Testimony as Prepared for Delivery By
Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney
November 5, 1991

I am pleased to have the opportunity to appear before this committee today to reaffirm the commitment of the United States government - and especially the Department of Defense - to account as fully as possible for American prisoners of war and for Americans missing in action and otherwise unaccounted for.

Mr. Chairman, this committee meets at a time of increased public attention to the fate of our POWs and MIAs in Southeast Asia. I welcome and encourage this spotlight on a matter of the utmost national importance.

I can think of no subject that stirs more emotion, or generates more frustration and controversy than the subject of POWs and MIAs, especially those lost during our operations in Southeast Asia. The fact that there were thousands unaccounted for in previous wars does not make it any easier to accept the fact that 18 years after active U.S. participation in the Vietnam War ended, we still do not have a full accounting of all those lost in combat.

Eight months ago, when we defeated Iraqi forces in the Gulf, we were able to account for all of our people, even those lost behind enemy lines. That achievement is one of the legacies of our concern for other missing in Indochina. In turn, our success in the Gulf generated a renewed national attention and commitment to achieve the fullest possible accounting for those lost in Southeast Asia.

We welcome any contributions that this committee may make in shedding additional light on this important issue. I assure you of my full support for this Committee's efforts. The Department of Defense will make any of its experts in this field available to the committee to address specific questions you may have.

Accounting for other missing in Indochina remains a deeply personal commitment for me and for President Bush. I am the first Defense Secretary to come before Congress to testify exclusively on the subject of POW-MIA affairs. This is an indication of the importance that I and the Administration attach to this critical issue.

Under the President's leadership, we have pressed harder than ever before to find answers to the difficult questions this search entails. Today, I can tell you that although many questions remain unanswered, the Administration has made significant breakthroughs in a number of important areas.

First, as a result of General John Vessey's outstanding effort as Special Presidential Emissary to Hanoi for POW-MIA Affairs, we have opened an office in Hanoi and are conducting in-country joint field operations. This has enabled us to carry out investigations on the scene, enhancing our ability to get the answers to our questions that we need.

Second, as shifts within the communist world have opened new avenues for our search, we have carried out the first joint investigations ever held within Cambodia and worked for increased cooperation with officials in Laos.

Third, to take advantage of the new information now available to us, I have ordered that 88 additional personnel be assigned to augment our field staff. I have also authorized the creation of a new position within the senior Pentagon ranks, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW-MIA Affairs. With the new staff for this office, our POW-MIA efforts will be augmented by an additional 102 persons.

The effort to account as fully as possible for our POWs and MIAs is not an easy one. Our most urgent requirement is to determine whether any Americans remain captive in Southeast Asia and if so, to return them to the United States. The issue of live prisoners has been at the forefront of our intelligence effort and in our negotiations with the governments of Indochina.

The governments of Indochina have consistently denied holding any Americans. We do not, and never will, accept their denials as the last word. We intend to keep the pressure on. President Bush has pledged decisive action to return any American, should such evidance be obtained. I make you that pledge again today.

In recent months, questions have been raised regarding the Department's efforts to resolve the POW-MIA issue. As thisÙÉ Committee can well appreciate no American official would spare any effort that might Iead to the discovery of a single American prisoner of war. It is unthinkable that any American servicemen or women would fail to come to the aid of a lost comrade. Anyone who knowingly withholds or conceals information that could lead to the recovery of a captured American serviceman would deserve the most severe punishment possible. But I must say I have difficulty imagining why anyone would do such a thing. Everyone I know would be thrilled to learn that one of our comrades is still alive and we have a chance to get him back.

In fact, countless men and women in uniform and in civilian life have devoted long hours, great skill, and high hopes in the search to account for Americans who did not return from Southeast Asia. As professionals, as members of the armed forces, many of whom served during the Vietnam conflict, and as Americans, they have not needed to be told how important their mission is. They've had clear marching orders from the members of this Administration: The POW-MIA effort has our fullest support.

I regret the burden that families have borne through these long years of uncertainty and loss. And I condemn the cruelty of fast operators who have preyed on their hopes and made them suffer.

All Americans can be assured that the issue of prisoners of war and missing in action has the efforts of the members of my Department as well as our hearts. As you can well imagine, it is a subject that continues to haunt the men and women in uniform who served in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. We have a special obligation to those who gave of themselves in the service of the nation; to their families, and to those who will be asked to serve in future conflicts, to do everything in our power to obtain the fullest possible accounting.

