AII POW-MIA - Senate Select Committee 60

Appendix 6 : Selected Excerpts From Hearing Testimony - Part 1

Accounting - Left Behind Admiral Stockdale 12/03/92

Chairman Kerry: Based on that concept of morality that you have been driven by and the entire process that you felt drove all of you that you would come back together speaking to us today, to a matter of moral certainty in your heart and under oath, do you believe that you left anybody behind or that anybody was alive?

Stockdale: No. No. I would not have come back...

Accounting - Left Behind Admiral Stockdale 12/03/92

It was the Son Tay Raid of November 1970 that prompted the North Vietnamese to bring them all -- all of these chickens out in the satellite camps back, all back to Hoala Prison, where in January 1971 every American prisoner -- with two exceptions which I'll cover in a minute -- where every American prisoner who had ever been sighted, whispered to, tapped to by any other American over the last 6-1/2 years were all locked up in a ring of contiguous large cell blocks around the largest west courtyard of Hoala Prison, and it's half the prison.

Accounting - Left Behind Admiral Stockdale 12/03/92

Found in those dungeons -- all of this activity found in those dungeons, a meaning of life centered on being your brother's keeper emerged, keeping a memorialized chronology of contacts and acquaintances that could some day, God willing, when papers and pencils were available, allow you to present to the world a history, in the worst case, of who was last known to be where.

Accounting Admiral Stockdale 12/03/92

And then there's a kind of an unreal -- as we've come along in this 20th century, we've become litigious... where we believe that somebody owes us an explanation and an apology and a payback if something is not quite right. And when you start talking about warriors last seen alive, never being -- that the Government owes you a blow-by-blow description of what happened to them to bring about either their demise or their missingness, there's never been a war in history that any government could do that.

To say that the Government owes us an explanation for what happened to a guy who was last seen alive out on the battlefield. Can anybody see that as a possible reality? At night or in storms, people get buried under avalanches. There's any number of things that have happened over history.

That's just an unrealistic goal somebody has cooked up, and now it's a demand.

Accounting Andry 11/06/91

Mr. Chairman, let me say we don't expect this committee to take on mission impossible by trying to account for every single POW or MIA. But we do believe that every effort should be made to determine why the Government has been unable to do a better job of accounting for these soldiers. Furthermore, every effort should be made to determine what plans our Government has made to prevent this intolerable situation from happening again.

Accounting Bell 12/04/92

...we're not talking about one man being the only one privy to this information, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of analysts at the time of intercept having access to the same information that Mr. Mooney saw and that Mr. Minarsin saw.

And they have all reached the same conclusion, that just never happened, that there is no indication that people were singled out based on their air crew status, based on their technical capability or their technical knowledge, as Moscow-bound, and our review -- and this is, as I said, the third time that it's been reviewed to look for that information -- supports that.

Accounting - Left Behind Bell 11/06/91

We had information of Americans being held at that time [after Operation Homecoming], sir, but it was not correlated to any specific individual.

Accounting - KIA/BNR Brooks 12/01/92

I, too, have wondered why some cases were left MIA when all good, in my estimation, evidence suggested that the person never survived the plane crash, bailing out of the aircraft, whatever the situation happened to be.

Accounting Chambers 08/04/92

As I have explained, our analysis sets an upper limit on the number of MIAs who could possibly be POWs. It does not suggest that there are POWs, or that any POWs were in fact held past the time of Operation Homecoming. What we are talking about here are those MIAs who potentially could have survived. We do not know if they survived. I cannot overemphasize this distinction.

Accounting - KIA-BNR Chambers 08/04/92

The Defense Intelligence Agency, as we were just discussing, reviewed all 2,266 cases to identify those people who had the best chance for survival...However, our investigation of the loss incidents revealed that not all of the 1,171 were likely candidates for survival... We also have cases where information on an individual's fate is mixed, or evidence of their fate is lacking... These are the most difficult cases, because it is almost impossible to know where to begin an investigation unless more information becomes available.

In some of the 1,171 cases, we know the individual didn't survive, even though he wasn't declared killed in action by his commander, and I think Mr. Sheetz mentioned that there are cases where all identifiable traces of an individual were eliminated by the sheer force of an explosion... Finally, there are those who are known to have died in captivity...

