Once home to the CIA, this tiny Southeast Asia runway was considered ‘the most secret place on Earth’

Long Tieng, Laos CNN —

Deep in the sweltering jungles of central Laos, a 4,500-foot stretch of cracked concrete cuts through the trees — an airstrip without an airport, in a village where many have never been on a plane.

But behind its crumbling control tower and bomb-cratered runway lies a hidden chapter of America’s Cold War history — a site once known as “the most secret place on Earth.”

The village of Long Tieng sits in central Laos, about 80 miles northeast of the capital, Vientiane. Today, it’s a sleepy settlement of a few thousand people who mostly rely on the land to carve out a living.

There are a couple of restaurants, two guesthouses and a handful of multipurpose shops selling everything from rice to farming tools made from repurposed bombshell metal — a nod to the villa