Senate Select Committee - VI

Investigation of the Accounting Process

The Committee investigation included a comprehensive review of the procedures used by the U.S. Government to account for American prisoners and missing from the beginning of the war in Southeast Asia until the present day. The purposes were:

• to determine accurately the number of Americans who served in Southeast Asia during the war who did not return, either alive or dead;
• to evaluate the accuracy of the U.S. Government's own past and current process for determining the likely status and fate of missing Americans;
• to learn what the casualty data and intelligence information have to tell us about the number of Americans whose fates are truly "unaccounted for" from the war in Vietnam; and
• to consider whether efforts to obtain the fullest possible accounting of our POW/MIAs was treated, as claimed, as a matter of "highest national priority" by the Executive branch;
• to assess the extent to which Defense Department and DIA accounting policies and practices contributed to the confusion, suspicion and distrust that has characterized the POW/MIA issue for the past 20 years; and
• to determine what changes need to be made to policies and procedures in order to instill public confidence in the government's POW/MIA accounting process with respect to past and future conflicts.

Although 2,264 Americans currently are listed as "unaccounted for" from the war in Indochina, the number of Americans whose fate is truly unknown is far smaller. Even during the war, the U.S. Government knew and the families involved knew that, in many of these cases, there was certainty that the soldier or airman was killed at the time of the incident. These are generally cases involving individuals who were killed when their airplanes crashed into the sea and no parachutes were sighted, or where others witnessed the death of a serviceman in combat but were unable to recover the body.

Of the 2,264 Americans now listed as unaccounted for, 1,095 fall into this category. These individuals were listed as "killed in action/body not recovered" (KIA/BNR) and were not included on the lists of POW/MIAs that were released publicly by the Defense and State Departments during the war or for several years thereafter. It was not until the late 1970's that KIA/BNRs were added to the official lists of "missing" Americans.

The next largest group of Americans now on the list of 2,264 originally was listed by the military services or by DIA as "missing in action." These are individuals who became missing either in combat or in non-combat circumstances, but who were not known for certain either to have been killed or to have been taken into captivity. In most, but not all, of these cases, the circumstances of disappearance coupled with the lack of evidence of survival make it highly probable that the individual died at the time the incident occurred.

Approximately 1,172 of the still unaccounted for Americans were originally listed either as MIA or as POW. Of these, 333 were lost in Laos, 348 in North Vietnam, 450 in South Vietnam, 37 in Cambodia and 4 in China. Since before the war ended, the POW/MIA accounting effort has focused, for good reason, on a relatively small number of these 1,172 Americans, that is, those who were either known to have been taken captive, or who were lost in circumstances under which survival was deemed likely or at least reasonably possible. These cases, in addition to others in which intelligence indicates a Southeast Asian Government may have known the fate of the missing man, are currently referred to as "discrepancy cases."

In 1987, Gen. John W. Vessey, Jr. (USA-Ret.) was appointed Presidential Emissary to Vietnam on POW/MIA matters. Gen. Vessey subsequently persuaded Vietnam to allow in-country investigations by the U.S. Government of high-priority discrepancy cases. The DIA and DOD's Joint Task Force-Full Accounting (JTF-FA) have identified a total of 305 discrepancy cases, of which 196 are in Vietnam, 90 are in Laos, and 19 are in Cambodia.

In 61 of the cases in Vietnam, the fate of the individual has been determined through investigation, and the Committee finds that Gen. Vessey correctly states that the evidence JTF-FA has gathered in each of these cases indicates that the individuals had died prior to Operation Homecoming. The first round of investigation of the 135 remaining cases in Vietnam is expected to be completed by January 18, 1993. A second round of investigation, which will proceed geographically on a district by district basis, will commence in February, 1993.

None of the discrepancy cases in Laos and Cambodia has been resolved. Because many of the Americans lost in those countries disappeared in areas that were under the control of North Vietnamese forces at the time, resolution of the majority of Laos/Cambodia cases will depend on a process of tripartite cooperation that has barely begun. The Committee further finds that, in addition to the past reluctance of the Vietnamese and Lao to agree to a series of tripartite talks with the United States, both the Department of State and the Department of Defense have been slow to push such a process forward.

As mentioned above, the Committee will append a case by case description of the circumstances of loss of each unresolved discrepancy case to this report. Those descriptions demonstrate that the U.S. Government has knowledge in only a small number of cases that the individuals involved were held captive and strong indications in only a small number more.

However, that is not to say that the Governments of Vietnam and Laos do not have knowledge pertaining to these or other MIA cases which may indicate survival. Answers to these troublesome questions will best be obtained through an accounting process that enjoys full cooperation from those governments.

