News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Vermont's Governor Visits Laos Site

Date: February 15, 2002

"Vermont's Governor Visits Laos Site
By CHRISTOPHER GRAFF, Associated Press Writer

Vermont Gov. Howard Dean on Friday stood in a Laotian rice paddy in where authorities believe his brother was buried after being killed by communist insurgents in 1974.

"Emotionally, it was very tough," Dean said in a telephone interview from Vientiane, Laos. "But I have a wonderful sense now of knowing much more of what happened to my brother and where he is."

Charles Dean, 24, was traveling around the world in the fall of 1974 when he and an Australian companion were arrested by the Pathet Lao, a left-wing nationalist group that fought the U.S.-supported government before winning control of Laos in 1975.

The Pathet Lao apparently considered the two men to be spies since they were carrying cameras. The U.S. and Australian governments strongly protested their detention and said the two were merely tourists.

Charles Dean and Neal Sharman were held in a small, remote prison camp. Authorities believe they were killed Dec. 14 while being driven toward Vietnam.

The Dean family learned in March or April of 1975 that Charles Dean had been killed, and turned their efforts to determining where.

A big break came late in 2000 when the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting — a Pentagon (news - web sites) unit created 10 years ago to seek remains of Americans missing in Indochina — pinpointed a remote site near the Vietnam border where it believes the two are buried.

The information was based in part on interviews by government investigators with local informants who may have been present either at the camp or the shootings.

No decision has been made whether to excavate the site to recover the remains.

On Friday, Howard Dean was taken by helicopter to that spot where, through an interpreter, he was able to interview one of the informants.

"There is no question this is the site," he said."