The Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs was created because
in 1991, almost nineteen years after the formal termination of U.S.
participation in the Vietnam War, a part of the war remained very
much with us as a nation. For almost two decades, the questions of
whether American prisoners were left behind and, if so, whether
they remained alive somewhere in captivity had haunted America. The
failure to resolve these questions had raised doubts about the good
faith of our government, about whether a real commitment had been
made to the issue, about the wisdom of past actions taken or not
taken and about realistic options for the future.
The durability of the debate surrounding the POW/MIA issue caused--
it did not result from--creation of the Select Committee. The
committee began its work at a time of swirling controversy and
doubt about whether official U.S. handling of the issue matched the
high priority the government claimed it received.
The Committee was established on August 2, 1991 when the Senate
approved a Resolution introduced by Sen. Bob Smith providing for
the creation of a Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs to serve
during the remainder of the 102nd Congress. By October, 1991, a
Chairman, Vice-chairman and ten additional Members had been
appointed to the Committee and a Resolution providing funding had
been approved.
Despite the passage of time, the work of previous Committees and
commissions, the efforts of countless officials to clarify and
explain and the public status throughout the past decade of this
issue as one of highest national priority, a Wall Street Journal
poll, taken shortly before the Committee was created, found that 69
percent of Americans believed that U.S. servicemen were still being
held against their will in Southeast Asia and that of those, three-
fourths felt the U.S. Government was not doing enough to bring the
prisoners home.
As these numbers indicate, the POW/MIA issue has had a life of its
own. The simple explanation for this is that although no American
prisoners are known for certain to be alive, 2,264 continue to be
officially "unaccounted for" and therefore not proven dead. In
addition, the U.S. Government has continued to receive reports
alleging that some Americans remain alive in captivity. It is only
human nature to hope, in the absence of contrary proof, that a
loved one has survived. And it is only to be expected, in such
circumstances, that the American people, would demand the fullest
possible effort to establish the truth.
The evidence of the past 20 years is that on a subject as personal
and emotional as the survival of a husband, brother or son, it is
simply not enough to talk of probabilities and the need for
perspective. It means little to the family and friends of a missing
serviceman to be told by some that the percentage of U.S. forces
missing after Vietnam is lower than in previous wars or that it is
inevitable that there will be a certain number unaccounted for in
any major armed conflict and that the opposing side has far more
MIAs than the U.S. The search for answers to POW/MIA questions is
not about mathematics; it is about the fate of individual human
beings who went to Indochina to fight for their country and who did
not come back. Something very real happened to each of those brave
men, and our country will not be at peace with itself until we are
morally certain we have done all we could to find out what.
In addition to the emotional concerns of families, a second impetus
for establishing the Committee was provided by legitimate
unresolved questions of fact. Why, Americans asked, did so few of
the U.S. airmen downed in Laos return home? How do we explain the
dozens of unresolved, first-hand reports of Americans being sighted
in captivity in Southeast Asia after the end of the war? Were the
hundreds of resolved reports adequately investigated? How can we
trust the assurances of Vietnam that it holds no prisoners when we
have strong evidence that it has stockpiled American remains? What
about the Tighe Commission's 1986 conclusion that "there is a
strong possibility of U.S. prisoners being held?" And what about
the steady drumbeat of rumors about conspiracy, cover-ups,
photographs, failed rescue missions and mysterious videotapes?
All of this controversy was fueled in the period just prior to the
Committee's creation by the February 12, 1991 resignation of
Colonel Millard Peck as Director of DIA's Special Office for
POW/MIA Affairs. In his letter of resignation, Col. Peck criticized
what he called a "mindset to debunk" information that U.S. POWs
might be alive and suggested that a "'cover-up' may be in
progress."
Even more dramatic was the identification by family members in mid-
1991 of individuals in three photographs that appeared to depict
American POWs in Southeast Asia. The photographs generated enormous
publicity and sparked demands for an immediate government response.
Interest in the issue was stimulated, as well, by discussions of
conditions for establishing normal diplomatic and economic
relations between the United States and Vietnam. The U.S. State
Department's "Road Map" to normalization required, among other
things, full cooperation by Vietnam in resolving last known alive
discrepancy cases, implementing a plan to resolve expeditiously
live-sighting reports on which the U.S. requests assistance and the
rapid repatriation of all recovered and recoverable American
remains.
The Committee's Mission
Obviously, even the fullest possible accounting for U.S. POW/MIAs
will leave some questions unanswered. Investigations can uncover
information, but not create it. If, for example, neither friend nor
foe had certain knowledge at the time about the fate of a pilot
lost over water, there is little likelihood that the Committee or
any other investigative unit could, at this distance in time,
establish that certainty.
