NEWS: more on POW/MIA
Nhan Tran
06/24
U.S MAY HAVE LEFT POWS IN VIETNAM --SENATE PANEL
WASHINGTON, June 24, Reuter - A Senate panel has found evidence, but no
proof, that 100 or more American prisoners of war may have been left behind in
Indochina after all were supposedly repatriated in 1973, Senator John Kerry
said.
"Taken together, the information available to the committee does constitute
evidence that some Americans remained alive in Indochina after Operation
Homecoming," he said.
Kerry's Select Committee on POW (prisoner of war) and MIA (missing in
action) affairs was beginning a new round of hearings on the issue.
Vietnam says it released all of its U.S. prisoners after the January 27,
1973, Paris peace treaty that ended direct U.S. military involvement in the war
in Indochina. A total of 591 Americans, including nine captured in Laos, were
repatriated in the so-called Operation Homecoming.
But Charles Trowbridge, deputy director of the Defence Intelligence Agency's
Office for POW/MIA affairs, conceded that the government had evidence that "some
people were left behind" in Vietnam and Laos after 1973.
"There may be evidence, but not good evidence," he added.
Kerry said U.S. officials were wrong from the start to play down the
possibility of servicemen being held after 1973.
His committee released documents showing the U.S. Defence Department lied to
the families of servicemen killed in secret operations in Laos and Cambodia.
"This is enough in my mind to contradict official statements made then and
repeated for almost two decades," he added.
Unanswered questions about the fate of missing Americans are the key
obstacle to normalisation of U.S.-Vietnam ties. The U.S. lists 2,266 Americans
as missing or otherwise unaccounted for: 1,655 in Vietnam, 522 in Laos, 83 in
Cambodia and six in China.
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06/25
Kerry-MIA
Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
By JOHN DIAMOND
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Navy Lt. John Kerry knew he had no business steering his
Mekong River patrol boat across the border into Cambodia, but orders were
orders.
A quarter-century later, Sen. John Kerry says newly declassified documents
have convinced him fellow servicemen captured on such trips were left behind at
war's end.
Kerry, D-Mass., announced this week at hearings of the Senate Select
Committee on POW-MIA Affairs he chairs that as many as 133 U.S. servicemen may
have been left behind, either as unrecorded fatalities or prisoners of war, when
the Vietnam War ended in 1973.
This conclusion that the government failed to account for all its soldiers,
sailors and fliers did not come easily for the 48-year-old senator. Through two
decades of political activism since he returned from Vietnam, first as an
opponent of the war, then as a lawmaker, Kerry has remained studiously neutral
on the POW-MIA question.
Veterans groups and researchers of varying credibility raised allegations and
published photographs suggesting that Americans might still be languishing in
Southeast Asian stalags. Bereaved family members pleaded with lawmakers to
rescue loved ones they were convinced were still alive. Kerry said only that
there was evidence that needed to be explored.
"I've always said there's evidence. But I'm not going to draw any conclusions
about this until we do a sound, sensible job," Kerry said in an interview. "This
conclusion was drawn from documents which no one saw 10 years ago."
But for Kerry, who spent six violent months commanding a patrol boat on the
Mekong River, there's always been a ring of truth to allegations of abandoned
Americans. By Christmas 1968, part of Kerry's patrol extended across the border
of South Vietnam into Cambodia.
"We were told, `Just go up there and do your patrol. Everybody was over there
(in Cambodia). Nobody thought twice about it," Kerry said. One of the missions,
which Kerry, at the time, was ordered not to discuss, involved taking CIA
operatives into Cambodia to search for enemy enclaves.
"I can remember wondering, `If you're going to go, what happens to you,"'
Kerry said.
Kerry was wounded three times, received three Purple Hearts, the Silver Star
and the Bronze Star. After his Navy tour ended in 1969, Kerry co-founded Vietnam
Veterans Against the War.
Declassified documents released at the hearings show that the government
altered its intelligence information to hide the fate of U.S. pilots and
soldiers downed in secret missions to Cambodia and Laos during the war. The
concealment extended to listing a casualty as "killed in action, body not
recovered," when, in fact, the remains had been found.
"What I'm saying is that when the government announced all the POWs are home
and when the government said the MIAs are dead, that was not true," Kerry said.
"There was a list of people that we had evidence of being captives whom we
should have accounted for then, not 20 years later."
Some of the missions were routine cross-border actions, not sanctioned as
part of the official U.S. war effort. Others were "black ops," secret operations
far into Laotian and Cambodian territory.
Historian Stanley Karnow, author of "Vietnam: A History," said in a telephone
interview that secret ground and air raids into Laos and Cambodia continued
throughout the Vietnam War in violation of treaties. Cambodian air raids
intensified under President Nixon beginning in 1969, leading up to the U.S.
invasion of Cambodia in April 1970, Karnow said.
The military's falsification of records created a lasting problem in sorting
out the killed, captured and unknown.
"The lists are so screwed up frankly that it's very hard to patch it
together," Kerry said.