Accounting - KIA/BNR Chambers 08/04/92

This leaves us with 100 to 125... Sir, the 269 total are the individuals who were likely candidates for survival and possible captivity, but within that sub- category there are several groups..

Accounting - KIA/BNR Chambers 08/04/92

The difficult task of identifying who might have survived, and remained a prisoner after the war, began even before prisoners were released during Operation Homecoming in 1973 and continues today...the total 2,266 unaccounted for Americans, 1,095 were killed in action, leaving 1,171 Americans missing in action.

Accounting - KIA/BNR Chambers 08/04/92

As shown here, the 269 individuals for priority investigation are drawn from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and have been the focus of our field investigations that began in Vietnam in September of 1988... However, not all 269 individuals are likely candidates for survival and possible captivity...Based on our field activities in Vietnam, 61 of these people are known to have died. An additional 78 cannot be considered as possible POW candidates for one of the following reasons:

They are known to have died but happen to have been lost in the same incident with a last-known-alive person.

They are known to have died in captivity, but are incorporated as priority cases because at one time they were carried by their respective services as a POW or they do not meet the criteria for a last known alive designation but are included as discrepancy cases because we believe the Indochinese Governments are withholding information concerning their fate.

And finally, there are remains still under analysis at the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii that we expect will lower this number further once they are identified.

There are also several cases where we have information that points strongly but not conclusively to death at the time of loss. loss.

Accounting Cheney 11/05/91

I feel we are closer than we have ever been to a full accounting on those who are still missing.

Accounting - KIA/BNR Clapper 08/04/92

...I need to make clear as well that the determination of status as to whether someone is or is not KIA is not totally an intelligence call. There are others that play in this, and obviously not all the families or next-of-kin would necessarily accept that categorization of 1,095 were killed in action, body not recovered.

Chairman Kerry: Well, I'm troubled, you know, folks, if there isn't sufficient evidence to put them on a KIA list, they don't belong on it. I mean, this is part of what lends so much controversy to this issue.

Accounting - Left Behind Clements 09/24/92

Chairman Kerry: Let me ask this question, Governor, in that second paragraph that you were just reading, this is a July document, correct?

Governor Clements: July the 17th.

Chairman Kerry: And you said in that document of this number, 67 are officially listed as prisoner of war.

Governor Clements: They are officially listed as prisoner of war based on information that they reached the ground safely and were captured.

Chairman Kerry: Correct. That is exactly the point I want to make. . . . You have 67 people in July that you have recorded as on the ground and captured.

Governor Clements: That's right.

Chairman Kerry: Last known alive captured, correct?

Governor Clements: That is correct.

Chairman Kerry: Seems to me that is an indication you have people alive in Southeast Asia.

Accounting - Status Changes Clements 09/24/92

Chairman Kerry: May I ask you what the rationale was, and there may well be a very good one, but what was the rationale for taking this long-time standing position of the Secretaries of the Service and changing it. Why did you suddenly have to make these reviews?

Governor Clements: This was most, most delicate situation. There were some very legitimate reasons and cases for changing of status. . . .

Chairman Kerry: So if there was a legitimate reason for somebody to be made POW, why did you have to step in and be the arbiter of that?

Governor Clements: What I am trying to explain, and I think it is a very understandable situation, there were all kinds of nuances to this particular question.

Accounting - Status Changes Clements 09/24/92

Chairman Kerry: ...Approximately how many cases, individual cases, do you remember being brought to your attention after Homecoming, that is for reclassification?

Clements: Well, quite a few. And for me to put a number on it would be very difficult.

Chairman Kerry: Was it more of the magnitude of five or 100? Can you give us some idea of how many cases would have brought to your attention? Not with any accuracy, was your answer. Question: I'll understand that it's just an approximation. Answer: Over a four-year period there could easily have been 50 or 75 cases that were investigated in-depth that would have been brought to my attention.

So, the range was 5 to 100, you picked 50 to 75. Now that is a lot of cases that potentially the service secretary sent to you saying we want to reclassify this person as a POW. If it had been left to them, that person would have been. It was not left to them. You had taken over that authority. The result was none were.

