Inside The CIA’s (Largely) Secret Role In The Tibetan Resistance – Analysis

By Tenzin Pema, Dorjee Damdul, Passang Dhonden, and Lobsang Gelek

High up in the Southern Rocky Mountains of Colorado, at 9,200 feet, lies Camp Hale – widely known as the birthplace of backcountry skiing and the training grounds of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division soldiers who fought the Nazis in World War II. 

Lesser known, however, is the camp’s storied past as the CIA-operated secret training facility for Tibetan resistance fighters in the early 1960’s.

The Tibetan fighters who trained there – from 1958 to 1964 – were a part of a nationwide armed resistance movement in Tibet against Communist China. 

Sixty years after the end of the operation, Camp Hale has yielded a new secret. Called “The Ranch” by the CIA and fondly referred to as “Dumra,” or garden, by the Tibetans, it was the training ground for at least 259 Tibetan fighters who were then parachuted back into Tibet and what is today Nepal to aid the Tibetan resistance against China. 

Yet, until recently the exact location of the CIA’s training facility for Tibetans was lost to history. Quite like the story of Tibet’s armed resistance against China and the CIA’s role in it, it had remained shrouded in secrecy for many decades.

Decades after the CIA dismantled Camp Hale, leaving no trace of the site— save for a few ruins of bunkers— the original footprint of the Tibetan training camp was finally identified in 2024 within the 53,804-acre expanse of alpine valley, thanks to the work of a dogged academic, a local hiker, and a former CIA trainer. 

In June, the families of former fighters, their supporters, and the Central Tibetan Administration’s Cabinet Minister for Security, Gyari Dolma, gathered to honor the resistance movement.

Bruce Walker, now 91, is the last surviving CIA case officer out of about 30 officers who trained the Tibetan fighters at Camp Hale. 

“I’m the last speaking CIA officer who can tell the story,” Walker told Radio Free Asia in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the June commemoration ceremony. 

His tale of the time spent there reveals the spirit of a people deeply committed to their cause who drew on a wellspring of grit, ingenuity and ability to learn the skills Camp Hale had to offer.

Finding Dumra

Following the People’s Liberation Army’s invasion of Tibet in 1949, thousands of ordinary Tibetans rose up in a series of independent uprisings in the 1950s to defend their country and religion against Chinese troops. In 1958, the Chushi Gangdruk army, a unified resistance force, was formally established.

Led by Gompo Tashi Andrugtsang, a charismatic trader living in Lhasa, it later became known as the Chushi Gangdruk Tensung Danglang Magar or Tibetan National Volunteer Defence Army, a name it was given by a tutor to His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

In 1960, they set up a base in Mustang, then a small kingdom in Nepal, where they were exiled, until they were eventually forced to lay down their arms in 1974. 

For a large part of this period, the movement received covert financial support and training from the CIA, with four contingents of Tibetan troops flown in to train at Camp Hale from 1958 to 1964. 

Yet it was a secret even to those who lived nearby the Colorado training grounds. 

“The local community here in Colorado still don’t know the Tibetan history of Camp Hale – much in the same way that the Tibetan community still don’t know much of the history of Chushi Gangdruk or CIA in Camp Hale,” said Carole McGranahan, an anthropologist and scholar of Tibet who spent years working to locate the site. 

Indeed, a false story was circulated at the time to maintain the secrecy of the training site and keep the locals at bay. “Atom Unit Making Tests Near Leadville,” read a headline from the Denver Post in July 1959, after the press was informed that the Defense Atomic Support Agency would soon be conducting atomic testing programs at Camp Hale. 

“I like to think of it now as that it was hidden in plain sight,” said McGranahan, noting how the CIA maintained the secrecy of the camp for over four decades. 

Word of the camp and the CIA’s role in training Tibetan fighters there only began to trickle out in the early 2000s following the declassification of a 1964-dated CIA memorandum. 