But the Committee was not created with the expectation of final,
definitive, case-by-case answers. That is a task that may well be
beyond mortal power to achieve, and that only the Executive branch
has the resources to attempt. Rather, the Committee's job was to
investigate the events, policies and knowledge that have guided
U.S. Government POW/MIA related actions over the past 20 years and
to do so in order to advance the following goals:
to determine whether there is evidence that American POWs
survived Operation Homecoming and, if so, whether there is
evidence that some may remain alive in captivity;
to ensure the adequacy of government procedures for following
up on live-sighting reports and other POW/MIA related
information;
to de-mystify the POW/MIA accounting process so that the
families and the public can better understand the meaning
behind the numbers and statistics used in discussions of the
issue;
to establish an open, comprehensive record, and to provide for
the broad declassification of POW/MIA materials in order to
enable both the Committee and the public to make informed
judgments about questions of policy, process and fact;
to lend added weight to Executive branch efforts to obtain
cooperation from foreign governments in Southeast Asia and
elsewhere in accounting for missing Americans;
to review the activities of private organizations who
participate in fundraising and educational efforts related to
the POW/MIA issue; and
to examine, to the extent time and resources permit,
unresolved issues pertaining to missing Americans from World
War II, Korea and the Cold War.
De-Mystifying the Process
Nothing has done more to fuel suspicion about the government's
handling of the POW/MIA issue than the fact that so many documents
related to those efforts have remained classified for so long.
Rightly or wrongly, the secrecy--especially about live-sighting
reports and critical internal reviews of Defense Intelligence
Agency procedures--have fed the perception that government
officials have something to hide. This perception increased in the
months prior to the Committee's creation because of evidence that
some Congressional inquiries may have been responded to with
inaccurate or incomplete information and because then Congressman
Bob Smith and Senator Charles Grassley had enormous difficulty in
prior years in gaining DOD permission to review classified POW/MIA
related materials.
As a result, the Committee sought from the beginning to work with
the Executive Branch to make public all information relevant to the
POW/MIA issue, except that related directly to the sources and
methods of gathering intelligence. The Committee agreed that
"source and methods" must be kept confidential in order to maintain
America's ability to gather new information and track leads in the
future. The Committee's goal was to "de-mystify" the POW/MIA issue
and to lay before the public a complete picture of what the U.S.
Government knows. The Committee generally succeeded in this
objective. A full description of the efforts made to obtain the de-
classification and public release of documents is included in
chapter entitled "Declassification."
Accountability and Response
A major investigative priority of the Committee was to examine the
U.S. Government's ability and willingness to respond rapidly to
possible evidence that live Americans may still be held against
their will in Southeast Asia. The Committee also sought to gain
greater cooperation from the governments of Southeast Asia in
efforts to obtain answers to questions about specific missing
Americans. These "process-oriented" issues go to the heart of U.S.
priorities. For example, a bureaucracy that assumes that all
American POWs are dead may not respond as energetically to an
unconfirmed, but possibly credible, report that a POW has been
sighted as a bureaucracy that assumes Americans may still be alive.
Similarly, an Administration that attaches a genuinely high
priority to POW/MIA issues is likely to devote greater resources of
intelligence and response than an Administration that does not. The
evolution of U.S. government policies and procedures from Operation
Homecoming to the present are discussed in the "Accountability"
chapter of this report.
Building a Public Record
Beyond the questions of process, there exist the fundamental
questions of fact. The Committee understood from the outset that it
could not expect to answer every question, but that it had a
responsibility to pursue as comprehensive an investigation as
possible. To this end, the Committee conducted more than 1000
interviews; took more than 200 sworn depositions; held more 200
hours of public hearings; reviewed tens of thousands of pages of
documents, files, and reports; studied large quantities of
intelligence information, including raw intelligence; posted a
full-time investigator to Moscow; and sent Member delegations to
Russia, North Korea and four times to Southeast Asia.
The Committee's goal was to identify and explore every promising
avenue of investigation. To this end, the Chairman and Vice-
chairman sent personal letters to the primary next of kin of all
Vietnam-era POW/MIAs, and to all returned POWs, seeking information
and advice. During televised public hearings, Members of the
Committee have repeatedly invited all those with information
concerning a POW/MIA related matter to come forward and share that
information with the Committee. The Committee has also solicited
suggestions from veterans organizations, activist and family
groups, current and former U.S. officials and from the public at
large with respect to possible witnesses and areas of
investigation.
The final judge and jury of U.S. Government actions on the POW/MIA
issue is not this Committee; it is the American people. As previous
POW/MIA related inquiries have shown, it does not matter much what
the official view is if the public does not generally understand
and share that view. As a result, the Committee made a conscious
effort to combine its behind-the-scenes investigative work with
public hearings so that the public would learn--almost
contemporaneously with the Committee--about various aspects of the
POW/MIA issue. For the same reason, the Committee made every effort
to avoid holding hearings in executive session and to provide for
the declassification of Committee-generated documents, such as
depositions. The goal from the outset has been to create a
comprehensive and unbiased public record that would be available
for families, journalists, historians and citizens to review and
make their own best judgments about the facts. This report is an
important part of that record.
