CIA and the Secret War

WHITE POWDER: A Novel of the CIA and the Secret War in Laos


Soon you can order this fine novel from amazon.com or any of a number of fine book sellers. It will also be in some libraries across the US (and Canada, hopefully). ISBN 1449975852

The cover art is complete, the layout is complete and the work is going through a final editing process. In late January, or early February, it will be available. (Yes, WoFat gets a free autographed copy)

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In 1961 the Viet Nam war wasn't the lead story on the evening news and wouldn't be for three more years. The developing war in neighboring Laos was never to make a headline. It was a secret war, managed under the auspices of the Central Intelligence Agency. In Laos the only cash crop was opium. Opium grown in Laos was purchased and refined by the Corsican Organized Crime Group known as the Unione Corse. They worked the drug in clandestine laboratories in France and later also in Viet Nam. 

The novel begins in 1961 with an effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to penetrate the Unione Corse through the use of Captain Craig Burton, one of the 107 United States Special Forces soldiers assigned to the 77th Special Forces Group who originally entered Laos in 1959. Unbeknown to the CIA, Burton is involved in a torrid affair with the married daughter of a kingpin in the Corsican underworld in Laos. Their tale of star-crossed love winds through the story and slowly becomes the story as personal motives supplant the CIA's operational imperatives. 

This extraordinary novel re-creates elements of the Secret War in Laos as it was in the early years when Soviet Russia, Communist China, the fading French Empire and the emerging American Empire grappled for control of the opium producing center of the world. White Powder is Larry B. Lambert's first novel: fast moving, panoramic, and scrupulously researched - a work on a grand scale. It is filled with the intense passion of a period that determined the shape of today's world. It draws strength from his personal experiences as a special warfare officer and intelligence official. M. Cordell Hart, a former CIA official who began his career in Indochina stated, "The novel is disturbing. It makes me feel as if I was back there."