIA’s role in training them as the agency is erecting a memorial plaque at Camp Hale, a training base in Colorado for US troops during World War II.
Unknown to the local residents, who were told it was an atomic testing site, Camp Hale served as a training camp for nearly 2,000 Tibetan warriors who were taught the art of guerrilla warfare by the CIA from 1957 to 1972 to fight China’s People’s Liberation Army that attacked Tibet in 1949 and annexed the Buddhist kingdom within two years. The event last week saw former CIA agents, Tibetans involved in the operation, and representatives of the US forest service and the Tibetan-American community in Colorado gather at Camp Hale.