The Investigation
The Committee investigation began by tracing the history of the
issue back to its war-time beginnings. Clearly, the chance that
American POWs are alive in Southeast Asia today depends on whether
some were left behind after Operation Homecoming. The chapters in
this report entitled "The Paris Peace Accords" and "Accountability"
focus in detail on this possibility.
The largest share of Committee efforts was devoted to examining
information concerning the possible survival of Americans during
the post-war period and up to the present day. This required the
review of vast quantities of first, second and third-hand "live-
sighting" reports; the analysis of a wide range of intelligence;
examination of the methods that DIA uses to evaluate information;
and the consideration of indications that POWs may have been
transferred to the former Soviet Union or to China during or after
the Korean or Vietnamese conflicts. Chapters 4 and 9 describe this
aspect of the Committee's investigation.
Cooperation of Southeast Asia Governments
It will be extremely difficult for our government to obtain
additional solid information concerning the fate of our POW/MIAs
without the cooperation of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
Accordingly, the Committee has sought to use its review of POW/MIA
issues to encourage recent trends towards greater cooperation
between and among these governments and the United States. Members
of the Committee traveled to Southeast Asia in April, October,
November and December, 1992 for talks with foreign officials and
U.S. personnel deployed there. In addition, Committee Members have
met from time to time in the United States with representatives of
the foreign governments to exchange information and clarify
outstanding questions.
Below is a very brief summary of the situation that existed in each
of these three countries at the time the Committee's work began. A
full description of the issue is contained in the "Vietnam, Laos
and Cambodia" chapter of this report.
Vietnam
When the Committee was formed, 1656 Americans were listed as
unaccounted for in Vietnam. Since the end of U.S. involvement in
hostilities on January 27, 1973, the remains of 266 Americans have
been returned and identified.
Most of the Americans lost or captured in North Vietnam during the
war were Air Force or Navy airmen who crashed in populated areas
accessible to Vietnamese authorities. The North Vietnamese made a
systematic effort to investigate crash sites, capture and process
American POWs, bury and preserve remains and maintain centralized
records.
About two-thirds of the Americans lost in South Vietnam were
enlisted Army and Marine Corps personnel. U.S. officials have found
that records and information concerning American prisoners held in
the south are less complete than for those held in the north.
Since the war, Vietnamese officials have steadfastly denied that
any Americans are held captive or that the remains of American
servicemen are being knowingly withheld.
Cooperation from Vietnam is essential to the resolution not only of
cases involving Americans lost or captured in Vietnam, but in
Cambodia and Laos, as well. This is because the vast majority of
Americans missing in those countries were believed to have become
missing in areas under the control of North Vietnamese military
forces at the time. Thus, Vietnam's military archives and other
records are an important potential source of information concerning
the fates of these men.
Since 1973, the degree of cooperation received from Vietnam has
varied widely depending on the international political situation.
A good working relationship was impossible during the years
immediately after Operation Homecoming because of disputes over
violations of the Paris Peace Accords. After the fall of Saigon in
1975, some efforts were made on both sides to pave the way for more
normal political and diplomatic relations. That progress came to an
abrupt halt in late 1978, however, following Vietnam's invasion of
Cambodia, which the United States strongly opposed. Significant
bilateral discussions did not resume until the early 1980's, but
have since grown steadily in their frequency and depth.
One of the most positive outgrowths of recent talks was the
appointment in 1987 of Gen. John W. Vessey, Jr. (USA Ret.), as the
President's special envoy to Vietnam. As a result of Gen. Vessey's
discussions with then-Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach,
the U.S. established a POW/MIA liaison office in Hanoi in July,
1991. The purposes of the office are to investigate live-sighting
reports, to conduct joint searches for the remains of American
servicemen and to seek access to the relevant Vietnamese records.
The Vessey team has placed a major emphasis on the investigation
and resolution of the "discrepancy" cases. Discrepancy cases are
those where U.S. officials believe there is the highest probability
that additional information concerning a missing American can, with
the proper degree of cooperation and investigation, be found.
Currently, 135 discrepancy cases involving Americans lost in
Vietnam are under investigation and a preliminary investigation in
Vietnam of each case is to be completed by January 1993.
Laos
At the time of the Committee's creation, 528 Americans were listed
as unaccounted for in Laos, of whom 335 were considered POW/MIA.
Only 12 U.S. POWs captured in Laos returned during Operation
Homecoming and one, Emmet Kay, who was captured after the cease-
fire returned in September 1974. Since the end of the Vietnam
conflict, the remains of 42 servicemen have been repatriated.