A documentary released just before, titled Shadow Circus: The CIA in Tibet, by filmmakers Tenzing Sonam and Ritu Sarin, also drew attention to the Tibetan resistance movement, even as additional details began to emerge from books, such McGranahan’s Arrested Histories, and interviews of former CIA trainers.

Still, the site itself continued to remain hidden. In 2010, a plaque was installed to mark the U.S. government’s first public acknowledgment of the CIA-Tibet training camp. But even then, the exact location of the training site was unknown.

Following a ceremony to mark its installation, retired CIA officers and former Tibetan fighters went looking for the original Camp Hale training grounds. The group included Roger McCarthy and Ken Knauss, the two CIA officers who had worked on the original campaign. But they came back frustrated and dismayed that they couldn’t locate the site where they had lived and worked for several years, McGranahan said. She promised to make it her mission to locate the original site. 

It would take years, but true to her word, McGranahan, with the help of Vail Valley local resident and hiker Tracy Walters, took on the mission. The duo took with them old photographs of Camp Hale and, while snowshoeing, matched the 1963-1964 photos to the current landscape by carefully aligning specific ridgelines to locate Dumra. 

In February 2024, they found the first location – rather easily, McGranahan says. “The second one was more difficult,” she added, explaining that it required matching up the visual angles of old photographs to the physical topography of the land until they hit on the right spot.

“But we found it,” she said.

She then turned to Walker and to filmmakers Sonam and Sarin for final confirmation on whether the site they had located was indeed Dumra.

Walker, who was the only Tibetan-speaking CIA trainer from 1960 until the CIA shut the site in 1964, responded the very next day. “You nailed it,” he wrote. “You found the site. And I’m the one who took those photographs.”

An operation misunderstood?

Along with his wife and few friends, Walker came to Camp Hale from California in June to honor the Tibetan soldiers who he trained in the covert operation which the CIA code-named ST Circus. 

Now an elegant white-haired nonagenarian, Walker lit up as he recalled his time working on ST Circus, his voice filled with energy as he explained the backstory of the secret mission and smiling fondly as he recalled the commitment of the Tibetan fighters whom he had trained.

“The covert operation was misunderstood in some respects… [there’s] the impression that the Americans in the CIA were taking advantage of the Tibetans. We were not,” Walker told RFA Tibetan.

“Tibetans in the 1950s and 60s had very few international friends… in the late 1950s, the American government and the CIA were the few from the international community that were willing to come to the aid of the Tibetans,” he said.

Indeed, the CIA would support the movement with training, aid, and arms until the early 1970s.

“We did what we could to get them their aid. We were not going to send an army and we were not going to send tanks, but we tried to send help to Chushi Gangdruk to fight and to make progress in the rest of the country,” said Walker.

At Camp Hale, over a dozen CIA case officers trained Tibetan fighters on a full range of combat and operations skills.

“This site was specifically used for the purpose of training radio teams who would be parachuted back to Tibet to join the resistance forces and to send back messages about the situation – the resistance inside Tibet – on a real-time basis,” Walker told RFA Tibetan. Over the years, the soldiers who trained there were air dropped into Tibet and in Mustang, Nepal, where they aided and trained the thousands of resistance fighters stationed at those locations.

It was actually not the first site for ST Circus. Earlier, the CIA had piloted the project with a group of fighters who were trained at Saipan, Northern Mariana Island. The first radio team to be dropped back into Tibet by Operations St Circus took place in September, 1957 – but the training grounds were moved to Camp Hale when it became apparent that the Tibetans were not used to the hot weather conditions of the island, and Colorado was selected because its terrain and weather conditions resembled that of Tibet. 

Life at Camp Hale

Walker’s first assignment with the Tibetan project had been as a caretaker and cook for six weeks for the small contingent of Tibetans who trained at Saipan. 

He first arrived in Camp Hale as a case officer in April 1960, but he would not be at the camp on a permanent basis until two years later, after the CIA sent him for periods of more language training. 

