Looking for specific details or firsthand accounts about Air America (CIA proprietary airline) T-28D Trojan pilots who flew missions over Laos during the early-to-mid 1970s Secret War. General YouTube videos cover the overall Laos air ops, but I'm especially interested in the Air America T-28 pilots themselvestheir training, SAR/close air support roles, individual stories, mission logs, or any rosters/declassified info from the later Waterpump era or the AA 'A-Team.'
Any book recommendations, oral histories, veteran contacts, or lesser-known resources? (Beyond the usual Raven FAC stuffI'm zeroing in on the civilian/contract Air America side.) Thanks!

I'll look around to see what I've got already. I have done a lot of reading and research on the air war in Vietnam (in all it's aspects) producing the first two episodes of my YouTube channel's series on the F105.

Off the top of my head, I remember a fairly in depth discussion of the use of T-28s by the CIA trained/led Laotian Air Force, in LTC Tom Wilson's novel "Thud Ridge". The main sequence I remember involves an NVA attack on Lima Site 85, a clandestine air navigation beacon used by the USAF to facilitate strikes from Thailand into Route Pack VI--the Hanoi region.

My memory is that T-28 operations were not run by Air America pilots per se, but by CIA directly or by active duty USAF personnel that had been "sheep-dipped" into the Royal Lao AF. I believe the Raven FACs you mentioned were a similar situation. Of course, I'm thinking there was a lot of personnel movement between the various CIA front companies, and even into and out of clandestine active military roles.

The first two episodes of our F-105 series on YouTube here:

Birth of the F-105 - Episode 1

Episode 2 The F-105 At War