U.S. efforts to obtain information from Lao authorities have been
complicated by the facts that Laos was not a party to the Paris
Peace Accords and the United States was not a party to the 1973
Laos cease-fire agreement that pledged all sides to return captive
personnel. In addition, the Defense Department estimates that at
least 75 percent of the Americans missing in Laos were lost in
areas controlled at the time by North Vietnamese armed forces.
These losses were generally in eastern Laos along the border with
Vietnam and near the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Although the POW/MIA records kept by the Lao have been judged to be
less extensive than those kept by Vietnam, there is credible
evidence that at least a few unaccounted for Americans were
actually held by Pathet Lao forces during the war. Therefore, the
Lao can be expected to have knowledge concerning the fate of these
individuals. Additionally, there is strong reason to believe that
North Vietnamese military were instructed to recover and record all
they could about downed U.S. aircraft and killed or captured
pilots. Thus, efforts to account for many Americans will
ultimately require tri-lateral cooperation involving not only the
U.S. and Laos, but Vietnam as well.
In recent years, Lao authorities have been more cooperative with
the U.S. in planning and carrying out investigations at known U.S.
aircraft crash sites, often in remote and virtually inaccessible
locations. The government has also cooperated in efforts to
evaluate photographs alleged to depict American POWs.
Cambodia
At the time of the Committee's creation, 83 Americans were listed
as unaccounted for in Cambodia and no prisoners or identified
remains had been repatriated during the post-war period until
recently. Cambodia was not a party to the Paris Peace Accords
and no separate cease-fire agreement on repatriation was reached in
the aftermath of the war. The recovery of American POWs or remains
in Cambodia was made virtually impossible after 1975 when the Khmer
Rouge seized power and embarked on a bloody reign of terror
directed at Cambodians and foreigners alike. Throughout much of the
past 20 years, the U.S. has had either difficult or non-existent
diplomatic contacts with the Cambodian Government. The years of
struggle and chaos leave little hope that documents or records have
survived that would reveal additional information about U.S.
personnel.
As in Laos, however, most of the Americans unaccounted for in
Cambodia were lost near the border with Vietnam in areas where
North Vietnamese forces were dominant. Thus, the best potential
sources of documentary information concerning those lost in
Cambodia may be in Hanoi, not in Phnom Penh.
Fortunately, the current government in Cambodia has demonstrated a
willingness to cooperate with the U.S. in joint field
investigations and other efforts to obtain accurate information
concerning American POW/MIAs. Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen has
been particularly helpful in this effort.
Previous Wars
The seeds of the Cold War were sown by the Red Army as it pursued
the Wehrmacht across Eastern Europe. The Kremlin imposed Communist
regimes on the war-ravaged nations of the region and war-time
alliances were replaced by a deadly rivalry: NATO versus the Warsaw
Pact. The Soviet Union and its client states, from Europe to the
Bering Sea, from the Arctic to the tropics, became the theater of
operations for the far-flung activities of U.S. intelligence
agencies and units of each service.
To no one's surprise, the Soviet Union reacted. It kidnapped
intelligence agents and "attaches." It shot down U.S. intelligence
aircraft and the air crews disappeared. These were America's "Cold
War losses."
Another tragic outcome of the rapid advance of the Red Army was the
"liberation" of American and Allied POWs from German POW camps by
the Red Army. Rather than moving these hapless soldiers westward
toward their own advancing armies, the Soviets took thousands of
them eastward to Odessa. Some boarded ships and eventually reached
their homes safely. Others, and we may never know how many, became
prisoners -- not of war, but of the Soviet gulag.
During the Korean War, thousands of American fighting men were
captured by North Korean and Chinese forces. Estimates vary, but
clearly hundreds were not returned after the armistice and prisoner
exchange. Intelligence information, collected during and after the
war, indicated that many POWs were held in China, and some were
sent to the Soviet Union. Therefore, accounting for the Korean War
missing involves not only North Korea, but China and Russia as
well.
The problems the United States faces in recovering soldiers who
have fallen into Communist hands predates even World War II. We
note that the Bolsheviks captured American soldiers on the
Archangel and Siberian fronts during the Intervention of 1918-19.
Additionally, the U.S. is not alone in trying to account fully for
missing and captured soldiers in the period immediately following
past wars. Many of our allies from the Korean conflict still have
unaccounted for servicemen.
Because the Committee's focus concerned the possibility that
American POWs could still be alive, our resources were devoted
primarily to investigating the relatively recent conflict in
Vietnam. Nevertheless, the Committee did focus considerable
attention on investigating previous wars and conflicts. A
discussion of this phase of the Committee's investigation is
contained in Chapter 9 of this report.
Previous Investigations
The Select Committee began its work in October, 1991 fully aware
that the POW/MIA issue had been examined and investigated by
Congress and the Department of Defense many times in the past. One
of the challenges facing the Committee was whether it could uncover
significant information that previous investigations into the
subject had not.
