Senate Select Committee - VII

Investigation of POW/MIA-related Intelligence Activities

The Committee undertook an investigation of U.S. intelligence agency activities in relation to POW/MIA issues. This included a review of the DIA's primary role in investigating and evaluating reports that Americans missing from the Vietnam war were or are being held against their will since the end of the war in Southeast Asia. The investigation also included a review of signals intelligence (SIGINT) obtained by the National Security Agency (NSA), a review of imagery intelligence (IMINT) obtained by aerial photography and a review of covert U.S. Government activities associated with POW/MIA concerns.

In the area of intelligence, more than any other, the Committee and the Executive branch had to balance concerns about the public's right to know with a legitimate national need to maintain secrecy about intelligence sources and methods. The Committee insisted, however, that the fullest possible accounting of government activities in the intelligence field be made public and that no substantive information bearing directly on the question of whether there are live American POWs in Southeast Asia be withheld.

As a result of Executive branch cooperation, especially from CIA Director Robert Gates and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, the Committee gained unprecedented access to closely- held government documents, including access to relevant operational files, the President's Daily briefs, the Executive Registry and the debriefs of returning POWs. Unfortunately, the limited number of individuals affiliated with the Committee who were given access to these materials prevented as thorough a review as the Committee would have preferred.

At the Committee's insistence, and despite the reservations of the Executive branch, public hearings were held for the first time on the products of satellite imagery related to the POW/MIA issue. Two former employees of the National Security Agency testified in public about information they gathered while working as specialists in the field of signal intelligence. And two days of hearings culminated an exhaustive Committee investigation of reports that American captives had been seen in Southeast Asia during the post- war period. In addition, thousands of pages of live-sighting reports have been declassified and made available to the public.

The Committee understands that the process of analyzing intelligence information is complicated and subjective. In most instances, the quality and source of information is such that it can be interpreted in more than one way and isolated bits of information may easily be misinterpreted. As a result, the Committee believes in the importance of taking all sources of information and intelligence into account when judging the validity of a report or category of data.

Overall Intelligence Community Support

During the Committee's investigation, all DIA directors since the late 1970's testified that the POW effort lacked national-level Intelligence Community support in terms of establishing a high priority for collection, in funding, in the allocation of personnel and in high-level attention. None of the former directors recalled attending national-level management meetings to discuss the POW/MIA issue prior to the mid-1980's, and only one national intelligence estimate was produced on this issue during the first 17 years after the end of the war.

Senior CIA officials told the Committee that there was no written collection requirement on POWs, but that everyone understood that POW information was important when obtained. CIA officials also asserted that this issue was the near exclusive preserve of the Department of Defense and that the CIA played only a supporting role.

Former NSA Director, Admiral Bobby Inman, testified that the NSA signals intelligence collection efforts in Southeast Asia were dismantled after the war and was not resumed until at least 1978.

Over the past decade, the Reagan and Bush Administrations have raised the priority of POW/MIA intelligence collection, have increased resources and improved policy level management. The basic structure of responsibilities, however, has not changed.

The Role of the Defense Intelligence Agency

The DIA has had a central, two-pronged, role in U.S. efforts to account for our POW/MIAs. First, the DIA is responsible for investigating and analyzing reports of live-sightings or other evidence that American prisoners may still be held. Second, the Department of Defense relies heavily on DIA's analysis to reach conclusions about the fate of missing servicemen.

In addition to these responsibilities, the DIA's prominent role in the POW/MIA issue over the years has caused it to become a focal point for family, Congressional, press and public questions on the subject.

Criticisms of DIA Operations. The Committee identified and arranged for the declassification of a series of internal reviews of the DIA's POW/MIA operations that were conducted during the mid-1980's. A principal concern raised by these reviews were the agency's procedures for evaluating and responding to reports that U.S. POWs had been seen alive after the conclusion of the war.

The Committee agrees that the DIA's POW/MIA Office has historically been

• plagued by a lack of resources;
• guilty of over-classification;
• defensive toward criticism;
• handicapped by poor coordination with other elements of the intelligence community;
• slow to follow-up on live-sighting and other reports; and
• frequently distracted from its basic mission by the need to respond to outside pressures and requests.

In addition, several of those who reviewed the workings of DIA during this period also faulted DIA's analytical process and referred to a "mindset to debunk" live-sighting reports.

Several Committee Members express concern and disappointment that, on occasion, individuals within DIA have been evasive, unresponsive and disturbingly incorrect and cavalier. Several Members of the Committee also note that other individuals within DIA have performed their work with great professionalism and under extraordinarily difficult circumstances both at home and abroad.

The Committee recommends that the Secretary of Defense ensure the regular review and evaluation of the DIA's POW/MIA office to ensure that intelligence information is acted upon quickly and that information is shared with families promptly.