Kerry emphasizes that he has no evidence that any U.S. serviceman remains
alive in captivity in Southeast Asia. Nor does he speak of any Rambo-like rescue
mission. Rather, the next step is a methodical and continuing unfolding of the
facts.
"It's not a good story but it's important that we understand it and it's
important that we put the conspiracy theories behind us if we can," Kerry said.
"But we're not there yet."
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06/25
POW-MIA
Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
By WILLIAM M. WELCH
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The former Pentagon official in charge of accounting for
the Vietnam War's missing clashed with a Senate committee Thursday by insisting
he'd had no "hard evidence" in 1973 that Americans were left behind alive.
Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate POW-MIA panel, charged that Roger
Shields had been "disingenuous" and the Pentagon was knowingly wrong in
asserting in April 1973 that there was no reason to believe Americans remained
behind after the release of U.S. prisoners of war.
"We had no current, hard evidence that Americans were still held prisoner in
Southeast Asia," said Shields, who was deputy assistant secretary of Defense for
POW-MIA affairs from 1971 to 1977.
"None of those who returned had any indication that anyone had been left
behind," Shields said.
But Shields acknowledged that the Pentagon was aware it had not received an
accounting from North Vietnam for some men "who at one time had been alive and
in captivity."
Kerry has charged that recently declassified government documents show that
as many as 133 U.S. servicemen may have been left alive in Vietnam and Laos
after the Pentagon asserted it knew of none left behind.
Shields, defending actions nearly 20 years later, contended those servicemen
were appropriately regarded as missing because it had received no specific,
recent information confirming that they remained in captivity.
Kerry also suggested a broader effort to mislead, citing comments of former
deputy Defense secretary William Clements and then-President Richard Nixon.
"To say that all prisoners of war had returned, as the president announced on
the 29th of March (1973) ... was wrong. You knew it was wrong," Kerry said.
Without explaining the document he was reading from, Kerry recounted what he
described as an exchange Shields had with Clements, who later became governor of
Texas.
"You recall going to see ... Clements in his office, in early April, a week
before your April (news) conference. And you heard him tell you, quote, `All the
American POWs are dead.' And you said to him, `You can't say that."'
Shields replied, "That's correct."
"And he repeated to you, `You didn't hear me. They're all dead,"' Kerry
added.
"Here's the disingenuousness: Why didn't you say ... `We've got 244
questions. We've got people we list as POW and we don't know.' Instead of
saying, `There are no indications that anybody's live.' Because the last thing
you knew was that they were alive."
Shields responded, "I do not know whether they are alive or dead, Senator
Kerry."
Kerry: "You had indications some were alive."
Shields later was questioned about Nixon's comment that all POWs had come
home. He replied: "I don't control the president's comments. I was dismayed at
that statement, as anyone else was."
A committee spokeswoman, Deborah DeYoung, said later that Kerry had read from
a classified deposition given by Shields to the panel's staff. A copy was not
released.
Shields suggested the committee itself was being less than serious in its
dealings with the issue, citing comments by at least one member, vice chairman
Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., that it has information an American was alive in
Southeast Asia as recently as 1989.
Kerry said that was Smith's personal view and that he disagreed.
Smith said he stood by his remarks,
Kerry said the committee's review of Defense Department documents shows that
244 Americans who did not return during Operation Homecoming "should have been
recorded in captivity" in April 1973. He said 111 Americans from that list of
244 were later found to have died, leaving 133 unaccounted for.
Later in the day, retired Army Gen. John Vessey, the president's special
emissary to Hanoi on POW-MIA Affairs, said that based on his five years of work,
he does not believe any Americans alive now in Indochina.
However, Vessey agreed that it would have been inaccurate in 1973 to say
there is no indication of Americans left behind in captivity.
Vessey also said there was no evidence of a government conspiracy or cover-up
on the issue.
"The probablity of a conspiracy being kept without it being blown wide open
is zero," the retired general said.
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06/25
OFFICIALS DEFEND U.S. POW POLICY
By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON, June 25, Reuter - Current and former U.S. officials rejected
charges on Thursday that they knew U.S. prisoners possibly had been left behind
in Indochina after Vietnam claimed it had released all POWs.
Testifying before a Senate panel, Roger Shields, former head of a Defence
Department task force on prisoners of war, said that after "Operation
Homecoming," the final prisoner exchange in 1973, there was nothing firm to
indicate any Americans had been left behind.
"At the termination of Homecoming we had no current, hard evidence that
Americans were still held prisoner in Southeast Asia," Shields, head of the
department's task force on prisoner-of-war (POW) and missing-in-action (MIA)
issues from 1971 to 1977, told the Senate panel. "I emphasise: current, hard
evidence."
The hearings have shed a somtimes unflattering light on U.S. efforts to
account for the 2,266 Americans still listed as missing or killed in action in
Indochina.
On Wednesday Senator John Kerry, chairman of a Senate committee on POW/MIA
affairs, said his panel had determined that Shields' contention in 1973 that
Washington had no signs Americans were left in Indochina was wrong at that time
and that 80 or more may have been abandoned.
