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CIA hitman Bill Young found dead in Chiang Mai
'Killing was part of the job' said former agent described as 'a retired James Bond'
An American missionary's son who became a top CIA Vietnam War-era hit-man in the jungles of Burma, Laos and Thailand has been found dead in his Chiang Mai home, a bullet in his head, a revolver in one hand and a crucifix in the other.
"Bill Young died as he once lived - violently," said a friend.
William Young was 76, a tall, lean, modest and quietly spoken man who belied the image of a CIA killer. He was likened by his British friends to a retired James Bond.
"He was an extraordinary individual who led an extraordinary life," said the US Consulate General in Chiang Mai, the main city of northern Thailand, in a death notice.
Despite his action-packed CIA career, Young drifted into quiet retirement in his rambling home on the outskirts of Chiang Mai. Disowned by the CIA after challenging US policy in Vietnam and Laos, Young worked at home for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, using the contacts he had built up over the years among the hill-tribes of Laos and northern Thailand.
I visited him over a period of several weeks, working on the script of a film about his extraordinary life. Our long recording sessions were broken regularly by phone calls from his contacts, conducted in at least four different hill tribe languages.
Bill was most at home among the Lahu, who inhabit the mountains of Laos and northern Thailand. Lahu mourners packed a Chiang Mai church, together with other hill tribe representatives, for a traditional ethnic funeral service today.
Hundreds of hill tribe people in traditional dress, including members of the warlike Wa, are expected to attend the burial on Wednesday in Chiang Mai's Foreign Cemetery, a leafy corner of the city watched over by a bronze 19th century statue of Queen Victoria.
Bill's grandfather was a Baptist missionary who converted thousands of Lahu tribespeople in British-controlled Burma in the late 19th century. His father, Harold, also a missionary, pioneered the CIA connection by joining the American intelligence service and conducting spy missions in southern China after Mao Ze Dong's Communists ousted the Kuomintang.
Bill was born at a mission station in Burma and grew up in hill tribe villages, learning at least five local languages and forging friendships that were later to help him in his dangerous espionage work.
Harold Young's Washington connections secured Bill a CIA post, and soon the young operative had gathered an army of several thousand Lahu warriors to help disrupt communist supply lines running through Laos during the Vietnam war. "Killing was part of the job," he told me, detailing several scenes where he had shot his way out of tight corners in remote hill tribe villages.
Although Laos was officially neutral, US special forces penetrated deep into the landlocked country as the Vietnam war raged, while US aircraft bombed border sections of the Ho Chi Minh trail which carried North Vietnamese supplies southwards. The US did all it could to cover up its Laotian operations, which came to be described as the 'Secret War'.
At the height of the fighting, Bill was air-dropped into the mountains of central Laos to find a suitable site for an airfield base. He scoured the mountainous, forested terrain on foot and finally found an ideal valley near the Plain of Jars. (The photograph at the top of the page, which was on display in Young's living room in Chiang Mai, was taken during this period.)
The CIA operation known as Air America based itself there and within months the airfield, named Long Cheng but which appeared on no map, had grown into one of Southeast Asia's busiest.
"It was a small city," Bill told me. "It had brothels and bars, casinos - everything a serviceman could ask for. But it had a church, too."
Bill's base as a CIA operative was a comfortable house on the Thai banks of the Mekong River, opposite Laos.
He liked to party, and his home became open house to a steady stream of air hostesses and nurses heading for the Air America base. Bill married one, but the marriage ended in divorce.
"She was a very beautiful woman and I loved her dearly," Bill told me. "But she persuaded me to return to the US and take a regular job there. I lasted only a few months - my real home was among the Lahu."
Bill died with one ambition unrealised. A major Hollywood film studio paid him $100,000 for the rights to his story, but the movie he wanted to see arrive on the big screen was never made. Some say the disappointment fuelled the depression that haunted him in later life. ·
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Dear Bill
You saved my life and this I shall never remember!
Up there don't read or listen to what rotting rats write about you. - They only forget that the day USA shall not control al petrol routes, China shall pursue their aggressive stance toward USA & take control of the world.
I remember when you helped me to deliver a French couple held has hostages by the Karens in 1981 - near 3 Pagoda Pass. Thanks again â?? it was quite a pleasure to work with you. We often talked about France in Indochina & meantime the Vietnamese led by general Ho Cong Hoa (That became a person with whom I shared aviation projects in Ho Chi Minh during the 90ties) scared the shit out of the Thai Army while cleaning the Khmer Rouge.. Today Vietnam shall follow China in its politics - Yes! MacArthur was right!
A bientôt mon ami!
Bill Young was a drug runner out of Laos. I don't find any improvement in the missionary image in Thailand from what he did. Markus Young his cousin, works with the Wa in Burma. Divine Inheritance. So Bill Young worked for the DEA in Chiangmai and what was he doing when all the Hmong and Akha were slaughtered in Chiangmai and Chiangrai during the DEA Thaksin 2003 edition of the Drug War? Being so heavily involved in drugs, yet missionaries in Thailand feel justified taking away Akha children "because their parents are involved with drugs." Yeah, right. And the Wa showed up at the funeral, fitting considering that they built their empire running meth. These kind of missionaries are a blight on the human race and however they exit from Thailand is of no importance. Meanwhile missionaries such as Bill Young continue to have cushy lives in Thailand at the expense of the impoverished hill tribe they claim to help. Considering all the innocent hill tribe who were murdered without trial in Thailand, I say good riddance and the more of these missionaries who follow his final shameless example, the better.