Sporting a red beard and looking like an “adventurous American”, Walker returned to Camp Hale in September 1962, where he found the site had been renovated with new quarters added and ready to open its doors to the fourth and final batch of trainees who arrived in October that year.

The camp had four classrooms, one recreation room, one staff barracks, one administration office, a gym, a mess hall, and a storage room. 

The Tibetan fighters had a rigorous training program there. “It was a very busy campus,” Walker recalled, with the trainees always “practicing one thing or another, or they were in the classrooms.”

It was a huge time of learning for Walker too. “I started out as a case officer who was not speaking Tibetan, giving instruction and compass reading to find locations on a very special map made by the CIA,” he said.

He eventually gained enough proficiency to communicate directly with the trainees. “It was a very different career change in speaking a different language to an entirely different people who I had never met before,” he reflected.

The Tibetans were trained in radio operation; surveillance and combat maneuvers; parachuting at Fort Carson, another military base in Colorado; intelligence collecting; clandestine exchange of written material and film; world history and geography; and small armament training with bazookas, grenades and rifles. 

“All were given training with the M1-Garand rifle, and the old 10th mountain division rifle range. Two marine sharpshooters were seconded to this project and they also gave the Tibetans instructions in self defense and jiu jitsu,” Walker said. 

Walker and the other CIA officers admired the Tibetan fighters, who had volunteered for the movement and had been recruited as exiles in India. They represented Tibetans from all over Tibet and came with varying backgrounds; they even included monks who had temporarily given up their vows to fight for the Tibet cause. 

“They were not paid. They were simply willing and able… And boy, were they able,” said Walker.

They were also quick learners, he recalled. “They were enthusiastic, they listened, and they took to the training immediately. Above all, they were happy to be here… And it was a real pleasure to work with them in that respect because they made it easier for us to get to know them and to try to accomplish through the training,” he added. 

Tibetan curiosity, resilience

The CIA officers were amazed by the Tibetan curiosity and ability to invent solutions to problems with the materials at hand, said Walker.

There was one instance, where the fighters had reportedly made a portable rocket, apparently out of a wooden trough, using gunpowder, homemade napalm, and a small warhead, he said, citing a local Vail Daily report. 

The Tibetans also had a natural gift for volleyball and engaged in highly competitive tournaments. On weekends, movies would be projected in the recreation room and headquarters would send new movies on a rotation basis. The Tibetans, without any surprise, liked western movies. But their favorite was The King and I.

“Their response was a pure delight to watch,” Walker said.

They also had a “remarkable talent” for drawing, Walker said. Crayons and colored pens were made available for drawing and few of their drawings became collectibles, including an illustration that a Tibetan fighter had made representing Chinese desecration of Tibetan culture and religion which was used in CIA material. 

On Saturday nights, the Tibetans took over the kitchen from the CIA cooks Joe and Bill, and would make Tibetan dishes like momo and shabaley. 

But they didn’t (strictly) stick to this routine. One day, a shepherd from the area — who had a longstanding agreement with the government for him to traverse Camp Hale with his sheep as he led them to summer pastureland — found one sheep missing when he returned with the sheep after a month of their grazing. “His route happened to go directly past the Tibetan compound. Not wanting to cause suspicion by denying the shepherd his annual drive, we arranged for the compound to close up tightly, presumably with everyone inside the compound and out of sight,” said Walker. 

Upon his return, having led his herd through the compound and out of Camp Hale, the herder soon counted his sheep and found he was missing one. “He reported his loss to army authorities and the situation was brought to our attention. We had no recourse but to suggest the sheep must have drifted from the herd, gone astray and could not be found,” Walker said. 

“Somehow we found out that two Tibetans had waylaid the sheep and later roasted it and brought it into the compound for the fellow Tibetans to eat. The herder was angry and unsatisfied but as far as we were concerned, it was out of sight, out of mind.”

