James William Lair

James William Lair (often referred to as Bill Lair) (4 July 1924 – October 28, 2014) was an influential Central Intelligence Agency paramilitary officer from the Special Activities Division.

He was a native Texan, raised in a broken family, but a good student.

He joined the CIA after serving in a combat unit in Europe during World War II, followed by a geology degree from Texas A&M.

In his senior year, he was recruited by the CIA.

Bill Lair was born in Hilton, Oklahoma on 4 July 1924; he moved to Borger, Texas at the age of three.

His mother divorced his father for idleness, and remarried.

Her second husband died as a result of a freak oilfield explosion in 1937.

However, Lair's grandfather, an old-time cowboy, was an important influence in young Bill's life.

Lair lived in and around Borger and Panhandle, Texas until 1940, when he moved to Waco.

He graduated from 11 years of schooling at Waco High School, at age 16.

He took some post-high school courses while working for the Panhandle Herald and a grocery store.

As a fifth-generation Texan, Lair never lost his childhood accent.

He was raised as an only child, although eventually he would come to have two younger sisters, and he grew up poor, quiet, and shy.

His imagination sparked by his reading, he dreamt of becoming a pilot.

He was a seventeen-year-old freshman at Texas A&M University when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred.

Anxious to defend his nation, he applied for naval pilot's training, but was rejected because of substandard eyesight.

He then convinced his mother to cosign his enlistment papers into the U.S. Army as a private.

He saw his first combat in the invasion of Normandy.

His armored unit fought its way across Europe for the next year.

Lair's unit ended World War II on the Elbe River, facing a Russian unit on the far bank.

It was there that Lair became convinced the American army should have continued the war, and defeated the communists.

Once discharged postwar, Lair earned a geology degree from Texas A&M in expectation of working in the petroleum industry.

However, the Central Intelligence Agency recruited him just before graduation.

Assigned to the Kingdom of Thailand on 1 March 1951, Lair found himself training Border Patrol Police to Special Forces standards.

Originally established with an aim of opposing the invasion of Thailand by the People's Liberation Army of China, the new unit policed the Thai border areas until hostilities broke out in the neighboring Kingdom of Laos.

Acting in response to the Kong Le coup of 9 August 1960, Lair's unit secretively supplied the communications liaisons needed for the successful counter-coup of 14 December 1960.

Once established within Laos, Lair promptly searched out Vang Pao.

With Lair's aid, Vang Pao raised an army of 30,000 guerrilla warriors to fight in the Laotian Civil War.

The Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964, followed by the first American combat troops landing in Vietnam in May 1965, escalated the war.

In mid-1966, the new CIA Chief of Station Ted Shackley promulgated increased operations against the Ho Chi Minh Trail and commitment of more troops to the fight for northern Laos.

U.S. air power began to be used in Laos.

The Royal Lao Air Force began its struggle to become an effective close air support force.

A new covert unit, the Raven Forward Air Controllers, was formed to guide the air strikes.

The use of airpower as mobile artillery to clear the path for guerrillas was successful in the short run; however, Lair believed it would lead to ultimate defeat for the Hmong, as they were used as light infantry in fixed positions.

Increasingly estranged from Shackley, as well as from Ambassador William H. Sullivan, Bill Lair left Laos in August 1968.

After attendance at the Army War College, Lair returned to a desk job in Bangkok.

He would score one last military intelligence coup, when his Thai brother-in-law visited the dying Mao Zedong and brought back information about the political maneuvering of potential successors.

Just before Lair's retirement from the CIA, he was honored with a private audience with Thai King Bhumibol.

Upon his return to the United States, Lair became a long haul trucker.

He remained active within the Hmong-American community.