Accounting - Shields Statement Clements 09/24/92

...There was never any discussion or argument between us that statement in all likelihood probably was true.

Chairman Kerry: That they were all dead.

Governor Clements: That they probably and in all likelihood were dead.

Chairman Kerry: Was that the prevailing attitude at DoD?

Governor Clements: Absolutely...

Accounting - Status Changes Clements 09/24/92

Governor Clements: I want to correct one thing there. I did not take over that authority, and my actions in this regard were strictly on a review basis...

Chairman Kerry: You used the word review, but when the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Acting Secretary at some periods of time, says, I want a memo sent to all departments that any reclassification from MIA to POW must first be cleared by me, that is a clearance. MIA to KIA is OK within each service. So it was OK to take MIA and put them into KIA, kill them off. But do not make them prisoners. I have got to see it. And nothing happened. Nobody was made a prisoner.

Accounting - Shields Statement Clements 09/24/92

"I don't think there's any question at all that I said -- not in those exact words, but I said that in all likelihood those people over there are probably dead..."

Accounting - Status Changes Clements 09/24/92

Vice Chairman Smith: ...Why did you, Governor Clements, make a decision to not allow your service secretaries, which as far as I know has never happened before and has not happened since -- to not allow your service secretaries to upgrade an individual from an MIA category to a POW category? Why did you make that decision?

Governor Clements: I don't think that I made such a decision.

Accounting - Status Changes Clements 09/24/92

Vice Chairman Smith: Governor, I have got it in your own handwriting... 'I want a memo sent to all departments, services, ASD, DIA, JCS, that any reclassification from MIA to POW must first be cleared by me -- me.' That is what you said.

Accounting - Status Changes Clements 09/24/92

Governor Clements: I have no recollection of making a decision of that kind. Let me tell you something, Senator, it is very, very clear that only classification can be changed within the services. And let's don't get that confused.

Vice Chairman Smith: 'I request that all actions which recommend reclassification of military personnel from missing in action to captured status be submitted to me for approval. Proposed reclassification action should be first routed through the Assistant Secretary of Defense for a preliminary review before referral to me.' That was June 8th, 1973.

Accounting - Nixon Statement Daschle 09/21/92

From my perspective, and listening to the data and reading the documents, there was a sea change attitude immediately following the President's assertion that everybody has now come home.

Even somebody with your credibility and dedication and determination, for whatever reason, even though you were in the White House and obviously assigned to a different responsibility, chose not to raise the issue, in spite of the fact that you did feel strongly about it and took the actions that you have so capably described this morning. But you did not raise the issue. No one raised the issue, apparently, inside the Government after the President made his assertion in March of 1973.

And I guess I would just like you, if you could, to describe what it was, with all of those who felt as strongly as you did, that this was no longer a time within which to raise the issue, and we are going to put it behind us.

All I am asking -- and I do not mean it to be in any way an accusatory question. I just would like you to describe the atmosphere that apparently permeated the White House and the administration in June when you arrived, re-arrived, about this issue? Why was it such that no one chose to challenge the President's statement and recharacterize it in a way that would be less positive, as you described it?

Laird: I cannot explain that, Senator. I believe that that's something you should pursue.

Accounting Daschle 06/24/92

...you might as well have been in two different countries trying to look into this thing, for as little cooperation and coordination that there was.

Accounting - Left Behind Dole 09/24/92

Though without suggesting that it is the intent of the committee, there is certainly a fact of life that the media is reporting your work as a kind of who shot John exercise. The headlines are all full of finger- pointing about, quote, who abandoned, unquote, our POW/MIAs; about who is to blame for the situation where too little was done for too long; and trying to find out the truth about the fate of our POWs and MIAs.

Accounting Duker 12/02/92

...I don't know that I'll ever be totally satisfied that the resolution is there personally. I do believe a beginning would be, though, to -- at least for every American that was last known alive or last known alive in captivity, if we could resolve every one of those cases that would at least be a beginning towards coming to some kind of an accounting.

Accounting - Left Behind Ford 11/15/91

I have not seen anything that would convince me that there are not some Americans still alive... how many, I'm not sure, but I think that the reports suggest that there was one for sure, that the Vietnamese didn't tell us about until much later. That was one, but there are also some reports suggesting that people might have been alive we didn't know about. We didn't know where they were -- and they probably died afterwards.