Best and bravest

In 1960, part of the training was to practice parachute landing in advance of being airdropped in Tibet. However, after a U.S. civilian pilot was shot down over Russia in May 1960, President Eisenhower banned further overflights into Tibet.

Thereafter, the radio teams and the support teams were flown back to Thailand, and over land to border posts in India and Nepal, including Mustang. 

Walker acknowledged the grim reality that awaited these men upon their return to Tibet. “They knew what would be the consequences if they were parachuted to Tibet,” Walker said somberly. 

“A lot of the Tibetans who were trained on the radio teams that were parachuted in gave their lives. They were captured. Some of them went to jail, and a few of them were released, in time,” he said. “But there were a lot of heroes — as this will attest — who sacrificed their lives as Tibetans.”

An important legacy

The training program at Camp Hale was closed in 1964 as the U.S. began to take a more conciliatory approach to China. CIA support for the Tibetan resistance movement ended altogether in the early 1970s as the Nixon administration took an approach of engagement with Mao’s Communist regime. Along with increased pressure from the Nepali government, which also began to cultivate warmer ties with China and internal fissures that emerged within the movement itself, the Chushi Gangdruk was forced to lay down its arms by 1974. 

Though the program wound down, a legacy, including crucial successes, came from the Operation ST Circus trainings that has significance today, even if the resistance movement ultimately did not achieve independence.

For example, the first radio team ever trained as part of the CIA operation at Saipan – two fighters, Athar Norbu and Gatsetsang Lotse (codenamed Tom and Luke, respectively) – were airdropped in September 1957. 

The team, known as Team A, were able to contact local Chushi Gangdruk members in Kham, eastern Tibet, and reach Lhasa, making contact with Tibetan leaders such as the Lord Chamberlain, Thupten Phalha. 

As explained by Gyolo Thondup in his book The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong, the Dalai Lama was not directly involved in the CIA operations, as it was impossible for him to condone any use of violence when his entire life was committed to nonviolent Buddhist practice. 

But some high-ranking officials such as Lord Chamberlain Phalha knew about the resistance from the beginning and were sympathetic to its cause. 

“It was Phalha who organized the Dalai Lama’s escape… Team A accompanied the Dalai Lama on his journey to the Indian border from where they radioed CIA Langley that the Dalai Lama had arrived safely,” said Walker. 

In the Dalai Lama’s personal autobiography titled My Land, My People, the spiritual leader acknowledged the bravery of the Tibetan freedom fighters who accompanied him undercover into exile in 1959.

“In spite of my beliefs, I very much admired their courage and their determination to carry on the grim battle they had started for our freedom, culture, and religion,” he wrote.

“I thanked them for their strength and bravery, and also, more personally, for the protection they had given me.” 

The Dalai Lama’s escape into exile and the role the Chushi Gangdruk played in his safe escort from Lhasa to India is till today regarded as the movement’s most significant achievement.Today, plans are afoot to build a memorial on the now-rediscovered exact training ground. The plaque that was installed in 2010 stands not too far away, its inscription attesting to the bravery of those involved: 

From 1958 to 1964, Camp Hale played an important role as a training site for Tibetan Freedom Fighters. Trained by the CIA, many of these brave men lost their lives in the struggle for freedom. ‘They were the best and bravest of their generation, and we wept together when they were killed fighting alongside their countrymen.’ (Orphans of the Cold War, by John Kenneth Knaus). This plaque is dedicated to their memory.

Standing by the plaque, at the site he’d played a part in re-discovering and which brought back so many memories, Walker mused over the friendships gained and lost to history. 

“It was an emotional parting because we became very good friends with the Tibetans and they with us. We bonded, and we were sorry that we had to break it up the way we did,” he said.

• Edited by Boer Deng; Contributing editors Kalden Lodoe for RFA Tibetan and Jim Snyder and Abby Seiff for RFA Investigative.