"There is evidence that some people were absolutely left behind...And it is
sufficient to contradict official statements made then and repeated for almost
two decades," Kerry said.
The Defence Department said on Thursday that it readily accepted Kerry's
characterisation of official U.S. statements at the time as being at odds with
the department's actions.
"In fact, the Defence Intelligence Agency was continuing to gather
information and intelligence on people still unaccounted for after Operation
Homecoming, and in fact the United States government presented a list to Hanoi
of people unaccounted for," said Pete Williams, a Defence Department spokesman.
Shields has been a focus of controversy because he said on April 13, 1973,
less than two weeks after Operation Homecoming ended, that the United States had
"no indication" then of any Americans alive in Indochina.
Charles Trowbridge, deputy director of the Defence Intelligence Agency's
Special Office for POW/MIA affairs, testified that Shields' formulation had been
accurate.
"We had no information, no current information, where we could go and put
our hands on some individual that was alive at the time," he said. "We just
didn't know in a lot of cases and we don't know today."
Committee Vice Chairman Bob Smith, a New Hampshire Republican, reiterated on
Thursday that, based on his review of classified evidence, he personally
believed American POWs were held in Vietnam and Laos at least as late as 1989.
Vietnam says it released all U.S. prisoners after the Jan. 27, 1973, Paris
peace treaty that ended direct U.S. military involvement in the war. A total of
591 Americans, including nine captured in Laos, were repatriated.
Shields testified that Vietnam had breached Article 8(b) of the Paris peace
agreement, which provided for an accounting for those listed as missing. "We
never had access in the areas where our men were lost," he said.
Unanswered questions about the fate of some missing Americans is the sole
major obstacle to normalising U.S. relations with Vietnam. The United States
lists 2,266 Americans as missing or otherwise unaccounted for: 1,655 in Vietnam,
522 in Laos, 83 in Cambodia and six off the coast of China.
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06/25
Possibly 80 Vietnam POWs Left Behind, Kerry Says' Senate Panel Chairman Also
Accuses Pentagon of Misleading Families of Some Servicemen
By John Lancaster
Washington Post Staff Writer
The chairman of a Senate panel investigating the fate of missing U.S.
servicemen in Vietnam charged yesterday that 80 or more Americans could have
been left behind as prisoners after the end of the war, although there is no
evidence any are still alive.
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on
POW/MIA Affairs, said the Pentagon was "wrong" to assert in public statements
following the return of U.S. POWs in April 1973 that all American prisoners had
been repatriated.
Kerry said committee investigators have established that 244 of the Americans
officially listed as prisoners at the end of the war had never showed up on
homecoming planes.
The Pentagon was later able to establish that 127 of that number - servicemen
and civilians - had died in captivity, leaving scores of prisoners whose fate
has never been fully resolved, Kerry said. The Defense Intelligence Agency's
list of missing prisoners, Kerry added, was left with 80 names.
"Taken together, the information available to the committee does constitute
evidence that some Americans remained alive in Indochina" after all were
supposed to have been returned, Kerry said. "This is enough in my mind to
contradict official statements made then and repeated for almost two decades."
Kerry also accused the Pentagon of deliberately misleading families of some
missing servicemen, releasing recently declassified documents showing that
relatives of soldiers and airmen who disappeared in Cambodia and Laos received
false information on the circumstances of the losses.
The United States was not at war with either country and, according to one of
the documents, wanted to preserve the "covert nature" of the missions.
Kerry and Sen. Bob Smith (R-N.H.) played down reports of dissent in the
committee, which is trying to resolve the 20-year-old debate on whether any
Americans were left in captivity in Indochina. Several committee staff members
have close ties to POW-MIA activists who contend that the U.S. government has
suppressed or ignored evidence that Americans were secretly being held in North
Vietnamese prisons or labor camps.
Further complicating the picture is the maverick presidential candidacy of
Ross Perot, who has long espoused the view that U.S. prisoners were left behind.
Any evidence that the Bush administration had knowledge of such cases could
prove a major boost to his campaign. Perot, who has investigated POW-MIA issues
for more than two decades, was slated to testify before the committee but has
since backed out, saying he will provide a deposition.
Perot yesterday reiterated his claim that the U.S. government took a
lackadaisical approach to reports that American servicemen were still being held
in Indochina. "There has been large numbers of sightings, et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera, over the years," he said at a news conference. "If you look in detail
at the records, no significant effort was made to run that down."
Charles Trowbridge, deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency for
POW-MIA affairs, acknowledged under questioning by Kerry that the Pentagon had
expected all the Americans on the official prisoner list to be returned during
"Operation Homecoming" at the end of the war.
But he said that in many cases, the Pentagon had developed subsequent
information - sometimes from other returning prisoners - leading officials to
the conclusion that the missing men had been killed in action. He acknowledged
that some "discrepancies" have never been resolved and are still being pursued.
"We may have been talking with a man on the radio, after (he was shot down),
and he said, `I`m receiving small arms fire, I'll see you around the club,' and
that's the last we ever heard of that information," Trowbridge said.