The CIA Has Exploited the Free Tibet Movement for Decades

By PIPR

5 July, 2025

Key Points: The Dalai Lama was on the CIA payroll. USAID has funded Free Tibet causes.

The pro-independence slogan “Free Tibet” hides a history of Western betrayal. First, the British Lhasa Convention of 1904 strategically allowed Chinese elites to interpret the accord as being in their interests. A few years later, the US diplomat and champion of the Open Door for China Policy, William Rockhill (1854-1914), told the 13^th Dalai Lama that “close and friendly relations with China are absolutely necessary” to US interests.ⁱ Second, the Washington Conference 1922 created the same kind of strategic ambiguity as the British effort. For these reasons, the present Dalai Lama (b. 1935), who until 1974 received $15,000 per month from the Agency, criticised the CIA’s covert exploitation of Tibetan independence as doing more harm than good: “Once the American policy toward China changed, they stopped their help … Otherwise our struggle could have gone on.”ⁱⁱ

Today, almost all of China’s 3.6 million ethnic Tibetans, most of whom are Buddhist, live on the so-called Roof of the World: the Tibetan Plateau, a region that has been controlled by China since 1950 and which borders Bhutan, Burma/Myanmar, India, Kashmir, and Nepal. Ethnically, most Tibetans share a common ancestry with Han Chinese, Bhutanese, Burmese, and Nepalese.

When China invaded, Tibetan leaders requested assistance from Britain, which refused to help. Dates vary according to sources, but roughly from 1955 to ‘75,ⁱⁱⁱ the US Central Intelligence Agency ran a multimillion dollar Tibet programme,^iv which some have named Operation Mustang.^v The programme consisted of three projects: ST BAILEY (propaganda), ST BARNUM (airlifts), and ST CIRCUS (training rebels).^vi In 1956, the pro-independence militia, Chushi Gangdruk (ཆུ་བཞི་སྒང་དྲུག་), was formed to fight the Chinese occupiers. For those who believe that Buddhists cannot be violent, consider this statement from guerrilla leader, Ratuk Ngawang (དབྲ་ཕྲུག་ངག་དབང, 1926-2016): “Communist Chinese are enemies of Buddhism. So since they were enemies of Buddhism we never felt it was a sin to kill them.”^vii Operations included border raids, bombings, and sabotage.

Saipan is the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth, near the Philippines. Beginning 1957, the CIA trained Tibetan guerrillas on the island. Then in his late-20s, Gyalo Thondup (རྒྱལ་ལོ་དོན་འགྲུབ, b. 1927), the current Dalai Lama’s brother, liaised between the CIA and the resistance.^viii In 1959, guerrillas trained at Camp Hale, Colorado, and were airdropped into Tibet, though this only served to alert the Chinese regime to the rebel positions. The CIA set up a base in neighbouring Nepal, though the so-called Mustang operation suffered the same lack of funding and coordination that led to the previous “failures.”^ix 

US policy shifted throughout the 1980s as successive governments prioritised arming Taiwan as well as Uyghur rebels to fight the Soviets. More broadly, US policy planners hoped that China’s new ruler, Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平, 1904-97), would allow the American privatisation of Chinese businesses. As a corollary to this wider agenda, State Department functionaries believed that Tibet would fall into Deng’s liberalisation agenda. Support for Tibetan independence continued but on a much smaller scale, leaving the Dalai Lama and other prominent figures to feel abandoned by the Americans.^x

Scholars divide state-power into two categories: soft and hard. Examples of “hard power” include China’s military invasion of Tibet and America’s arming Taiwan to act as a proxy against China. Examples of “soft power” including cultural and propaganda initiatives designed to advance state interests abroad. In 1988, the State Department began funding the Tibetan Scholarship Program via the Dalai Lama’s Tibet Fund. The US has several soft power institutions, two of which are the State Department’s Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID began financing the Tibet Fund in 2012.^xi Prior to that, USAID had commissioned pro-privatisation studies of Tibet’s biodiversity and awarded grants to farmers.^xii The aim was to compete with China’s development funds in the region. Sometimes soft and hard power merge. In 2020, for instance, USAID officials gave a presentation to the Pentagon’s Indo Pacific Command which mentioned a secretive USAID-funded “Tibet Governance Program” about which no open-source material can be found.^xiii

After years of abandoning the Tibetan people, it would appear that US strategists are preparing to exploit them again.

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