History: "Why the CIA Secretly Operated an Airline in Southeast Asia for Decades"

 An article on Air America, an airline and air transport company operated in Southeast Asia by the CIA. The article opens:

    Air America was designed with deniability in mind.

    So don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of the CIA-administered airline that employed more than 5,000 people, including hundreds of ex-military and bush pilots, to service America’s logistical needs throughout Southeast Asia campaigns from 1950 to the mid-1970s. 

    The CIA remained so tight-lipped about its biggest proprietary that for decades, many Americans only knew of Air America through press reports of daring pilots and alleged opium-running in Laos or via the eponymous 1990 action-comedy flick starring Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr. 

    However, a more comprehensive accounting of Air America, told eventually through declassified documents and carefully reported books such as William Leary’s Perilous Missions and Christopher Robbins’ Air America, shows how integral the CIA’s covert airline was to American servicemen and civilians in the region.