A Ukrainian website reports that Kremlin-controlled media outlets and z-Telegram channels have said that a CIA operative killed in May’s missile attacks on Kyiv was honored by the addition of his star to the CIA Memorial Wall. A photograph was used as “proof” in online propaganda. However, this is false.
In 1969, Dr. Jon Evans was killed in an aircraft accident over Southeast Asia, and in his honor, the 140th star was added.
According to a report, not every deceased worker meets the requirements for recognition. Candidates are evaluated by the CIA’s Honor and Merits Awards Board, which then makes a suggestion to the director based on established criteria.
A star was added to the CIA Memorial Wall in honor of Dr. Jon Price Evans on May 23rd, and his name was entered into a book that sits underneath the wall. The aircraft in which Dr. Evans was traveling crashed in the Southeast Asian region in January 1969.
The report reveals the United States secretly planned to employ resources from the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense in Laos and Thailand in reaction to communist participation in Laos in the Vietnam War, which also included Cambodia. Plans were kept under wraps but were subsequently shown to be illegal under the Geneva Accords.
Due to our tight alliance with anti-communist Thailand and our intention to prevent the communists we were already battling in Vietnam and exposing in Laos from overrunning that country, these measures were put into action.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail was essential to the activities of this period. Although the majority of the route was in Vietnam, it also passed through Cambodia and Laos and was a network of roads rather than a single path. Many of these CIA activities in Southeast Asia made use of the CIA asset aircraft known as Civilian Air Transport which later became the more well-known Air America.
