and Lhotse. Nor did he inform the Dalai Lama of American willingness to provide aid." Following a mass uprising in Lhasa in 1959 during the celebration of the Tibetan New Year and the ensuing Chinese military response, the Dalai Lama went into exile in India. Some sources state that the Dalai Lama's escape was assisted by the CIA. After 1959, the CIA trained Tibetan guerrillas and provided funds and weapons for the fight against China. However, assistance was reduced during the course of the 1960s and finally ended when Richard Nixon decided to seek rapprochement with China in the early 1970s. Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, in The CIA's Secret War in Tibet, reveal how the CIA encouraged Tibetan revolt against China — and eventually came to control its fledgling resistance movement. The New York Times reported on 2 October 1998 that the Tibetan exile movement received $1.7 million a year in the 1960s from the CIA. The Dalai Lama said in his autobiography that his brothers were responsible and that they didn't tell him about it, knowing what his reaction would be. Lodi Gyari, the Dalai Lama's personal representative in Washington, said he had no knowledge of the annual subsidy of $180,000 marked as for the Dalai Lama or how it was spent. The government in exile say they knew that the CIA trained and equipped Tibetan guerrillas who raided Tibet from a base camp in Nepal, and that the effect of those operations "only resulted in more suffering for the people of Tibet. Worse, these activities gave the Chinese government the opportunity to blame the efforts of those seeking to regain Tibetan independence on the activities of foreign powers—whereas, of course, it was an entirely Tibetan initiative." The budget figures for the CIA's Tibetan program were as follows: Subsidy to the Dalai Lama: US$180,000 Support of 2,100 Tibetan guerrillas based in Nepal: US$500,000 Other costs: US$1.06m Total: US$1.73m Positions on the status of Tibet The status of Tibet before 1950, especially in the period between 1912 and 1950, is largely in dispute between supporters and opponents of Tibetan independence. According to supporters of Tibetan independence, Tibet was a distinct nation and state independent between the fall of the Mongol Empire in 1368 and subjugation by the Qing Dynasty in 1720; and again between the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912 and its incorporation into the PRC in