Submitted by Marilyn Grote
There ARE Live American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia and Our Government Knows It!
A brief look at the well documented chronology of the POW/MIA issue as we know it today speaks volumes as to why the men and women - military personnel and civilians alike - listed herein are much more than the sum total of their numbers. The burning question of how to "resolve" this issue has always been a thorny one for our government to deal with. It has never known how to move any Communist government into a position where it will return our people. The issue is, and always has been, THE RETURN OF AMERICAN PRISONERS OF WAR, BOTH ALIVE AND DEAD, not a nondescript cloaking of the issue in the shadowy classification of Missing in Action. This issue is about the Communist countries in Southeast Asia holding POWs hostage in one form of captivity or another. For example from the public record:1954-1976: After the French government pays an unspecified sum of money to the Vietnamese for the "maintenance of French cemeteries," the Communists respond by releasing between 1,000 and 1,500 Legionnaires alive. They are returned in small groups on an irregular schedule over this 22-year span. Even today live sighting reports surface about prison camps holding French Legionnaires from the First Indochina War.
3 April 1973: Laotian Communist forces declare they are holding more than 100 American POWs and are prepared to give a full accounting. The US government responds 9 days later by declaring all POWs are dead - without ever talking to the Laotians about the prisoners they admit holding!
25 June 1981: Defense Intelligence Agency Director Eugene Tighe testifies before the House Subcommittee on Asian/Pacific Affairs that live American POWs remain in Southeast Asia.
7 December 1984: The Washington Times reports that Bobby Garwood, released by Vietnam in 1979, saw up to 70 live captive Americans long after the war ended.
28 June 1985: The Washington Times reports DIA Director Lt. Gen. Eugene Tighe testified Hanoi is still holding at least 50-60 live American POWs.
15 October 1985: The Wall Street Journal reports that National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane says live American POWs remain in Southeast Asia.
19 August 1986: The Wall Street Journal reports the White House knew in 1981 Vietnam wanted to sell 57 live POWs for $4 billion. The White House determined the offer was genuine - and ignored it!
30 September 1986:The New York Times reports a Pentagon panel estimates up to 100 live American POWs are held in Vietnam alone.
7 October 1986: CIA Director William Casey says: "Look, the nation knows they (the POWs) are there, everybody knows they are there, but there's no groundswell of support for getting them out. Certainly you are not suggesting we pay for them, surely not saying we could do anything like that with no public support."
January 1988: A cable from the Joint Casualty Resolution Center in Thailand states that during Gen. Vessey's visit to Hanoi, "The Vietnamese people were prepared to turn over 7 or 8 live American POWs if Vessey told them what they wanted to hear. All the prospective returnees were allegedly held in a location on the Lao side of the border."
10 June 1989: The Washington Post reports a Japanese monk released after 13 years in a Vietnamese prison had American cellmates who nursed him to health.
September 1990: The Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Interim Report on POW/MIAs in Southeast Asia concludes that despite public assurances in 1973 that no POWs remained in the region, the Defense Department "…in April 1974 concluded beyond a doubt that several hundred American POWs remained in captivity in Southeast Asia."
September 1990: Senator Jesse Helms: "The deeper story may be that there was a deliberate effort by certain people in the government to disregard all information or reports about living MIA- POWs. If there could be even one American over there and forgotten by his country, it would be worth it if we could find him and bring him back home."
October 1990: Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach admits Vietnam still holds American POWs, and will release "as many as 10 live American POWs." His offer, like others before it, is ignored by Secretary of State James Baker III.
February 1991: Colonel Millard Peck, Chief of the Pentagon's Special Office for Prisoners of War and Missing in Action, resigns in protest of being ordered by policy makers in the POW/MIA Inter- Agency Group not to investigate live-sighting reports of American POWs!
25 April 1991: Senator Bob Smith addresses the Senate and reveals that, of more than 1400 eyewitness sightings of live POWs, NONE has ever received an on-site investigation!
23 May 1991: The Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Examination of US Policy Toward POW/MIAs concludes that the US has ignored thousands of American POWs, and left them to rot in Soviet slave labor camps, and North Korean and Vietnamese prisons. "Any evidence that suggests an MIA might be alive was uniformly and arbitrarily rejected."