The Committee's approach has been to learn from, and build on,
those previous investigations, without necessarily accepting as
valid either the methods or the findings of those inquiries. The
Committee's review of earlier studies has helped to focus resources
and attention on areas that had not been thoroughly examined before
or where still unanswered questions had been raised.
It should be noted that earlier investigations have varied widely
in content, method, purpose and work product. Most previous efforts
have consisted simply of Congressional hearings or single-purpose
studies into the workings of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The
only previous study that was comparable in its original mandate to
that of the Senate Select Committee was that of the Montgomery
Committee in 1975-1976. A summary of prior investigations and
hearings is included as an appendix to this report.
The Montgomery Committee
The most extensive and influential of prior Congressional
investigations into the POW/MIA issue was conducted by the House
Select Committee on Missing Persons in Southeast Asia, known as the
"Montgomery Commission report" after Committee chairman, U.S. Rep.
G.V. "Sonny" Montgomery. The investigation included public
hearings, private meetings with U.S. officials, including President
Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and direct talks with
key government officials in Vietnam and Laos. The Montgomery
Committee reviewed many of the same issues that would be considered
by the Senate Select Committee 16 years later. These included the
implementation of the Paris Peace Accords, the possibility that
U.S. POWs may have survived in Laos and DIA procedures for
obtaining the fullest possible accounting of POW/MIAs.
The most significant and widely-quoted finding in the Montgomery
Committee's December 13, 1976 final report was its conclusion that
"no Americans are being held alive as prisoners in Indochina, or
elsewhere, as a result of the war in Indochina."
The Committee did not, however, exclude the possibility that some
American servicemen might have remained behind voluntarily, citing
specifically one deserter and one defector (then listed officially
as a POW) who "were alive in Indochina in the early 1970's and may
still be alive."
During its investigation, the Committee reviewed the files of the
33 U.S. servicemen still listed as POW in 1976. The Committee
concluded that six of the 33 had been classified improperly as
POWs, and that there was no evidence that 16 others had ever been
taken prisoner. The Committee identified only 11 POWs who had not
been accounted for by the Vietnamese.
Although the Committee found no "dereliction or malfeasance of duty
on the part of U.S. Government officials," it did cite the military
security classification system for contributing to "unnecessary
confusion, bitterness and rancor" among POW/MIA families. It also
found that the DOD's decision to conceal actual loss sites during
the secret wars in Laos and Cambodia "contributed to the mistrust
expressed by some next of kin."
The Montgomery Committee's report strengthened the view of those
who felt that no American POWs had been left behind, but failed to
persuade others. Representatives Joe Moakley, Benjamin Gilman and
Tennyson Guyer, all Members of the Committee, questioned the
Committee's basis for concluding that no American prisoners were
alive in Indochina and the National League of Families released a
25 page report criticizing the Committee's methodology and its
overwhelming reliance on data provided by the U.S. Government.
During its own investigation, the Select Committee interviewed
Angus MacDonald, who served as staff director for the Montgomery
Committee. Mr. MacDonald said that the Montgomery Committee's
inquiry was focused almost solely on the question of whether
American POWs remained alive at that time (1975-1976) and not on
whether some may have been left behind after Operation Homecoming
in 1973. Mr. MacDonald also confirmed that the Montgomery Committee
did not receive access to many of the Executive branch documents
made available to the Select Committee, particularly intelligence
information and those dealing with the negotiation and aftermath of
the Paris Peace Accords.
The Woodcock Commission
In February, 1977, shortly after taking office, President Carter
appointed a Presidential Commission on Americans Missing and
Unaccounted for in Southeast Asia. The five member Commission was
chaired by Leonard Woodcock, President of the United Auto Workers,
and was designed to help the President gain greater cooperation on
the POW/MIA issue from the governments of Southeast Asia.
Although the Commission was not empowered to negotiate, it was
instructed to seek all available information from the Governments
of Vietnam and Laos and to listen carefully to the concerns of
those governments on other matters of interest, including possible
U.S. economic aid. The hope was that the Lao and Vietnamese would
be more forthcoming on POW/MIA matters if they sensed a willingness
on the part of the U.S. to consider such issues as normalization of
relations and reconstruction aid.
The centerpiece of Woodcock Commission activities was a visit of
several days in mid-March, 1977 to Vietnam and Laos. The delegation
was told by leaders in both countries that they were willing to
cooperate on POW/MIA matters, but that the United States should
also take steps concerning economic aid and reconstruction. In
Vietnam, the Commission received the remains of 12 U.S. airmen and
was informed that a specialized office would be established by the
government to receive information on POW/MIA related matters. In
Vientiane, government officials emphasized the difficulty of
looking for the remains of MIAs in a nation as rugged, remote and
impoverished as Laos, and said that all U.S. POWs captured in Laos
had already been returned.