Mr. Chairman, later today and in the weeks ahead, you will hear from a number of officials who are far more knowledgeable than I am about the details of our procedures and about individual cases. I want to take this opportunity this morning to give you my perspective as Secretary of Defense on the overall progress of the issue of POW-MIAs, and what we are doing to achieve the fullest possible accounting.

THE INVESTIGATIVE PROCESS

I would like to spend a few minutes, first, to explain how we approach the important issue of whether Americans remain captive in Indochina. To date, we have no conclusive evidence proving that Americans are being held against their will in Indochina.

Nonetheless, the importance of this issue makes investigating live-sighting reports our first priority.

The Defense Intelligence Agency has the primary responsibility for investigating and analyzing live sighting reports received by our teams in Southeast Asia. Reports come from many sources, but our investigators solicit potential sources of information from among the thousands of refugees leaving Vietnam, legal travelers who have recently visited the region and others who may have been in a position to observe. In many cases individuals with information seek out our representatives in Bangkok. Regardless of how the information is received, the procedure for investigating remains the same.

Upon receipt, live sighting reports are examined to determine if the geographic location of the sighting the time and circumstance of the sighting, and the details provided correlate to a known missing American. Related data is retrieved from DIA's extensive casualty, source and camp files, and the information is compared to what is available in the report. All files of losses or known incidents of capture or imprisonment in proximity to the location reported are reviewed for possible correlation, as are all files of all missing individuals whose time or location of loss generally relate to the given report.

Based on these findings, a preliminary determination is made regarding whether descriptive details provided by the source missionaries, or civilians jailed at various times for violations of Vietnamese codes. In fact, almost 300 of these resolved reports have been correlated to Private Robert Garwood who returned from Vietnam in 1979. Of the remaining reports, 373 have been determined to be fabrications, leaving 109 reports under active investigation. These reports are the focus of other analytical and collection efforts.

We have a live-sighting investigator on the staff of our Hanoi Office and we will insist that he will be granted free access by the Vietnamese to carry out his duties. To date, we have not reached complete agreement with the Vietnamese on the modalities of investigating live-sightings in Vietnam. We again raised this issue in a meeting in Hanoi last week and it appears that there is still more work to be done before the Vietnamese grant permission for our investigator to travel freely. It is our intent to press the issue continually until granted full and free access.

As I noted earlier, investigating live-sighting reports will continue to be our first priority. We will dedicate all resources necessary to support this vital requirement just as we have with the photographs that have appeared prominently in the media this past summer. We will not be satisfied until we are absolutely certain that every last case that can be resolved is resolved.

COMMAND and CONTROL

The organization of our POW-MIA effort is one of the most important ways we sharpen our focus on the issue. Later during these hearings, Major General Christmas, the Pacific Command Director for Operations, will outline what we have done to focus and expand our field investigations through a new Joint Task Force in our Pacific Command. But today, let me briefly describe the concept for this plan.

We will apply the military assets and personnel available within the US Pacific Command to address the POW/MIA issue in much the same way as we applied the assets of Central Command in Desert Storm to defeat the Iraqis. Proceeding from a two tiered approach, we will investigate discrepancy cases and last known alive cases on a full-time basis with an expanded Hanoi Office staff. We will continue to bring in teams of investigators from Hawaii to support the activities of the Hanoi Office and to investigate systematically the cases within particular geographic regions. The Joint Task Force approach promises to bring a new intensity to our on scene operations. We now have the staff and experts available to move forward as quickly as the Indochinese governments will allow.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

The end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, and economic difficulties in China have been significant factors in changing attitudes and opening new avenues for progress in POW-MIA affairs in Southeast Asia. These developments removed support from Southeast Asian Communist regimes, forcing them to seek cooperation from other sources of economic assistance. They are turning to the West and especially the United States. This has opened new opportunities in three countries, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

VIETNAM

General Vessey's Activities

Over the past year, the Vietnamese have demonstrated increasing levels of cooperation in resolving the fates of Americans missing in Indochina. General John Vessey, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and now Special Presidential Emissary to Hanoi for POW-MIA Affairs, has been especially persistent in pushing for greater access.

In April, he led an interagency delegation to meet with the Vietnamese Foreign Minister. At that meeting General Vessey and the Foreign Minister agreed to establish a POW/MIA Office in Hanoi that would: conduct in-country investigations of reported first hand live-sightings; research historical records; conduct forensic review of jointly or unilaterally recovered remains; and conduct advance planing and execute joint field operations. On July 8, the U.S. POW/MIA Office opened in Hanoi with an initial staff of five.