...As we accumulate evidence and as we go through that process, we are able to begin to piece together a little bit better what happened back in 1972, or 1973, or 1975, and the evidence, as we accumulate it, more and more suggests that there are probably some left alive in 1973.

Accounting Godley 09/24/92

This is an important distinction. The MIAs were men in aircraft, principally, shot down. They were carried as MIAs until they were either reported as POWs or their graves were located, or a large number of their wing men or other aircraft in the air at that time reported shot or downed in flames.

Accounting - Nixon Statement Grassley 06/25/92

Without this statement, that the President made and of course those attendant follow-on policy decisions, there is absolutely no electrifying conflict. People are incensed. I don't suppose people are incensed with bureaucratic incompetence, they have learned to handle that, but they are incensed because of the deception around this issue, deception by our own government.

Accounting Grassley 10/15/92

...the Paris Peace Accords hearings gave the live-sighting reports a context, a plausibility quotient. In my view, we must revisit this issue before our work is complete, and we must certainly get a response on the discrepancies.

Accounting - Comptroller's Records Grassley 09/24/92

Presently, there are 1,278 military personnel who are unaccounted for as a result of the hostilities in Southeast Asia. Of this number, 67 are officially listed as prisoner of war based on information that they reached the ground safely and were captured. Now, that is from Clements to President Nixon. And that is on, I believe, the 17th of July, 1973. Now, the point that I want to raise and that I would like to have you respond to is, as I see it, the bottom line is that we may not have known with 100 percent certitude that these men were prisoners. But it seems to me that we sure as heck believed that to be the case, to the point that we would list them as current captured. We believed it to the point that we had a list entitled ``Current captured.'' And, at the least, it seems to me, this information conflicted with both the Nixon statement on March the 29th and the Shields statement on April the 14th.

Accounting - Comptroller's Records Grassley 09/24/92

I have got in front of me documents that are entitled number of casualties incurred by U.S. military personnel in connection with the conflict in Vietnam. And the bottom line has a figure that is current captured. And I do not know whether they are daily or weekly reports, but probably weekly reports. On March the 31st, 1973, there are 81 listed; 7 April, 73, 80; 14 April, 73, and that is the date that Shields made his statement that there are not any alive. We had 75. April 28th, 72.

Accounting - Status Changes Kerrey 09/22/9

My own belief is that a full accounting of our people will not occur until the Vietnamese Government itself is accountable to its own people. This is a Government that has lied to its people ever since they seized illegitimate power in 1975. They have continued to lie and misrepresent facts to their own people.

Accounting Kerrey 09/24/92

It is very important for us to try to figure out what we are going to do today, not [just] what we should have done 20 years ago.

Accounting - Left Behind Kerry 06/25/92

So there is certainly that measure of information that we have received. There are other acknowledgments that I think are not insignificant; acknowledgements that we are not really dealing with a universe of 2,266, [that] it is smaller.

In fact the committee, through its exhaustive review, suggest that somewhere in the vicinity, in 1973, of 244 is a reasonable number, minus those immediately determined to have died in captivity, which leaves you somewhere in the vicinity of 133, which is close, as Vessey said, to the numbers he has come up with.

Accounting - Shields Statement Kerry 09/22/92

Before Operation Homecoming, our officials in the military, and you in the executive, expressed the conviction that POWs were about to be left behind because the Laos list was incomplete. But after Operation Homecoming, the statements seemed to have shifted and been calibrated more towards putting people at ease, and urging an acceptance or encouraging the belief that the goal had been achieved.

Accounting Kerry 09/21/92

Chairman Kerry: President Nixon won in 1968 on a peace platform and indeed, no sooner was he elected than he began withdrawing troops. Our withdrawal was forestalled in 1968. For four more years the war went on. More prisoners were created and finally, we negotiated with the recognition that the country was fed up and South Vietnam was to either stand alone or fall alone with enormous military support, I might add, from us...

We are here 20 years later trying to understand in the dynamics of where we got to, whether or not we got our prisoners out or not...It was not us who stated that we do not have all our prisoners back, that was in memos that your colleagues in Government created.

