News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Floor Debate Comments

Date: July 29, 2000

Additional statement by Congressman Rohrabacher

Dana Rohrabacher, M. C.
Additional Statement by Mr. Rohrabacher for inclusion in floor debate on
H. J. Res. 99 July 26, 2000

I am surprised to hear for the first time today that the Vietnamese communists have made available the records of one of the prisons where Ambassador Peterson was held. In response, I just asked Ambassador Peterson which records he was referring to. Unfortunately, the records he is speaking of are not from the prisons in which he was held early during his captivity, for which I am most concerned that some Americans may not have returned from. I do not doubt that Ambassador Peterson is being honest that commanders from those prisons told him that they do not know where the records are after so many years. However, they as individuals were not the record keepers. The Vietnamese communist government kept many overlapping records on prisoners they held in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia or transferred from Indochina to other communist countries. It is those meticulous records that I am concerned about and to which my request to communist officials in Hanoi has not be addressed.

Former American POWs such as Mike Benge and Colonel Ted Guy have told my staff and I how they were repeatedly interviewed and had written records made by overlapping Vietnamese communist intelligence and military organizations while they were transferred between Laos and a number of prison camps in Vietnam. US officials have to this day have not had those records made available to them by the Vietnamese regime.

In addition, there are some 400 Americans who US intelligence agencies have identified as having been alive or who perished under Vietnamese communist control. The Vietnamese regime could easily account for these men, but to this day refuse to do so. Finally, the CIA and DIA have verified the validity of the testimony before Congress by a Vietnamese mortician who testified to processing hundreds of deceased American prisoners' remains in Hanoi during the war. He testified that the organization he worked for kept meticulous records of the deceased Americans, processed the remains for storage, and carefully packaged and labeled personal belongings of the deceased Americans. To this day, none of the records of that organization -- which could resolve the fates of scores of missing American servicemen -- have been made available by the Vietnamese regime.