Like the Montgomery Committee, the Woodcock Commission concluded
that "there is no evidence to indicate that any American POWs from
the Indochina conflict remain alive." The Commission found that the
Vietnamese "have not given us all the information they probably
have," but cited "a clear, formal assurance" from the Vietnamese
that they would look for MIA information and remains. The
Commission also concluded, pessimistically, that "for reasons of
terrain, climate, circumstances of loss, and passage of time, it is
probable that no accounting will ever be possible for most of the
Americans lost in Indochina. Even where information may once have
been available, it may no longer be recoverable due to the ravages
of time and physical changes."
It is worth noting that the Woodcock Commission's task was more
diplomatic than investigatory. It did not seek to replicate the
work of the Montgomery Committee, to review files, hold hearings or
develop new sources of information. Instead, it relied almost
entirely on briefings from U.S. agencies, POW/MIA activists and
others. The Commission clearly operated on the assumption that
further POW/MIA information could not be gathered without
cooperation especially from the Vietnamese, and that cooperation
would most likely be forthcoming if overall U.S.-Vietnamese
relations were improved.
Live-Sighting Reports
Neither the Montgomery Committee nor the Woodcock Commission had
the benefit of the flood of reports from refugees fleeing Southeast
Asia, especially Vietnam and Cambodia, following the Communist
takeover of those two countries. First-hand and hearsay accounts
about live Americans being sighted did much to revive hopes among
families and others that some U.S. POWs might have survived, but
few reports were received before 1979.
Live-sighting reports, and the U.S. response to them, dominated
much of the POW/MIA discussion during the late 1970's and 1980's.
In the early 1980's, George Brooks of the National League of
Families conducted a study in which he found considerable fault
with the way live-sighting reports were analyzed by the DIA. In
Congress, however, the House Task Force on American Prisoners and
Missing in Southeast Asia reviewed 80 "live-sighting" case files
and concluded that "all options available to DIA were exercised" in
responding to them. The following year, the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence concluded that the "DIA performs
unbiased, professional and thorough analyses of POW-MIA live-
sighting cases," and rejected suggestions that credible information
about live Americans had been covered up. It should be noted that
this was a limited inquiry into DIA procedures and that no public
hearings were held.
During this same period, Commodore Thomas A. Brooks (USN) of the
DIA wrote an extremely critical internal memorandum on DIA's
performance in evaluating live-sighting cases. According to the
memo, Admiral Brooks further sought to "damage limit" Members of
Congress who wanted to review POW/MIA files which were acknowledged
to be "sloppy" and "unprofessional".
During the first six months of 1986, the Senate Veterans Affairs
Committee, chaired by Senator Frank Murkowski, conducted seven days
of hearings on the POW/MIA issue, focusing primarily on "live-
sighting" reports and other information that U.S. POWs were being
held. The Committee received a bewildering array of allegations,
claims and counter-claims from agency officials, family members,
former POWs, retired military officers and Members of Congress. The
Committee issued no report, but the range of testimony indicated
that divisions over whether the U.S. Government was doing enough in
behalf of POW/MIAs and their families were widening, rather than
narrowing.
Also in 1986, two other critical reviews were written at the
Defense Department concerning DIA's POW/MIA efforts. One internal
review concluded that it was a "mystery" that prior Congressional
reports had generally praised these efforts. A summary of all three
reviews is discussed below, and the entire reports are included as
an appendix.
Internal DIA Inquiries
Meanwhile, several internal Defense Intelligence Agency reviews
were conducted during this period.
On September 25, 1985, Commodore Thomas A. Brooks (USN), DIA's
Assistant Deputy Director for Collection Management, reported
on his review of the operations and analysis of the DIA's
POW/MIA Office. Commodore Brooks was critical of some DIA
procedures and concluded that there was an element of truth to
the allegation that the DIA had a "mindset to debunk" reports
of live Americans in Southeast Asia.
On March 18, 1986, Col. Kimball Gaines (USAF), reported to the
Director of the DIA on a review of the POW/MIA Office that he
had conducted as head of a five member task force. The Gaines
Task Force concluded that it had "no confidence that the
current analytical process has adequately addressed all
relevant factors and has drawn totally reliable conclusions."
On May 27, 1986, a survey of DIA's PW/MIA Analysis Center was
discussed in a report by a Task Force headed by Lt. Gen.
Eugene F. Tighe, Jr. (USAF-Ret.)
Although the body of the Tighe report was classified until mid-
1992, some of the conclusions and recommendations were not. The
report recommended a "complete overhaul" of the activities of the
DIA PW/MIA Center in order improve the quality and thoroughness of
intelligence evaluation related to the POW/MIA issue.
The principal conclusions were that:
We have found no evidence of a cover-up by DIA.