Summer 1991: A flood of new evidence of live POWs pours from Southeast Asia: pictures, handwriting samples, hair samples, blood samples, fingerprints, footprints, maps and other physical proof. The Bush administration disregards the evidence, and attempts to discredit it by rumor and innuendo. Some of the photos are scientifically validated by nationally recognized experts, but none of them has ever been scientifically disproved!
2 August 1991: President George H.W. Bush says, "Until we can account for every person missing, we have to run down these leads to prove that nobody is held." The President of the United States sees his duty to prove the Vietnamese hold none of our nation's citizens rather than to gain their freedom by whatever means are at his disposal.
1 January 1992: Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman David Boren: "I think we're going to see, potentially, that a lot more (POWs) were left in Laos…it's been true in administrations of both parties - when the agreements were made, and they were anxious to get agreements at the time - there were people involved that simply wanted to get the agreements and didn't want to have all the questions raised at that time…it was too embarrassing. The longer it went, the more embarrassing it got to be…A lot more information is going to come on Laos…It's things that happened over time. Then, once when somebody found out how bad it was, nobody wanted to take the blow. They always thought, well, I'll hand this on to the next guy to admit that we really made a big mess…Those who knew the truth kept handing it on. There are people, obviously, in the military and otherwise, in the foreign policy establishment, who feel they're going to be embarrassed, now if this comes out. And so, they keep the secret…It has to come out and it will."
5 June 1992: Lt. Peter R. Matthes, USAF, puts his secret authenticator code - GX2527 - outside his prison camp in North Vietnam.
June 1992: Maj. Henry M. Serex, USAF, ["BAT21"] puts his last name and secret authenticator code - 72TA88 - right outside the prison wall of a second prison camp where he was being held in North Vietnam.
Both locations were photographed because of solid live-sighting reports of US POWs being held at these locations. Furthermore, these are just the latest satellite photographs made public of LIVE AMERCIAN PRISONERS OF WAR held captive in Southeast Asia since the mid-1970's. There is no doubt there are more.
9 June 1995: US GOVERNMENT OFFERS REWARD FOR RETURN OF POW/MIAs: Per DPMO Policy Memorandum, "Consistent with existing policy and commitments, such as those extended in service personnel blood chits, DoD will monetarily reward an individual or group who directly liberates an American service member detained against his or her will in a foreign country as a result of his or her status as a US combatant. To receive such a reward, the individual must be returned to US custody and identified as an actual POW or MIA from a recognized conflict."
February 1996: MSgt. Meteo Sabog, 24-year US Army veteran who vanished 25 February 1970 in South Vietnam after out-processing from his second tour of duty in Vietnam, surfaces in Northern Georgia where he has lived since 1985. How and when did he leave Southeast Asia? Where was he from 1970 to 1985? Was he in Southeast Asia or the United States? Was he a deserter who found his way out of Southeast Asia or a secretly returned POW/MIA brought back by our government? These and many other questions need to be answered.
Since the dissolution of the USSR, a treasure trove of evidence has turned up in communist files. In spite of the best efforts of the United States Government, the truth is coming out. For instance, in 1993, Steven Morris, a scholar from Harvard University's Russian Research Center, discovered a Top Secret document in the files of the Central Committee, Communist Party Soviet Union, International Department (formerly known as COMINTERN). General Tran Van Quang, Deputy Chief of Staff of the North Vietnamese Army, authored a report dated 15 September 1972 to the North Vietnamese Politburo, which ended up in Russian Intelligence archives. This document provided a detailed accounting of 1,205 live American POWs then held in 11 North Vietnamese prisons. The General's statements are quite revealing:
"1,205 American prisoners of war located in the prisons of Vietnam - this is a big number. Officially, until now, we published a list of only 368 prisoners of war, the rest we have not revealed. The government of the U. S. A. knows this well, but it does not know the exact number of prisoners of war, and can only make guesses based on its losses."
Note that this report is dated 4 months before the war ended. It only includes POWs held by North Vietnam in North Vietnam up to that point. However, it does not include Prisoners of War held in South Vietnam by the Viet Cong, those POWs held in Laos by the Pathet Lao, or those POWs held in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge.
The Senate Armed Services Committee provides supporting evidence. From a Committee Memo for Record dated 8 April 1993: "A member of the DRV (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) Politburo, Mr. Le Dinh, defected in 1979. He was debriefed (unprofessionally) by DIA, and he revealed that as of 1975, the Vietnamese possessed about 700 American POWs." The memo goes on to state: "Again, Le Dinh's statement that about 700 American POWs were kept back is authoritative. It is consistent with the Russian document, and it corroborates it."
