They based themselves near Houei Sai on the Bolaven Plateau. Aided by Team T of the Police Aerial Resupply Unit, the Lao Theung spies were so successful that within two months, their efforts were being lauded by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. By December 1963, McNamara was calling for Hardnose's expansion after a whirlwind two-day visit to Vietnam. By May 1964, Operation Hardnose had 20 espionage teams surveilling roads and manning radios in the vicinity of Saravane, and southwards to the Cambodian border. By the turn of the year, there were calls for further expansion of Hardnose; additional Thai PARU trainers were brought in. By September, the Hardnose road watchers had reported 5,000 People's Army of Vietnam troops moving south along the Ho Chi Minh trail. This was half again as many infiltrators as had been reported for all of 1964. The quickly growing transportation network included a new road in progress, Route 911, which would trim a third of the distance between the Mụ Giạ Pass and Tchepone. In September 1964, the Southeast Asia Coordination Meeting—a monthly session of U.S. ambassadors, CIA officials, and Department of Defense higherups—decided that Military Assistance Command, Vietnam should be running its own patrols into Operation Hardnose territory. On 7 March 1965, General William Westmoreland tasked the MACV-SOG with cross-border forays from South Vietnam into Laos. On 23 April 1965, Ambassador to Laos William H. Sullivan protested the new project as being what he deemed to be a rerun of the failed Operation White Star. Nor were ground incursions into the Laotian war the only influence of the Vietnam War on Lao operations. The Steel Tiger and Tiger Hound air operations zones were carved out of the Laotian Barrel Roll area and turned over to MACV to run from Vietnam. MACV-SOG also wanted to sponsor a guerrilla base zone east of the Bolovens Plateau between it and the Vietnamese border. By September 1965, MACV-SOG had overcome Sullivan's misgivings concerning Lao neutrality, and had Operation Shining Brass patrols probing the Ho Chi Minh trail from South Vietnam. In October 1965, Mike Deuel had served his three-year tour of duty in Laos. On the 11th, Deuel took his replacement on an orientation flight to distribute the teams' payroll in Salavane.