Dear Uncle Albert -
The morality lessons are truly wonderful - I've always appreciated the mental flagellations of self-ordained righteous individuals. It's always easy being a sideline critic but have you seen the world lately, Uncle Albert? Did it magically transform itself over night and do you think that the world is just composed of a bunch of misunderstood "good guys" for which the mere act of sitting down around the kitchen table and talking things out is all that is needed? The human animal is just that - an animal with the capability to commit insanely cruel acts against others in an attempt to further their personal goals. Can anyone pronounce "Al Qaeda"? And to add insult to injury, they vocally acclaim to perform their acts of savagery in the name of Allah. Thanks, but please reserve the sermons for the Sunday morning pulpit sessions.
I'm glad you have your convictions - I'm also glad that there are people in the world that can and do deliver on the motto "We do bad things to bad people". While I cannot personally claim to have worked in/known Mr Young's particular world, I can attest to a more recent version for which I was willing to do/delivered on a personal commitment to provide the same types of efforts for my country and for those not quite up to the task. I won't claim that the God I know won't hold me accountable for the actions I have/am taking during this mortal existence or not, but I have faith that he WILL judge me for not only my actions, but also those things I did/do which contribute to the betterment of others' lives regardless of whether they may pass someone else's higher moral belief/verbal diatribe!
In the grander scheme of life, Mr Young seems to have been of the infinitesimally small segment of mankind that had what it takes to venture to places and dark locales that few of the rest of society have either not heard of nor want to think about. I know that I currently live in a better world for people like Mr Young and the other Silent Services of this great country and elsewhere and for that, I am personally grateful.
Keep Calm and Carry On!
The Phoenix program was a counter-insurgency operation, and a highly effective one at that. Much more so than the B-52 raids that were like trying to hit mosquitoes with a wrecking ball. The SAD/SOG operations throughout numerous conflicts have been highly efficient at disrupting enemy supply, infrastructure, and communications channels. As recent as 2001, only 350 US special forces and 100 CIA officers organized the heavily outnumbered Northern Alliance against 50,000 Taliban and routed them without any large Army or Marine involvement. But then the "nation building" and huge mobilization began and we see the results of that 10 years on. So people can call the covert actions of the CIA "evil", but war is itself evil and if killing must be done, I would prefer that it be as surgical and of as high value as possible to end the wider loss of life as quickly as possible. I have to believe that Mr. Young felt that what he was doing was helping to end the conflict and bring lasting peace/stability to a region and people that he loved.
All I have to say about the intelligence community is this. So many events in history around the world have been changed by men with no name and the world will never know they existed. This is a man who stayed committed to a cause. In a man with extraordinary circumstances was able to maintain composure, now it is sad that he committed "suicide" but I try to keep an open mind towards the unknown.
I knew Bill well and visited him several times in Chiangmai. My mother knew his parents in Burma and Bill and I visited Doc Weldon in Chiengrai before he passed away who was the author of the Country Doctor at war in laos. I was in Laos and and served in Vietnam in the early years. There was an old saying that the CIA (Christians In Action) had good intents but the US Gov was the villain. Oh, Tony Po had more on his hands that Bill. I hope God gives Bill him a place in heaven and he finds peace after his long illness. If you want to know more you can mail me at sogthai@hotmail.com
He worked for the CIA - enough said. They aren't a group of boy scouts. Anyone who aided all of the CIA's evil deeds is no hero to me. To the man (jayprime) that wants proof of Young's soul not being saved, Young's final act in his life was his own murder. God, so I hear, frowns upon murder. And, Mr. James, to believe that he took his own life because of physical pain makes him out to be a coward (and thank you for feeling sorry for me - I needed that pity)
I find the title misleading. Bill Young was not a hired assassin; he organized hilltribe groups to fight in a guerilla war. As well, disenchanted with US ineptness in the region, he either left or was fired from the CIA in about 1967. He was replaced by the infamous Tony Po, who paid bounties for human ears and the like.
The sensational approach of this story makes me wonder how much Bill Young actually told the author. Let's hear the details.
Albert, if by reading one article about a man you think you know him well enough to make such a ridiculous pronouncement, then I feel sorry for you. Bill Young likely put a bullet through his head because he could no longer stand the physical suffering brought on by his illness. I doubt very much that it had anything to do with a guilty conscience.
Albert D'Agostino - "All his religious upbringing did nothing to save his soul."
Got proof of that assertion?
Right Keith, I am a jealous man who wishes he was able to murder in the name of "freedom" and get away with it. What
a stupid an insipid reply. What you call a life of action, most would call horror. Just the mere fact that this haunted murderer put a bullet in his head is enough to prove me right. Also, note his attempt at redemption by holding a crucifix is his cold dead hand. Cheerleaders such as you and your ilk whom abound in this world, are just a bunch of voyeuristic onlookers clapping with one hand for anything that titillates your boring and mundane existences. Your attitude is living proof that dinosaurs still exist.
Oh, get off your soap box Ago, so the man wasn't a saint he lived a life full of action and your post has echoes of jealousy in my ears.
No tears shed here! The apparent suicide of this paid killer shows the emotional imbalance created by placing individuals in this position. All his religious upbringing did nothing to save his soul. He would have better served the world if he had followed in his father's footsteps. His suicide is too little too late - he should have done it 40 years ago!