It is self-evident that a large number of MIA's may never
be properly accounted for. Therefore, false hope should
not be offered to those seeking a total accounting of
PW/MIA's.
DIA holds information that establishes the strong
possibility of American prisoners of war being held in
Laos and Vietnam.
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam holds a large number of
remains, some 400 at least, of U.S. military personnel
solely for continued bargaining power.
. . . . Major improvements in procedures and resources
are required for the DIA PW/MIA Center to evaluate
information properly.
The report's finding that live U.S. POWs were possibly being held
in Laos and Vietnam was based on live-sighting reports provided
primarily by the refugee community which the Task Force found to be
"possibly the finest human intelligence database in the U.S. post-
World War II experience," and on judgments made about the
likelihood, based on intelligence and history, that Vietnam would
seek to retain prisoners as bargaining chips.
Reagan Inter-Agency Group
On January 19, 1989, the last day of President Reagan's second
term, an "Inter-Agency Report of the Reagan Administration on the
POW/MIA Issue in Southeast Asia" was released.
The report credited President Reagan for designating the issue a
matter of "highest national priority," re-opening bilateral
discussions with Vietnam and Laos, upgrading intelligence
priorities, and discouraging "irresponsible" private activities.
The report concluded that "we have yet to find conclusive evidence
of the existence of live prisoners, and returnees at Operation
Homecoming in 1973 knew of no Americans who were left behind in
captivity. Nevertheless, based upon circumstances of loss and other
information, we know of a few instances where Americans were
captured and the governments involved acknowledge that some
Americans died in captivity, but there has been no accounting of
them."
Challenge for the Select Committee
Aside from the Montgomery Committee, no full scale Congressional
investigation of the issues to be dealt with by the Select
Committee had ever been conducted. However, the Select Committee
would have the advantage of new information that had become
available since the mid-1970's, including potential access to
information and cooperation from nations of the former Soviet bloc.
The Committee was determined from the outset to do as thorough a
job as possible. Unlike previous inquiries, the Committee would
focus not on a single issue or a particular point in time, but on
the entire chain of custody of the POW/MIA issue from the war to
the Paris Peace Talks to the present day.
The Committee's investigative methods also differ from previous
inquiries in several ways. First, the Committee required sworn
testimony from government officials and private citizens alike and
felt compelled to use its subpoena authority on some occasions.
Second, the Committee made a vigorous effort to solicit testimony
not only from policy-makers in Washington, but from professionals
in the field, many of whom have worked on the issue for more than
a decade. Third, the Committee requested, and received, cooperation
from the Executive branch, but also attempted whenever possible, to
analyze information and evidence independently from the Executive
branch. On several occasions, the Committee asked officials from
the Defense Intelligence Agency to respond to alternative theories
or interpretations of available information. The purpose was to
test the "conventional wisdom" and to allow a free-flowing exchange
of views for the benefit of Committee Members and the public.
Finally, the Committee sought access to all POW/MIA related
materials in the possession of the Executive branch, including
Presidential papers, National Security Council documents and the
records of the White House-based Washington Special Action Group.
Much of this material had never before been made available to
Congressional or other investigators of the issue.
Baseline Hearings -- November, 1991
During the initial round of hearings on November 5, 6, 7 and 15,
1991, the Committee sought to establish a baseline of belief and
knowledge about the POW/MIA issue, and to obtain guidance from
family, veterans and activist groups about the areas on which it
should concentrate its work.
The testimony of the first witness, Secretary of Defense Richard
Cheney, marked the first time that a Secretary of Defense had
testified before Congress exclusively on the subject of POW/MIA
affairs. The Secretary told the Committee that "to date, we have no
conclusive evidence proving that Americans are being held against
their will in Indochina. Nonetheless, the importance of the issue
makes investigating live-sighting reports our first priority."
The Secretary and subsequent Defense Department witnesses set forth
in detail the process DOD uses to seek POW/MIA related information
throughout Southeast Asia, including efforts to increase
cooperation with governments of the region. In that connection,
Secretary Cheney testified that:
Vietnamese cooperation on these joint investigations has
improved, but despite these improvements, we are still
not satisfied with Vietnam's performance. Too often, our
office finds that public pronouncements of increased
cooperation by Hanoi do not produce satisfactory
arrangements on the ground. Promises to cooperate on
live-sightings, improved helicopter transportation and
complete access to historical records remain only
partially fulfilled. Vietnam's foot-dragging on
unilateral repatriation of remains is especially
frustrating, especially if we ever hope to achieve the
fullest possible accounting in a reasonable period of
time, Vietnamese unilateral efforts, as well as their
participation in joint activities, will have to
dramatically improve.
Secretary Cheney also described Defense Department efforts to
evaluate the validity of recent photographs purporting to show U.S.
POWs, and alluded to the "cruel actions by some fast operators who
play on the hopes of families and friends of POWs and MIAs:
We must naturally pursue every lead that comes our way.