Initially, we indicated that the Office was temporary in order to provide time to assess its value. It is our judgment that so far, the Office is a success, providing a ready point of contact with the Vietnamese, and increasing communication between their officials and American POW/MIA specialists. We have indicated to the Vietnamese that we want to change its status to permanent. This will permit us to increase the staff and expand its operational role.

"Last Known Alive" Discrepancy Case Investigations

Since 1987, our efforts in Vietnam have focused on the investigation of 119 illustrative "discrepancy cases" which General Vessey presented to the Vietnamese in 1987 and 1988. These are cases in which we believe the individual survived his incident of loss and for whom the Vietnamese should be able to provide information. In some cases, these individuals were listed as Prisoners of War but did not return at Operation Homecoming in 1973, when US Prisoners of War were repatriated by the Vietnamese. In other cases, these individuals were "last known alive" on the ground, or were in communication with friendly forces and in eminent danger of capture. We believe the Vietnamese should be able to provide additional information on the fate of these individuals or otherwise account for them.

These "discrepancy cases" represent individuals that, in our judgment, based upon the incident of loss, are among the most likely to still be alive. That is not to say that other individuals in other cases could not be alive, but rather in prioritizing our efforts we selected the cases of individuals we believed most likely were alive when they fell into the hands of the Vietnamese. Therefore, if we can resolve the discrepancy cases and cases of individuals "Last known alive" we will be able to shed important light on the question of whether or not Americans remain in captivity in Indochina. Sadly, to date, we have not been able to locate any live Americans, however, we have been able to reach the judgement that 57 of the individuals who comprise the "discrepancy cases" provided to the Vietamese are dead.

In September we completed the l4th Joint U.S. Vietnam Field Investigation of last known alive "discrepancy cases. " This joint investigation was our most ambitious effort to date, and Vietnam's preparations and cooperation were improvements over past field investigations. Of significance, the Vietnamese allowed our resident researcher access to contemporaneous wartime documents that addressed the specific incidents of several previously unaccounted for Americans. As a result of these efforts, we believe that we may be able to confirm the death of several additional individuals. We are hopeful that the Vietamese will provide access to similar records for other wartime military regions.

Field Operations

If I may, I would like to explain briefly how these investigations work. In all cases, our investigators begin with the assumption that a missing serviceman or civilian is alive. First, we identify the case we would like to investigate jointly with the Vietnamese. The DIA and Joint Casualty Resolution Center then prepare case files of information for presentation to Vietnam's specialists. The records are detailed explanations of the incident of loss, biographic data, search and rescue efforts, and other information that will assist the Vietnamese and US investigators in focusing on a particular case.

We then ask the Vietnamese to independently check their records to locate any information they may have in their records and archives, locate eyewitnesses if any, and military personnel or veterans who may have participated in the action so that our teams may interview them. After the Vietnamese carry out these preliminary investigative activities, we send in our teams, consisting of records researchers, interviewers and linguists to question witnesses and examine documents. lf we can locate the crash site, we may survey it.

All of this information is compiled and a report is prepared and submitted to the Joint Casualty Resolution Center and Defense Intelligence Agency for analysis of the data received. The information is then correlated to the information within our files and analytic judgment reached. In some cases, we make a determination that further investigation is required. That may involve further records research and witness interview, or it may involve crash site survey and excavation. So far, there have been 14 such investigations since 1988. Another is scheduled to begin later this month. We go wherever the evidence leads and conduct as exhaustive an investigation as possible to attempt to determine the fate of the individual involved.

Vietnamese cooperation on these joint investigations has improved. But despite these improvements, we are still not satisfied with Vietnam's performance. Vietnamese officials could do much more to assist our efforts. Too often our official finds that public pronouncements of increased cooperation by Hanoi do not produce satisfactory arrangements on the ground. Promises to cooperate on live-sightings, improved helicopter transportation, and complete access to historical records remain only partially fulfilled. Vietnam's foot dragging on the unilateral repatriation of remains is especially frustrating. Certainly, if we ever hope to achieve the fullest possible accounting in a reasonable period of time, Vietnamese unilateral efforts as well as their participation in joint activities will have to dramatically improve. As I will discuss later in more detail, we intend to have the capability in hand to move as rapidly as cooperation by the governments of Vietnam Laos and Cambodia will permit.

To date we have accounted for only 7 of the 119 discrepancy cases presented to the Vietamese and jointly investigated. While we believe that we can confirm the death of an additional 57 unaccounted for Americans since we started this process, we have not been able to account for them by return of their remains. Obviously, results are slow in coming.