Former National Security Advisors Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, for the Nixon and Carter Administrations respectively, have publicly and frequently stated that, based on their knowledge and expertise, they believe the Vietnamese document found in the Russian archives to be authentic and accurate in its numbers of living POWs held back by Vietnam. Further, a number of well placed Pentagon military officials, administration bureaucrats, and Washington insiders, have agreed with Kissinger and Brzezinski's appraisal of the validity of the report.
Why would the Vietnamese and Laotians still hold American POWs this long after the war? One reason: money. On 27 January 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed with the knowledge some POWs were retained by the Vietnamese as collateral.
On 1 February 1973, President Nixon secretly agreed to pay $3.25 billion to the North Vietnamese in reconstruction aid. This agreement was sweetened by an additional $1 to $1.5 billion in medical assistance. He resigned soon thereafter, and Congress, unaware of the deal, never appropriated the money.
The Laotians also wanted reconstruction money. However, the United States refused to even talk to them. Under these circumstances, why should we expect them to release the POWs they were holding?
Credible, documented evidence has been presented that some American POWs were sold or bartered to the Soviet Union in exchange for weapons and other badly needed supplies. American POWs with "Special Talents" - such as electronics, communications, state of the art weapons systems, etc. - are said to have been especially in demand. At least six Prisoners of War also ended up in the hands of the Chinese; possibly others given to the North Koreans.
Why hasn't the American government done more to obtain the release of Live POWs? What motive could there possibly be NOT to bring them home? Very few in our government are willing to say much about it, but theories abound. One theory made plausible both by credible evidence and by recent events, holds that some of the POWs held by the Vietnamese and Laotians were actually captured years after the war in Southeast Asia supposedly ended. According to this theory, our intelligence agencies were unable to convince Congress to fund covert activities in that area following the end of the war. Though these activities were for the most part legitimate and reasonable, Congress was glad to be out of the morass of the war and did not want to hear anything more about that part of the world.
Some believe the CIA used its "properties" - private businesses such as Air America and Nugan Hand Bank that provided "covers" for their agents - to smuggle arms and drugs throughout the "golden triangle" and "launder" the profits for diversion to covert activities.
It is only reasonable to assume that some of the pilots and support crew would inevitably fall into the hands of our enemies. There is evidence that some of these latest "POWs" are being held in the same prison camps as the military POWs. If any of those original captives came home talking about others who had joined them as recently as 1982 or 1983, it would be the end of any number of reputations and political careers. This includes members of both major political parties and all Administrations since 1973.
Fact or fiction? Our government knows the answers - and it isn't talking!
Those Living American Prisoners of War will continue to survive until one of four things happens: They die of illness, they die of old age, they are murdered or we get them out. It is that simple. They have no ther options.
Other Wars
Vietnam was not the first war in which the United States Government abandoned its citizens for political expediency. Likewise, it is not the last.
World War I
At the conclusion of World War I, thousands of American, British and French troops stationed on the Eastern Front with the Allied Expeditionary Force were sent to Siberia to protect the rear. As a result of the fighting against Soviet Bolshevik forces around Archangel in 1918-1919, there were many casualties, and eyewitness accounts of hundreds of allied soldiers who disappeared.
At the conclusion of hostilities, negotiations with the Bolsheviks for the repatriation of the prisoners was begun, than terminated by orders from General Pershing, the commander of the American Expeditionary Force in Russia. These negotiations were delayed because the Bolshevik commander was unable to obtain authority from Moscow to conduct them.
In an 18 April 1921, the New York Times article entitled "Captives' Release Repeatedly Sought" reported that …"the American prisoners held by the Soviet Government have been told by the Bolsheviks that they are held because the United States government has not made vigorous demands for their release…"
While the USG did not publicly admit that American military personnel remained in the custody of the Red Army in Russia upon the return of the American Expeditionary Force in Russia, the New York Times article continued: "It has been demonstrated that the Soviet government is holding Americans in the hope that the United States will agree to recognize the Soviet (government) or enter into trade relations with it or release communists from prison in this country…"
Further, during this time it was widely known that the Bolsheviks held many American POWs and other US citizens against their will. In fact, the new Soviet Government attempted to barter the Americans they held in their prisons for US diplomatic recognition and trade relations with their regime. The United States refused, even though the Soviets had at one time threatened "…that Americans held by the Soviets government would be put to death…"
President Harding's Secretary of State, Charles Evans Hughes, responded to the Soviet demand for recognition and trade relations in return for prisoners by saying: "…the United States will not consider any suggestions of any character from that government until the Americans now held as prisoners are permitted to leave the country."