The families, however, knew this and for 20 years they have sought an honest accounting from us, so we are here today to do that and I am sure you are sympathetic to that.

Accounting - Shields Statement Kerry 06/25/92

Dr. Shields, do you not think that it is a little disingenuous to stand up before the Nation and have a policy announced that says we have no indication that there are any Americans alive when you know people are carried as POW and have nothing to suggest they are dead?

Why did you not say, "You know, we have got 244 questions. We have got people we list as POW, and we do not know," instead of saying, "There are no indications that anybody is alive." Because the last thing you knew was that they were alive.

Accounting - Left Behind Kerry 09/24/92

Evidence was available to American policy makers in 1973 that some POWs might have been alive. Clearly, there were people listed as POW who did not return. That does not mean that they were alive. It also does not mean the converse; that they were dead.

Accounting Kerry 06/25/92

What we did say unequivocally is that there were a body, a group of people listed as POW for whom there was a reason they were listed as POW, about whom we knew enough to call them POW. And we did not get an accounting at that time. And we had reason to believe that many of them were alive.

Accounting - Nixon Statement Kerry 09/24/92

Well, I would say, Admiral [Moorer], I think your effort to explain it that way is understandable and noble, but the fact is I read this morning a series of statements made by the President which did not refer to we are getting back the people on the list, it said all our prisoners are home.

...Secondly, on May 24th, in a speech to the POWs once they were all back, he said 1973 saw the return of all our prisoners of war. He did not say to them, we are still concerned about some of your friends; we are going to pursue it. He said you are all back.

And in a speech on June 15th, he said that for the first time in eight years all of our prisoners are back, all our prisoners are home here in America. So I must say to you that the evidence is overwhelming to the committee that there is a gap between the stated public policy and between reality at that point in time.

Accounting - Nixon Statement Kerry 09/24/92

If there were a clearer way for the Commander in Chief to send a message to Hanoi, or to the Pathet Lao, or to the American public and to our defense and intelligence officials that the active search for a live American prisoner was at an end, I do not know what that might have been. Now, no question, there is reference after reference in these documents to our continued desire for a full accounting for those listed as missing. But nowhere is there a reference to a belief in the likelihood that live Americans might still be held.

Accounting - Shields Statement Kerry 06/25/92

(Tape) Question: Do you think there still are POWs alive and well somewhere in either Laos or Cambodia? Answer: We have no indications at this time that there are any Americans alive in Indochina. (End tape)

Chairman Kerry: That was your statement at a press conference on the 12th of April, 1973. We have no indications at this time that there are any Americans alive.

Now it is a fact, is it not, that as of February of 1973 you personally had information about an EC or an EQ- 47 shot down in Laos, and you believed that four member s of that crew survived, did you not?

Accounting - Nixon Statement Kerry 09/24/92

So I frame that we have not got a full accounting in the context of having heard there is no evidence that anybody is still alive, and my immediate next thought is, OK, that must mean we have got to find out who is dead or how they died.

There is a huge difference. I mean I am in politics. I understand what it means to give a message. I remember those days too. I was riveted to the television set the night the President said all the prisoners are coming home...I thought they were all coming home too.

I must tell you, and I thought I was pretty aware back then, I never knew what I am learning today. I never knew you guys had a list of people that you thought were still prisoners. I never heard of it.

Accounting Kerry 11/15/91

I am a little disappointed that you folks do not have at your fingertips those numbers and the ability to tell me, Senator, here is how many went down. Here is exactly how many were unaccounted for.

Accounting Kerry 06/25/92

If you have evidence to show that somebody ought to be on a list, now is the time to come forward. But it is not sufficient for anybody to simply say gee, it ought to be bigger.

We are dealing with reality. And we have taken and put together lists from every possible list we have been able to find, subpoena, summon, locate, uncover in the archives, and there just are not any other lists. Moreover, there is a finite universe of people who went to Vietnam and either came back or did not. We know their names and we know the locations and the dates and times and we have records. And we are going to deal with records. We are not going to deal with hypothesis, theory, supposition, fantasy, and ultimately even hope, no matter how deep that hope may be. We have to base this on reality. We all have hope, but we are trying to figure out what is real here.