I support the statement by my colleague, Jim Baker, that the pace and scope of normalizing relations with Vietnam will dependÙÉ upon the extent of cooperation by the Vietnamese on POW-MIA matters. The Department of Defense firmly supports the road map that describes the steps Vietnam must take and measures we will take in response before we will be ready to have normalization of relations. I can assure you that we will be rigorous in our judgment about whether Vietnam is adequately complying. We will not be deterred from our goal of achieving the fullest possible accounting for our servicemen and civilians missing in action in Vietnam.

LAOS

Some of the most vexing questions remaining from the Vietnam war relate to the unaccounted for in Laos. Of the 528 Americans who remain unaccounted for in Laos, 3% are in the category POW or MIA. At Operation Homecoming only 9 Americans captured in Laos returned as POWs. It is important to realize that approximately three quarters of the Americans unaccounted for in Laos were lost in areas controlled by the People's Army of Vietnam (FAVN). Despite that fact, we continue to press the Lao for answers regarding the fates of Americans who were captured by the Pathet Lao. Only one American held by the Pathet Lao, Emmitt Kay, was released by them and returned from captivity. A second Pathet Lao prisoner, Dieter Dengler, escaped successfully.

Earlier this year, we conducted the first joint investigations of discrepancy cases involving Americans last known to be in Pathet Lao hands. Shortly thereafter, in May of this year, the U.S. and Lao agreed to an expanded plan for increased joint cooperation on POW/MIA and other humanitarian issues for the rest of 1991. Activities agreed upon include further joint investigations of discrepancy cases, small scale joint surveys and recoveries and joint crash site excavations.

So far, we have conducted the first three activities under the expanded program. In response to Lao humanitarian concerns, the Department of Defense and the US Pacific Command have provided Title 10 Humanitarian Assistance to the Lao. The Department of Defense has furnished to the Lao nearly I00 tons of excess medical supplies in three separate shipments over the past year. Additionally, the US Army Corps of Engineers completed construction of a small 5 room schoolhouse earlier this year in Savannakhet Province.

Finally, during September we conducted a Medical Civic Action Program Exercise with the Lao, sending US doctors, nurses, and medical technicians to assist the Lao in training their medical specialists in a remote northern village in which we would like to conduct POW/MIA investigations later this year or early next year. These humanitarian assistance projects will, hopefully, assist our investigators in obtaining Lao cooperation at the province and village level.

While we have undertaken a year-round plan with the Lao, actual cooperation on the ground has not yet fully succeeded in implementing the promised schedule. For example, we have had to delay a field activity scheduled to start late this week until the Lao repair the helicopter that they had planned to dedicate to the mission. The lack of helicopters continues to be the most pressing operational problem in Laos. The Soviet helicopters in the Lao inventory are dangerous and operationally degraded. Nonetheless, we have continued to use them on joint operations in that country. In the past, the Lao have rejected our proposals to fly U.S. military helicopters for casualty resolution efforts in their country. We have made alternative proposals, to include the lease back of US-made helicopters operated by commercial concerns in Laos. To date the Lao have made no commitment on these overtures, but we are continuing to work with the Lao to solve this problem.

We believe that the Lao shortcomings are more a fraction of limited resources and capabilities than a lack of commitment. In fact, they have been very cooperative on urgent investigations such as the purported Borah photograph. We have two major field operations planned before the end of this year, and I am hopeful that implementation will continue to improve rapidly and enable both countries to get back on track.

Lao-Vietnam Border Cases

As I said, approximately three quarters of the losses in Laos occurred in areas under the control of Vietnamese forces during the war. Accounting for Americans lost in such areas must be a trilateral effort between the Lao, Vietnamese, and U.S. While field operations inside Laos will necessarily be bilateral U.S.-Lao activities, the success of such efforts will largely depend upon U.S.-Vietnam cooperation. The historic records and documents required must come from the Vietnamese. Field cooperation on the border cases requires the assistance of both the Lao and the Vietnamese. We have proposed bilateral talks in December with the Lao and Vietnamese to develop a methodology for addressing these cases.

CAMBODIA

Phnom Penh has recently begun to cooperate with us in accounting for Americans missing in Cambodia. Since July, three investigation teams have traveled to Cambodia to follow-up on the photographs alleged to be of live American POWs. Their cooperation assisted other specialists in tracking down a number of what proved to be fraudulent photographs. Since July, we have also conducted two technical meetings with the Cambodians, the first such activity since Phnom Penh fell in 1975. Phnom Penh officials have also bilaterally returned remains that we hope will prove to be an American unaccounted for from the 1975 Mayaguez incident. We are hopeful that their cooperation will continue to improve.