On 20 August 1921, the United States concluded the Riga Agreement with the Soviet government to provide humanitarian aid to starving and sick Russian children. Among the conditions imposed by the US on the Soviets for this aid was the following: "The Soviet Authorities having previously agreed as the absolute sine qua non of any assistance on the part of the American people to release all Americans detained in Russia and to facilitate the departure from Russia of all mericans so desiring, the A. R. A. (American Relief Administration) reserves the right to suspend temporarily or terminate all of its relief work in Russia in case of failure on the part of the Soviet Authorities to fully comply with this primary condition…"
Because of this agreement, the USG expected 20 prisoners to be released, and were surprised when 100 Americans were turned over to US authorities. In reality, history has shown not all American prisoners were released. The Soviets held some back presumably for leverage in any future negotiations with the United States.
Public outcry throughout the US over The Soviet's behavior resulted in the formation of the 1929 Veterans of Foreign Wars/US Graves Registration Expedition which was allowed to travel into the Soviet Union. The team was able to recover and later identify 86 set of remains. Many others that were also recovered were never identified. Given the technical and scientific limitations of the day, as well as the length of time and the number of nationalities involved, officials believe now that some of the remains thought to be positively identified, in reality may have been misidentified. American Expeditionary Force in Russia personnel who were listed as either Missing in Action or Killed In Action/Body Not Recovered are the first men to face arbitrary status changes. As detailed in a 12 November 1930 memorandum from the Acting Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2 (intelligence) entitled: Alleged confinement of American Officers and Soldiers in Russian prisons, the author writes: "An administrative determination has been placed on each of their records that they were killed in action on the date they were reported missing." In other words, all of the men who were MIA were determined to be KIA/BNR on the date they were reported missing.
In 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt officially recognized the Soviet government. As a result of this formal recognition, the Soviets returned just 19 sets of remains in 1934 who were then "identified" by Graves Registration. However, none of the live prisoners were returned. Since an administrative determination of death had been placed in each missing man's records, as far as the United States government and the laws of this country were concerned, these men were legally dead. A handful of USG officials with access to the intelligence about living POWs and the Soviet concentration camps and prisons they were in knew about their existence, but the American public was kept in the dark.
The manner in which those abandoned Americans were treated following World War I illustrates succinctly the major problems faced by this nation in recovering its citizens - both alive and dead. These problems, which can be directly linked to the aftermath of World War I, still affect attempts to account for and repatriate both military personnel and civilians when captured by any Communist regime today. These problems include:
- The bureaucratic and legal assertion by the USG that the men who were POW/MIA were killed in action on the date they were reported as missing or sometime thereafter.
- The attempts by Communist regimes to use prisoners as barter for economic and diplomatic benefits.
- The dissemination and lies of the Communists about the existence and location of prisoners.
- The on-again, off-again return of remains.
- Where there is an unclear military victory over a Communist enemy, the American POW/MIAs are at the mercy of the reluctance of that enemy to return them and the weakness of the USG to pursue a clear, open policy for their repatriation. World War I set the precedent by the USG of abandoning its fighting servicemen and women, as well as civilians; and knowingly leaving them in the barbaric hands of its enemies.
Click Here For Continuation
World War II - Korea - French Indochina War - Cold War - Persian Gulf - Conclusions
The Legal Stuff
The material contained within The Moonduster Chronciles, the official Newsletter ("NEWSLETTER") of Operation Just Cause ("OJC") is the sole responsibility of the Editor unless otherwise indicated by a name and email address. Submissions of original work, including those written by the Editor, in all issues of "The Moonduster Chronicles" do not necessarily represent the views of Operation Just Cause, the Operation Just Cause Management, Operation Just Cause Staff or the membership of Operation Just Cause. By necessity, all submissions become the property of Operation Just Cause and The Moonduster Chronicles. Comments, criticisms and points of view are welcome. Please send them to: NL@ojc.org
Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 All Rights Reserved
Operation Just Cause and The Moonduster Chronicles ®
