COVERT AID TO LAOS SUSPECTED

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 24, 1993                   TAG: 9301240026
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium
COVERT AID TO LAOS SUSPECTED
In March 1981, two months after President Reagan had entered the White House, CIA Director William Casey wrote a fateful memo outlining a covert plan to roll back communism worldwide by aiding resistance forces in Afghanistan, Cuba, Grenada, Iran, Libya, Nicaragua, Cambodia and Laos.
The overt and covert dimensions of what would eventually be called the Reagan Doctrine became a matter of record in places like Afghanistan, Cambodia, Iran and Nicaragua.
Now, more than a decade later, documents and other evidence collected in a yearlong Senate investigation have uncovered what may have been another venture to provide military assistance to anti-communist rebels in Laos. This one may also have been conducted with White House knowledge or direction, investigators say, without the consent or knowledge of Congress.
If investigators' suspicions prove out, long before the Iran-Contra affair came into full flower, a covert assistance program took shape, which, in some ways, could have served as a prototype for Lt. Col. Oliver North's later fund-raising activities on behalf of the Contras.
The three key figures are John LeBoutillier, a former Republican congressman from New York, Ann Mills Griffiths, executive director of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, and Lt. Col. Richard Childress, a colleague of North's who allegedly oversaw the White House's interest in the POW issue from his position as director of Asian affairs for the National Security Council.
All three deny any wrongdoing. LeBoutillier and Griffiths say they were involved in legitimate efforts to raise money used to gather information about POWs in Laos and know nothing about any covert attempts to aid rebels. Childress says he was not involved in either LeBoutillier's activities or any private funding for the Laos rebels.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB