In Vietnam, A Ton Of Bricks
The Real Washington, 6/29/97
by CHIP BECK

HANOI, Vietnam -- Pete Peterson, the first American Missing in Action (MIA) person that Vietnam admits to having on its soil since the end of the War of Imperialist American Aggression in 1975, gave his boss, the touring Queen of Hearts, Madeleine K. Albright, a symbolic gift: A Brick.

The Brick, from the "Hanoi Hilton" Criminal Detention Center, was mounted on wood from one of the dungeon's toilet seats, where the equally symbolic and token Ambassador was missing for more than six years. The Criminal Detention Center, where the Valient Vietnamese Liberation Forces detained the most hardened of the American War Criminals, is now being turned into a luxury block of apartments and stores by a Singapore development firm called the Lippo Bank.

(In Washington, a White House spokesman denied any connection between John Huang, who has fled the United States rather than face questioning about illegal fund raising activities, and the appearance of Huang's name on the apartment complex's "Presidential Suite.")

"This Brick is a symbol of our committment to the MIA issue," said Mr. Peterson, who arrived in Vietnam less than two months ago, speaking the same level of the native language as he did as a War Criminal. "It is a stepping stone to a better future," he said, referring to the career aspirations of the Trade Policy Makers and Petty Bureaucrats Union that wrote the scenario for his current tour of duty.

Ms. Albright, appeared awake and alert, and moved enough to be visible to the audience. She said she would keep the "damn Brick" in her office as a paperweight, in case she needed "to throw it" at some "annoying family member." She said the Brick represented the sum total of American intellectual committment to the MIA issue and the speed at which events have moved over the past 25 years.

"Quick as a Brick," took on dual meanings that sunny afternoon.

Standing alongside the former Missing In Action also gave Ms. Albright something besides shade -- political Cover For Madeleine's Tush.

Mr. Peterson, who was celebrating his 62nd birthday as a cardboard cutout for the Clinton administration's Trade Policies, is not only a highly decorated veteran and onetime M.I.A., but he is a Democrat, has a black belt in the ancient oriental martial arts of Oragami, and was a short-time member of the Congressional Country Club in Washington. In the 1960s-70s, the Hanoi regime accused the Criminal American Pilots of being puppets for a corrupt Washington Administration.

Ironically, the charge may have been correct, but 25 years ahead of its time in Mr. Peterson's case.

For Ms. Albright, only one of a succession of American officials to make the pilgrimage to Vietnam in the 1990s, this is a trip about the future. Since the past was such an embarrassment, and a failure, this was no surprise. Like former Secretary of Fate Warren Christopher, who crawled to Hanoi in August 1995 to raise the American Dollar over the Bank of Vietnam, Albright is trying to solidify an incestuous and profiteering relationship between commerical developers and politicians on both sides of the Pacific.

Ms. Albright's spin doctors, reading from a 1958 script left over from a chapter in The Ugly American, claimed that the Vietnamese had cast off their ties to Russia and Vietnam, and had become the bulwark against communism that Washington had always hoped it would be. Several hundred Vietnamese agents of the Russian and Chinese intelligence services applauded the remarks.

But given President Clinton's shameful and cowardly avoidance of the Vietnam War, which he ran away from, not to Canada, but to Moscow and Prague in 1969, any high-level visit to Vietnam has to give lip service to the problem of American servicemen -- 2118 at last count -- who are still unaccounted for.

Ms. Albright has spent almost no time at all, really, on the MIA problem. She was able to cut her time on this topic nearly by 50% by simply dropping the use of the term "POW" from any and all of her speeches. "It really does save time," she noted, adding that the adminstration was searching for additional shortcuts by trying to figure out how to "revise the term, 'fullest possible accounting.'"

By ignoring the realities of the POW scandal, Ms. Albright hoped that by only using the term MIA, and assuring the Vietnamese that recovering about 10 more sets of remains would constitute the "fullest possible accounting," Vietnam would cooperate on spending the $10 million a year it costs to field the American bone-hunters and archeologists.

Fortunately, much of the money is already funneled into mechanisms that supports other Vietnamese projects, such as transportation for VIPs and Lippo dignitaries.

Vietnamese officials, greeting Albright's comments with gales of diplomatic laughter, promised to press for faster economic reform, a better climate for investment and embezzlement, more respect for dissent and religious freedom, and to put a Vietnamese female on the moon by the end of the decade. In fact, they promised to make the last goal "the highest national priority."

Albright had a long session this morning with the Joint Task Force that digs up crash sites as a favor to the Vietnamese, to try to resolve the fate of those Killed In Action and to divert attention away from the Clandestine Exploitation of American and French POWs that was orchestrated by Moscow throughout the First and Second Indochina Wars.

Hanoi and Washington, by juggling numbers and lobbing misinformation back and forth over the diplomatic ping-pong net, have managed to get the MIA question down to 48 persons without resolving a single POW case. The operation could go on for years, said LTCOL Jonathan ("Wild Goose") Chase, and ultimately a political decision would have to be made about what constitutes "the fullest possible accounting."

"We'll probably leave that up to the Vietnamese," 'Wild Goose' Chase said, "since they don't listen to us, anyway."

In her meetings today with Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet, Foreign Minister Ngyen Manh Cam and the Communist Party leader, Do Muoi, all expressed orchestrated sympathy for the American search and promised full assistance . . . "as long as the Big Bucks Keep Rolling In," said Vo in Vietnamese, to the uproarious guffaws of the assembled Vietnamese communists.

Albright asked for a translation of the remarks, but her interpretor, an American official married to a Vietnamese agent, was too busy laughing with the Hanoi officials to bother. Albright giggled diplomatically.

Ms. Albright then pressed ahead with the message the Vietnamese are happier to hear: "We have managed to snooker the families of American servicemen, the Veterans groups, or ignore them totally in the political process in order to coopt American values so that we could normalize our political and financial schemes with Vietnam and exchange ambassadors. Now we want to lay greater stress on moving forward with the profit motive that is the legacy of the late Secretary of Commerce Brown."

To do that, she said, Vietnam has to reinvigorate its economic standards, the "doi moi" or "graft," which is at the heart of Vietnamese and Clintonite economics. "What is needed now is Graft II," she said, just after signing a pledge for funds for the "Gore in 2000" campaign committee.

"Don't forget to launder them this time, for goodness sake. You'd think the Chinese would know better," she warned.

The Vietnamese leaders were convinced by Albright's argument that "economic and political corruption are two sides of the same coin." The agreed that they should sell the garbage line that they were going to relax curbs on political dissent and religious practice. "We'll curb it until your plane leaves the tarmac," Vo promised.

"That's all I need to know," responded Albright, brightly.

As Ms. Albright made her own first fire-sale visit to Vietnam, she basked in the symbolism of a new era, and in the presences of Unmissing MIA Pete Peterson. "There is no better foil for the sellout than Peterson, whose own journey from airman to MIA to politician to pin-stripped puppet is a frustration for American and Vietnamese veterans alike."

For his part, Mr. Peterson said that the Vietnamese treat him like an old friend. "We have as much respect for Ambassador Peterson today, as when he was a Criminal Pilot in our custody," remarked Vo in Russian. "Only now, he is much more useful and compliant."

"They approach me in the street like they know me really well, like they knew me in another life -- and maybe they did," Peterson said.

In Mandarin Chinese, Vo commented that after meeting the Ambassador on the street, the citizens have been instructed to wait until after he passes before spitting, signalling just how far respect for the Americans has come in 25 years.

Holding up the chunk of clay mounted on the wood from the toilet seat, Peterson assured Albright that their new policy toward Vietnam would go over with the Veterans and their families, "like a ton of Bricks."

So true.

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