Gyalo Thondup, who passed away at the age of 97, experienced a significant transformation in his life when his younger brother, Lhamo Thondup, was recognized by senior Tibetan monks as the reincarnation of the revered 13th Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader who proclaimed Tibet’s independence in 1912. In 1940, Lhamo was enthroned as the 14th Dalai Lama, elevating their family to a prominent status in the country. They exchanged their farmhouse for a mansion in Lhasa, where Gyalo attended an exclusive school for aristocratic children. At the age of 14, in 1942, he was sent to Nanjing, China, where he met Chiang Kai-shek, the president of the Republic of China, who saw Gyalo as the perfect intermediary between himself and the Dalai Lama once the latter reached maturity. Both the nationalists and communists aimed for Tibet’s reunification with China. In his 2015 autobiography, “The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong,” Thondup shared that he was often a guest in the president’s home, where he was treated like a son.
Following the communists’ rise to power in 1949 and their subsequent troop deployment in Tibet, Thondup, who had divorced his Tibetan wife and married the daughter of a high-ranking nationalist navy officer, fled to Kalimpong, West Bengal, where a significant Tibetan exile community already existed. During the winter of 1949-50, the Dalai Lama left Lhasa for southern Tibet, contemplating seeking asylum in India. It was during this period that Thondup first engaged with the CIA, as the U.S. State Department sought to establish connections with the Dalai Lama’s government due to concerns over the communist takeover in China. Thondup, having become the de facto leader of the Tibetan émigrés, was approached by the CIA. Although he was never anti-Chinese, he was firmly anti-communist. As conditions in Tibet worsened, the U.S. decided to support a resistance movement.
Thondup was tasked with identifying six candidates who were then exfiltrated to a CIA base in Okinawa, Japan, for training in intelligence and sabotage. To their surprise, their translator was Thondup’s eldest brother, who had taken on the name Taktser Rinpoche and held the position of abbot at a significant monastery due to another reincarnation. After fleeing the Chinese and renouncing his religious role, he also became a CIA asset. The agents Thondup recruited impressed the Americans enough to initiate a full-scale operation in Tibet. Training was moved from Okinawa to a secret base at Camp Hale, Colorado, where 250 agents—mostly ex-monks and all recruited by Thondup—received training.
When the Dalai Lama fled Lhasa for India in March 1959, he established contact with some of these agents. Although this collaboration remained secret for decades, it involved U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and others.
