News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Vietnam's Ability To Account

Date: August 25, 2000

National League of Families
VIETNAM'S ABILITY TO ACCOUNT
FOR MISSING AMERICANS
August 25, 2000

Family members, veterans organizations and other League supporters throughout the country have consistently opposed steps to improve economic and political relations until Hanoi makes the decision to cooperate fully to resolve the POW/MIA issue. The League supports a policy of reciprocity -- steps by the US to respond to efforts by Vietnam to locate and return remains and provide case-specific POW/MIA-related documents. The League supports a policy of reciprocity, but opposes steps in advance, in the hope that Vietnam will act in good faith.

One way of viewing what the US knows and what Vietnam can do is by looking at what Vietnam has not, but could have done. At the end of the war, US intelligence and other data confirm that over 200 unaccounted for Americans were last known alive or reported alive and in close proximity to capture. Vietnam knows that these are highest priority cases, directly related to the live prisoner issue. In over 100 of these cases, joint field investigations have reportedly been sufficient to confirm death. If true, remains of these Americans logically should be the most readily available for return since they were in captivity or on the ground in direct proximity to Vietnamese forces. Yet, Vietnam has accounted for very few of these Americans by returning identifiable remains.

US wartime and postwar reporting on specific cases, captured Vietnamese documents concerning the handling of US prisoners and casualties, and debriefs of communist Vietnamese captives, reinforced by US monitored directives and other reporting, form a clear picture of a comprehensive Vietnamese system for collection of information and remains, dating back to the French-Indochina War. Specific sources, such as the mortician in 1979, substantiated by others in the 1980s, highlighted remains collection and storage as a key aspect of Vietnam's policy for eventual dealings with the US.

Assessments by community-wide intelligence served as the basis for long-standing US expectations that hundreds of Americans could readily be accounted for by unilateral Vietnamese actions to locate and return remains. In 1986-87, the entire intelligence community maintained much higher estimates, but the numbers were subsequently further screened to establish the most realistic targets for the Vietnamese government to meet.

During the war and since, the Vietnamese communists placed great value on the recovery and/or recording of burial locations of US remains. In wartime, if jeopardized by imminent discovery or recovery by US forces, burial was immediate to hide remains, which were disinterred and photographed when possible, then reburied or transferred to Hanoi when feasible. Evidence of this process is confirmed by US intelligence.

Forensic evidence serves as another basis for establishing expectations. Scientific evidence of above or below ground storage, or both, exists on 167 of the 411 identified remains returned from Vietnam since the end of the war. This number, confirmed by CILHI forensic scientists, is far below US expectations, based on reliable intelligence indicating that hundreds more were stored by the Vietnamese government and, if Vietnam's leaders issue authorization, could be repatriated.

The total number of identified remains returned from Vietnam with scientific evidence of storage (167) does not equal the number reported stored by valid sources, nor come close to the US Government's long-standing assessments of remains available for unilateral repatriation by the government of Vietnam. Evidence of storage also exists on three remains returned in 1992 and subsequently identified, and an important signal was sent by the Vietnamese in a 1989 stored-remains repatriation. Both instances revealed province-level storage/curation.

After two years of no results from the Vietnamese in 1979-80, during a September 1982 ABC "Nightline" program, the late Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach flatly denied that Vietnam was holding any US remains, as did other senior Vietnamese officials throughout the Carter Administration. Yet, in 1983, Vietnam returned eight remains with clear evidence of storage. Negotiations for a two-year plan in 1985 brought the largest number of remains obtained to that point; nearly all showed evidence of storage. In 1987, negotiations resulted in the largest number returned during one year -- over 60 in 1988 - about half of them returned at one time. Nearly all were virtually complete skeletons that showed clear evidence of storage; there are more recent examples.

Vietnamese officials have admitted storage of remains. In 1985, following up an initiative through a regional government, a US National Security Council (NSC) official met privately with a Vietnamese Politburo member during an NSC-led US delegation to Hanoi. The carefully drawn plan was for negotiations on live prisoners and remains, but the minister indicated that live prisoners were not on the table for discussion. Rather, as discussed through the third party, the subject was hundreds of remains.

In order to test the scope of Vietnam's knowledge, two specific cases were officially presented to officials in Hanoi in 1985/86 with a request for their unilateral assistance; both losses were judged by the US Government to have occurred inside Laos, in areas under Vietnamese control during the war. One was returned unilaterally in 1988, 98% complete and stored above ground since his 1972 incident along the Lao/Vietnamese border. Vietnam has unilaterally repatriated stored remains from very remote locations spanning the entire war, not just highly populated areas.

There is continuity today. In 1991 and 1993, the Vietnamese provided graves registration lists with names of unaccounted for Americans. Inclusion of these names was likely purposeful, as was filtering through private channels photographs of dead, unaccounted for Americans whose remains have not yet been returned. Combat photography was directed by the Government of Vietnam; their soldiers did not own personal cameras, much less carry them. Regardless of mixed or conflicting signals on both sides, these and other actions by Vietnamese officials were apparently intended to signal the US Government of remains availability.

Information obtained from field operations after the war, including recent Joint Task Force-Full Accounting activities, reveals that central Vietnamese authorities systematically recovered US remains. Eyewitnesses reported central-level supervision of remains recoveries of Americans who still have not been accounted for. Vietnam's leaders have repeatedly pledged to renew and increase their own efforts to locate and return remains and provide relevant documents. If concrete accounting results in this context are achieved, the US should take further economic steps sought by Vietnam.