"on DPMO Reorganization and Dean-Sharman Case
by CDR Chip Beck USNR (ret)
The "reorganization" of DPMO is akin to organ transplant surgery in which several vital parts are left on the operating floor. I made my observations known yesterday, but obviously I agree with the Alliance's analysis in "Bits N Pieces."
On the Charles Dean and Neil Sharman case, the two young civilians who were taken prisoner by the Pathet Lao in 1974, I have this to add. In July I attended the first-ever reunion of old Laotian hands who comprised the bulk of surviving advisors to the indigenous Lao forces from 1961-1973, of which I was one. At the gathering in a remote part of the Far West, I spoke on behalf of the POWs, in search of some ancedotal material that might shed light on why we have so little information.
In the case of Dean and Sharman, I learned that the scenario you pointed out in "Bits" was pretty accurate: They were detained by the PL, who lied about it, and tracked by fairly active and interested intelligence officers pretty far from their initial detention site. I use the world "detention," because these two adventurous young men were neither soldiers nor spies, but tourist "kids" on a post-college graduation trip.
The important aspects of the discussion I had, in my view, were these:
(a) Dean and Sharman were taken alive (after Dean photographed a PL guard at one of the river stops and refused to turn over his camera). The intelligence apparatus at Vientiane got on to the case early enough to track the pair through witnesses, primarily ordinary citizens such as the boatman, Lao passengers, and villagers who got off at the stop where Dean and Sharman were detained. Other sources later maintained what the people at the Embassy felt were pretty good running accounts of their locations.
(b) By 1974, you may recall however, all of our military and paramilitary resources had been out of the country for about a year. The primary method of trying to get the pair back consisted of diplomatic entreaties to Prince Souphanouvong through the embassy representative, who was then John Gunther Dean. In spite of written testimonials by the witnesses, that the PL had detained the pair, Souphanouvong, after going through channels, claimed "it never happened and the reports were false."
The former American officer that I talked to stated that "we knew the Lao were lying about Dean and Sharman, and believed they were lying about other POWs as well." He went on to say, "Why should we believe them today?"
(Incidentally, I used historical and current analysis to arrive at the same conclusion in a DPMO report in 1995, only to have it buried by the Travis-Gray-Trowbridge chain because it refuted "policy statements.")
The 100+ advisors who showed up at the reunion represented between 300-500 years of collective experience in Laos, including extensive knowledge of the land, the people, the culture, and the history. They were not draftees, but volunteers. They did not hate the Lao, and in many cases, nearly went native. Therefore, when the preponderance of these men say they do not believe the Pathet Lao has ever told the truth about American POWs, the assessment should bear some weight. Far more weight than DPMO, and one of the reasons why follows:
I was also told that all the POW documents and records that existed in the Vientiane Embassy were turned over to JCRC in 1973, after the Paris Peace Accords established the Coalition Government and forced the peaceful withdrawal of all military and paramilitary foreign advisors (read American) from Laos.
In the spring of 1975, as things were going downhill elsewhere in Indochina, the JCRC representative (probably based in Bangkok) destroyed all the POW files, which was probably a 3-drawer safe full of material at the time. Some of the those files were probably one-of-a-kind notes and reports not duplicated back in Washington.
It is believed that the person responsible for the decision to destroy the POW records still works at DPMO and benefited fairly well from the recent reorganization.
When the roots of incompetence go back that far, the fruit borne by the tree tends to be pretty rotten, even today."