The findings of this phase of the Committee's investigation include:

By far the greatest obstacle to a successful accounting effort over the past twenty years has been the refusal of the foreign governments involved, until recently, to allow the U.S. access to key files or to carry out in-country, on-site investigations.

The U.S. Government's process for accounting for Americans missing in Southeast Asia has been flawed by a lack of resources, organizational clarity, coordination and consistency. These problems had their roots during the war and worsened after the war as frustration about the ability to gain access and answers from Southeast Asian Governments increased. Through the mid-1980's, accounting for our POW/MIAs was viewed officially more as a bureaucratic exercise than as a matter of "highest national priority."

The accounting process has improved dramatically in recent years as a result of the high priority attached to it by Presidents Reagan and Bush; because of the success of Gen. Vessey and the JTF-FA in gaining permission for the U.S. to conduct investigations on the ground in Southeast Asia; because of an increase in resources; and because of the Committee's own efforts, in association with the Executive branch, to gain greater cooperation from the Governments of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

After an exhaustive review of official and unofficial lists of captive and missing Americans from wartime years to the present, the Committee uncovered numerous errors in data entry and numerous discrepancies between DIA records and those of other military offices. The errors that have been identified, however, have since been corrected. As a result, the Committee finds no grounds to question the accuracy of the current, official list of those unaccounted for from the war in Southeast Asia. This list includes 2,222 missing servicemen except deserters and 42 missing civilians who were lost while performing services for the United States Government. The Committee has found no evidence to support the existence of rumored "secret lists" of additional missing Americans.

The decision by the U.S. Government to falsify "location of loss" data for American casualties in Cambodia and Laos during much of the war contributed significantly both to public distrust and to the difficulties experienced by the DIA and others in trying to establish what happened to the individuals involved.

The failure of the Executive branch to establish and maintain a consistent, sustainable set of categories and criteria governing the status of missing Americans during and after the war in Southeast Asia contributed substantially to public confusion and mistrust. During the war, a number of individuals listed as "prisoner" by DIA were listed as "missing in action" by the military services. After the war, the legal process for settling status determinations was plagued by interference from the Secretary of Defense, undermined by financial and other considerations affecting some POW/MIA families and challenged in court. Later, the question of how many Americans remain truly "unaccounted for" was muddied by the Defense Department's decision to include "KIA/BNR's"--those known to have been killed, but with bodies not recovered--in their listings. This created the anomalous situation of having more Americans considered unaccounted for today than we had immediately after the war.

The Committee's recommendations for this phase of its investigation include:

Accounting for missing Americans from the war in Southeast Asia should continue to be treated as a "matter of highest national priority" by our diplomats, by those participating in the accounting process, by all elements of our intelligence community and by the nation, as a whole.

Continued, best efforts should be made to investigate the remaining, unresolved discrepancy cases in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

The United States should make a continuing effort, at a high level, to arrange regular tri-partite meetings with the Governments of Laos and Vietnam to seek information on the possible control and movement of unaccounted for U.S. personnel by Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese forces in Laos during the Southeast Asia war.

The President and Secretary of Defense should order regular, independent reviews of the efficiency and professionalism of the DOD's POW/MIA accounting process for Americans still listed as missing from the war in Southeast Asia.

A clear hierarchy of responsibility for handling POW/MIA related issues that may regretably arise as a result of future conflicts must be established. This requires full and rapid coordination between and among the intelligence agencies involved and the military services. It requires the integration of missing civilians and suspected deserters into the overall accounting process. It requires a clear liaison between those responsible for the accounting (and related intelligence) and those responsible for negotiating with our adversaries about the terms for peace. It requires procedures for the full, honest and prompt disclosure of information to next of kin, at the time of incident and as other information becomes available. And it requires, above all, the designation within the Executive branch of an individual who is clearly responsible and fully accountable for making certain that the process works as it should.

In the future, clear categories should be established and consistently maintained in accounting for Americans missing during time of war. At one end of the listings should be Americans known with certainty to have been taken prisoner; at the other should be Americans known dead with bodies not recovered. The categories should be carefully separated in official summaries and discussions of the accounting process and should be applied consistently and uniformly.

Present law needs to be reviewed to minimize distortions in the status determination process that may result from the financial considerations of the families involved.

Wartime search and rescue (SAR) missions have an urgent operational value, but they are also crucial for the purposes of accounting for POW/MIAs. The records concerning many Vietnam era SAR missions have been lost or destroyed. In the future, all information obtained during any unsuccessful or partially successful military search and rescue mission should be shared with the agency responsible for accounting for POW/MIAs from that conflict and should be retained by that agency.