RECENT PHOTOGRAPHS

As the Committee is aware, there have been a number of photographs that have surfaced in the media, and which have been identified by family members as MIAs from the Vietnam war. We take each identification seriously, and will use our full resources to answer the questions raised by these photos. I would like to briefly give you a status report.

Colonel John L. Robertson USAF, Lieutenant Commander Stevens, USN and Major Albro Lundy, USAF.

Our photographic experts have concluded that the picture sai to depict Colonel John Robertson, US Air Force, Lieutenant Commander Larry Stevens, US Navy, and Major Albro Lundy, Jr., US Air Force, has been altered. The handwriting on the altered photograph and the method of alteration are both similar to changes made to five other photos said to be prisoners of war. We found the originals in Eastern-bloc magazines in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. These other photographs do not show American prisoners of war, they depict a Soviet baker, military advisor, and workers. One of the sources of this photograph has also passed to our investigators faked POW photos in the past.

To complicate the investigation, no one has claimed to have seen any of the individuals pictured. Further, a second picture, allegedly depicting Lieutenant Commander Stevens was provided by the same source that originally obtained the faked "Borah" photograph. Subsequent reporting from Sandia National Laboratories fails to verify that this is Lieutenant Commander Stevens.

The associated reporting accompanying the three person photo, except for limited biographic data widely circulated by POW/MIA activists in Southeast Asia, has also proven false. The identifications by the families are the only positive information we possess. We are continuing our investigation, however, the information available to us strongly suggests that two of the individuals allegedly pictured perished at the time of their loss incident. In the absence of additional reporting we may not be able to resolve this case.

Lieutenant Daniel V. Borah USN

A photograph taken in Laos surfaced earlier this year that was identified by family members as Lieutenant Daniel V. Borah, US Navy. In addition, a non-government forensic anthropologist positively identified the person in the photo as LT Borah. With the help of Laotian officials other investigators were able to locate the individual who turned out to be 77 year old Lao highland tribesman. The man was interviewed, photographed, and fingerprinted. He identified himself in the photo, as did a second individual who also appeared in the picture. Family members who want to see the tribesman for themselves will leave in a few days for Southeast Asia. They will] be accompanied by another investigator who first interviewed and photographed the man in Laos.

Captain Donald G. Carr, U.S Army

The case of Captain Donald G. Carr, US Army is quite compelling because of the remarkable likeness between the 1989-1990 photograph we obtained from retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jack Bailey and CPT. Carr's wedding picture. In order to pursue this case, we need more current and more precise information, particularly concerning the location of the individual in the photograph. I met with Colonel Bailey on 8 October at the request of several members of Congress. During the meeting Colonel Bailey promised that he would give our investigators access to his subsources and introduce us to the individual who took the photograph.

Accordingly, I dispatched a Department of Defense team to accompany Colonel Bailey to Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, after a week in Bangkok Colonel Bailey was unable to provide the access or information he had promised. After the team arrived in Bangkok he also disclosed that the photograph-instead of having been taken in Laos as he previously indicated-may actually have been taken in Burma or Thailand. Despite this setback, we continue to apply all our available resources to locating the individual pictured in the photograph.

POW/MIA FRAUD

I have already alluded to some of the recent experiences we have had with outright fraudulent claims. Lel me elaborate to make it clear what we are up against. I know I join all of you in condemning the cruel actions by some fast operators who play on the hopes of families and friends of POWs and MIAs. They doctor old pictures or forge documents solely to make a quick buck the worst of these individuals traffic in reports obtained from unnamed sources in Southeast Asia, invite publicity to their claims of live Americans, promise great results, and often seek to raise money to keep their efforts going. It is also common practice for them to claim that their information is proof positive of government-ineptitude and cover- up. In the process, they raise the expectations of the families desperate for any sign that a loved one is still alive. Unfortunately, when we investigate their claims we find no Americans, only unsubstantiated hearsay accounts, and too often signs of deceit and fabrication.