. . .
But each time we rush to answer. . . .false alarms, our
resources are diverted from solid leads and productive
lines of inquiry. Individuals who repeatedly provide
false information, well intentioned or not, should be
called to account for their actions.
General John W. Vessey, Jr. (USA Ret.), the Special Presidential
Emissary for POW/MIA Matters, reviewed the status of his efforts to
gain a fuller accounting of missing Americans. In describing the
U.S. and Vietnamese approaches to the issue, General Vessey told
the Committee:
The United States has quite consistently urged that the
POW/MIA matter be approached as a humanitarian issue. We
have regularly told the Vietnamese that resolution of the
issue is not a requirement for discussing normalization
of diplomatic relations. We have, however, consistently
said that the pace and scope of any normalization
discussions will be affected by the level of Vietnam's
cooperation in resolving the POW/MIA issues.
With respect to the issue of live Americans, General Vessey said:
We know through extensive debriefings and subsequent
investigations that all Americans seen by U.S. prisoners
of war who did return in the Vietnamese prison system
have been accounted for either as returned POWs or
through the return of remains or having been reported as
died in captivity.
In the years since 1973, other than the 100 or so
unresolved first-hand live-sighting reports under
investigation, we have gathered no other intelligence
that has been reported to me. . . .which indicates that
the Vietnamese are holding live prisoners or that there
was another POW system other than the one in which our
returned prisoners were held.
Of particular interest to the Committee was the advice and guidance
that POW/MIA families, veterans and activist groups had concerning
various aspects of the issue and the most appropriate focus for the
Committee's work.
For example, Robert Wallace, Commander-in-Chief of the Veterans of
Foreign Wars, cited a series of resolutions approved by his
organization calling for accelerated government to government
contacts with the nations of Southeast Asia, the establishment of
a non-diplomatic U.S. Government presence in Vietnam, the
appropriate declassification of POW/MIA information and more active
efforts to resolve questions about Korean War POW/MIAs.
John F. Sommer, Jr., Executive Director of the American Legion,
recommended the review of 1) live-sighting reports and the methods
used by DIA to evaluate them; 2) relevant satellite photographs; 3)
the 1986 Tighe Commission report; 4) document classification
procedures; 5) operation of the Central Identification Laboratory
in Hawaii; and 6) the allegations of former DIA official, Col.
Millard Peck.
J. Thomas Burch, chairman of the National Vietnam Veterans
Coalition, expressed concern about statements that U.S. officials
have made discounting the possibility that U.S. POWs are still
being held. "It is difficult to understand," Mr. Burch told the
Committee, "how the Government can effectively negotiate for the
return of live prisoners when it lacks the confidence of its own
negotiating position. Basically, they're telling the Vietnamese
they want information about live Americans at the same time they're
publicly saying that they're all dead."
Bill Duker, Chairman of the Vietnam Veterans of America's standing
committee on POW/MIA, also testified that the highest priority
should be given to the repatriation of live Americans and expressed
support for the declassification of POW/MIA information, "as long
as that declassification protects the privacy of the families and
safeguards U.S. intelligence methods and sources."
Joseph E. Andry, past National Commander of the Disabled American
Veterans, urged the Select Committee to carry out a dual mission:
"The first part of the mission should focus on an aggressive
pursuit of live sightings in Southeast Asia. The second part. . .
should be an encompassing investigation into why our government
still has not accounted for 90,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and
Marines since the end of World War II."
The Committee also received testimony from the National League of
POW/MIA Families and from individual family members.
Ann Mills Griffith, Executive Director of the National League of
Families, credited the Reagan Administration with efforts to raise
public consciousness of the POW/MIA issue, to upgrade functioning
of the POW/MIA Inter-Agency Group, and for developing a strategy
aimed at gaining increased cooperation from the governments in
Southeast Asia. Griffiths said that, unlike the past, the current
process has "integrity and priority."
Other family members who testified during the November hearings
included Dr. Jeffrey C. Donahue, brother of Maj. Morgan Jefferson
Donahue, lost in Laos in 1968; Mrs. Gladys Stevens Fleckenstein,
mother of Lt. Cmdr. Larry Stevens, lost in Laos, 1969; Ms. Shelby
Robertson Quast and Ms. Deborah Robertson Bardsley, daughters of
Col. John Robertson, lost or captured in Vietnam in 1966; and Mr.
Albro Lundy III, son of Major Albro Lundy, Jr., lost in Vietnam in
1970; Captian Robert Apodaca, son of Major Victor Apodaca, lost in
North Vietnam in 1967; and Dr. Patricia Ann O'Grady, daughter of
Col. John O'Grady, lost in North Vietnam in 1967. Each raised
serious questions about the U.S. Government's handling of the
POW/MIA issue as it affected the investigation into the status of
their missing family member.