Now, I want to emphasize again that the committee does not assert that every one of the names of the 133 were alive. We do not do that. We cannot do that. No one could do that.

Accounting - Nixon Statement Kerry 09/24/92

Chairman Kerry: Well, does that raise a question in your mind today as to whether they were, in fact, all home on the March --

Admiral Murphy: Well, yeah, if I'm looking at a piece of paper that says there are 67 of them left....while there is truth to the statement that I could not say where so-and-so was specifically on this day, we did have evidence that individuals had been captured and that individuals were not returning. And I think that is the centerpiece of the quandary we find ourselves in 20 years later. That those families know that, and now the country knows that. Those families knew that for 20 years. We also have evidence that there were people within the military, and in the State Department and elsewhere, who believed that.

Accounting - Shields Statement Kerry 09/24/92

...while there is truth to the statement that I could not say where so-and-so was specifically on this day, we did have evidence that individuals had been captured and that individuals were not returning. And I think that is the centerpiece of the quandary we find ourselves in 20 years later. That those families know that, and now the country knows that. Those families knew that for 20 years. We also have evidence that there were people within the military, and in the State Department and elsewhere, who believed that.

Accounting - Nixon Statement Kerry 09/21/92

The President mentioned the MIA issue in conjunction with a number of issues that were not meeting with full compliance...he did not personalize and raise the issue of noncompliance on POWs with the notion that we believe there were people that could be accounted for who were not being accounted for. There was just sort of this general sense of, well, MIAs are not being accounted for, which is distinct from the notion that you believe you have prisoners that were held and they have not returned. I think the Americans would have reacted, obviously, very differently to the latter than the former.

Secondly, his broader comment was not, we have gotten back all the prisoners that they have given us a list of. It was that all the prisoners have come home. So, there was a real distinction between what we knew or thought we knew about prisoners versus MIA generically. And that is, I think, something that lingered.

Accounting - Nixon Statement Kerry 09/24/92

And they are on the list that Senator Grassley has provided of the 67 still listed as captured, and you say by March we had decided there were none there, and yet people were still listed as prisoners. So what was it that allowed this decision to be made that just sort of -- wiped it away? What strikes me is that there was this group that we believed were POWs that somehow slid off into a category other than POW in people's minds, into a sort of MIA category without really having been accounted for, quote, as POWs.

Accounting - Nixon Statement Kerry 09/22/92

...we have found statements where the President said we are still worried about the full accounting, but it was for MIAs. The problem is there was this distinction drawn between MIAs and those that we believed were POWs.

Accounting - Status Changes Kerry 09/24/92

Chairman Kerry [to Clements]: Now, I want to come to the next critical point. Governor, this was your memorandum of 17 July, and you talk about Public Law 37 U.S.C. 551558, where the Service Secretaries are specifically charged with the responsibility for status changes. You say at that time this system has been used effectively to make status changes for missing in action, and you send over to the President, for some reason, a fact sheet discussing the provisions of the law, which raises in our minds the question of why the President might have been interested in the status changes, and if he was, why then, at a prior time, had you made a decision personally, in your own handwriting, to require the Service Secretaries for the first time to go through you in order to change somebody? Now, I understand there were 50 -- according to your own deposition -- there were some 50 to 75 requests by the secretaries to list somebody as POW, not as MIA, and you did not approve any one of those, correct?

Accounting - Left Behind Kingston 06/25/92

On 19 November 1975, I testified before the House Select Committee Missing Persons in Southeast Asia [Montgomery Commission]. I was also asked, how many cases did you have of men that were seen alive in captivity but not heard from subsequent to that time? I replied, I do not know accurately. I was then asked, can you estimate how many there were? I replied, around 100.

Accounting - Left Behind Kingston 06/25/92

Sen. McCain: When you were head of the JCRC, did you ever see any hard evidence that Americans were alive?

Kingston: Not to my recall.

Accounting Kingston 06/25/92

I interpreted that my mission was to search for, recover and identify dead and missing U.S. personnel.

Accounting - Nixon Statement Kissinger 09/22/92

On March 29th, President Nixon announced that all of our American POWs are on their way home.