SENATE STAFF MISSION

In August, at the request of a member of Congress, I agreed to provide an aircraft to take a Senate staff member and an individual purporting to have "hot" information on live Americans to Southeast Asia to follow-up his information. I also provided several experts to go along on the trip. This individual subsequently provided the Senate staffer with a source who failed a polygraph test. This same person was also involved to some extent in the fake "Borah" photographs. We must naturally pursue every lead that comes our way. But, each time we rush to answer these false alarms, our resources are diverted from solid leads and productive lines of inquiry. Individuals who repeatedly provide false information, well intentioned or not, should be called to account for their actions.

KOREA AND THE COLD WAR

In addition to our efforts in Indochina, we recognize that there are 8,177 Americans unaccounted for from the Korean War, and others missing as a result of Cold War incident. Accounting for these men is also of concern. We will continue to press the appropriate governments for the fullest possible accounting.

The North Koreans hold the answers to these 8,177 Americans, including 389 initially classified by their services as prisoners of war. Negotiations with the North Koreans on this subject have been conducted by the United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission (UNCMAC). The UNCMAC acts on behalf of all 16 nations, as well as the Republic of Korea, whose men fought and died in defense of freedom in Korea. The North Koreans have proved unwilling to cooperate fully with the UNCMAC, preferring instead to have occasional discussions with our embassy officials in Beijing and to use Congressional delegations to return a small number of American remains to U.S. control. With the help of Senator Smith, who has met with officials of the North Korean Government both at the United Nations and Panmunjon, we are pursuing an alternative approach that holds promise for future cooperation.

In the past year, we have made several approaches to the Soviets to investigate whether they possess information on Americans lost in Cold War aircraft incidents. In some of these cases, our information suggests that crewmembers survived their incidents of loss. The Soviets, however, have repeatedly denied any knowledge of the fates of these individuals. In April, the Department of State sent a demarche to the Soviets regarding this issue. More recently, Secretary of State Baker raised the issue with his Soviet counterparts during the Moscow Summit. The Soviets pledged at that time to make relevant KGB records available to our specialists. We have sent a "second demarche requesting access to the promised records. We have also raised the issue of Cold War losses with a delegation of Soviet and Russian veterans' groups when it visited my office last month. With their help, we hope to raise the consciousness of other veterans, and convince them that this issue is one of signal importance to the American people.

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE COMMITMENT

As this committee knows, the work is not easy. Hundreds of people in the Defense Department - who want nothing more than to resolve this issue - have devoted their careers to searching for answers to these questions. Congress has made its own contribution, with investigations, special committees, and hundreds of hearings by the committees with responsibility for oversight of the POW/MIA issue. Some of the most knowledgeable Americans on the subject are right here in Congress, and their assistance continues to be invaluable.

However, there is probably always room to improve the job we do in pursuing leads. I am told that there were many gaps in the efforts in the late 1970's and early 1980's which lead to the decision in 1985 and 1986 to increase the resources devoted to pursuing live sighting reports. The personnel increased that I ordered this summer were to make sure that new gaps do not appear as the level of overall effort increases.

Over the summer, to take full advantage of the new information available to us and increasing access being provided by the Governments in Indochina, I ordered that 88 additional personnel be assigned to augment our efforts in the field to gather and process information. They will add manpower in four places - the Joint Casualty Resolution Center, the Army's Central Identification Laboratory, the DIA's Special Office for POWs and MIA's, and DIA's Stony Beach operation.

I authorized those increases this past July. Since then, contact with Vietnam has further improved, as has the cooperation by the authorities in Phnom Penh. Cooperation with the Government of Laos has consistently expanded over the past years. To take advantage of the heightened activity, we have authorized the creation of a new position in the Pentagon -- Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW-MIA Affairs.

This position will be set up under the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs and assigned a staff of 14, including three positions already in that office. The new deputy will serve as the principal assistant on all POW/MIA matters, reporting to Paul Wolfowitz, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.

These two steps represent the assignment of 102 new positions in the Department for the important and difficult work of gathering new information, sorting out the facts, and working with the families. This brings total staff devoted exclusively to this issue to almost 240. lf more people and resources are required, we will not hesitate to add them.

CONCLUSION

Mr. Chairman, I look forward to working with you as we continue our progress in this important area. As you and the members of your committee travel to Southeast Asia, I urge you to impress upon the governments of Vietnam and Laos, and officials in Phnom Penh, the need to do all they can to resolve this issue. The answers to the questions about Americans unaccounted for do not lie in the files of the Defense Department. The answers must come from the governments of Indochina.

The families of POW's and MIA's have been, and will continue to be, our most important constituents. This nation is committed to keeping the faith with every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, and civilian until the fullest possible accounting is achieved. We owe them, and their families, nothing less. We will not rest until the job is done.