Through the 1960s, the CIA ran the largest covert operation in its history from a base in Laos that never officially existed, while American diplomats publicly denied any military presence in the country. Marc Eberle's film draws on declassified footage, CIA and Air Force veterans, Hmong fighters recruited into the agency's secret army, and journalists who tried to get near the story at the time to reconstruct how Long Tieng, once one of the busiest airports on earth, was erased from maps and press briefings. Pilots describe flying bombing runs over the Ho Chi Minh Trail launched directly from the base, and former operatives recall the parallel war fought alongside General Vang Pao's Hmong forces, a conflict that killed a large share of the Hmong male population. Interviews trace the operation from its Cold War justification through its human cost and into the refugee crisis it left behind. The film treats Laos not as a footnote to Vietnam but as its own hidden war, run in plain sight of no one who was supposed to know.