The Committee also believes that a central coordinating mechanism for pooling and acting upon POW/MIA-related intelligence information should be created as one of the Intelligence Community's Interagency Coordination Centers.

The Committee notes that the focus of the POW/MIA accounting process is in Southeast Asia. As a result, DIA analysts are spending more and more of their time traveling back and forth between Washington and the region or to Hawaii. The Committee believes that this would be an opportune time to move the DIA's POW/MIA office to Hawaii where it could be closer to JTF-FA and CINCPAC, which it supports. A number of tasks now sometimes performed by the office involving public and family relations can be handled, and handled more capably and appropriately, by the office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/MIA Affairs.

Live-sighting Reports. For the past 20 years, there has been nothing more tantalizing for POW/MIA families than reports that Americans have been seen alive in Southeast Asia and nothing more frustrating than the failure of these reports to become manifest in the form of a returning American--with the single exception of Marine Private Robert Garwood in 1979.

A live-sighting report is just that--a report that an American has been seen alive in Southeast Asia in circumstances which are not readily explained. The report could come from a refugee, boat person, traveler or anyone else in a position to make such an observation. The information could be first-hand or hearsay; it could involve one American or many; it could be detailed or vague; it could be recent or as far back as the end of the war.

The sheer number of first-hand live sighting reports, almost 1600 since the end of the war, has convinced many Americans that U.S. POWs must have been kept behind and may still be alive. Other Americans have concluded sadly that our failure, after repeated efforts, to locate any of these alleged POWs means the reports are probably not true. It is the Committee's view that every live- sighting report is important as a potential source of information about the fate of our POW/MIAs.

Accordingly, the review and analysis of live-sighting reports consumed more time and staff resources than any other single issue. The Committee investigation used a method of analysis that was based on the content of a carefully screened set of reports that dealt only with men allegedly seen in captivity after Operation Homecoming. The Committee took into account past criticisms and assessed current procedures while examining and testing DIA's methodology for evaluating live-sighting reports. In so doing, Committee investigators examined more than 2000 hearsay and first- hand live-sighting files while compiling a list of 928 reports for "content" analysis. These reports were plotted on a map and grouped into geographic "clusters". During briefings and public hearings, the Committee reviewed the most significant "clusters" for the purpose of determining whether they would, taken together, constitute evidence of the presence of U.S. POWs in certain locations after Operation Homecoming.

DIA Assessment. It is DIA's position that the live-sighting reports evaluated to date do not constitute evidence that currently unaccounted for U.S. POWs remained behind in Southeast Asia after the end of the war. Of the 1638 first-hand reports received since 1975, DIA considers 1,553 to be resolved.

Committee View. The Committee notes that 40 first-hand live- sighting reports remain under active investigation and that the nature of the analytical process precludes certainty that all past DIA evaluations are correct. Accordingly, the Committee recommends a strong emphasis on the rapid and thorough follow-up and evaluation of current unresolved and future live-sighting reports. The DIA is urged to make a continued and conscious effort to maintain an attitude among analysts that presumes the possible survival of U.S. POWs. The Executive branch is also urged to continue working with the governments of Southeast Asia to expand our ability to conduct on the ground, on-site investigation and inspections throughout the region.

The Role of the National Security Agency (Signals Intelligence)

The responsibility for monitoring and collecting signals (including communications) intelligence rests with the National Security Agency (NSA). During the Vietnam War, the NSA monitored all available sources of signals intelligence bearing on the loss, capture or condition of American personnel. Such information would sometimes provide a basis for concluding whether or not a missing American had survived his incident and, if so, possibly been taken prisoner.

During its investigation, the Committee was disturbed to learn that the NSA and its Vietnam branch were never asked to provide an overall assessment of the status of POW/MIA personnel prior to Operation Homecoming. The Committee believes that this information would have been useful both for the U.S. negotiating team and for those preparing for the repatriation of American POWs. The Committee also found that neither DIA nor any other agency within the Intelligence Community placed a formal requirement for collection with NSA concerning POW/MIA related information. In fact, the Committee found that NSA end product reports were not used regularly to evaluate the POW/MIA situation until 1977. It was not until 1984 that the collection of information on POW/MIAs was formally established as a matter of highest priority for SIGINT.

After the fall of Saigon, the National Security Agency and the military service components that support it largely dismantled their collection efforts in Southeast Asia. The elaborate collection capabilities that supported the war essentially ceased or were relocated to other trouble spots around the world. The analytical organizations that monitored signals intelligence in the region were also disbanded or sharply reduced as personnel were transferred to other assignments.

U.S. collection capabilities were further diminished during this period as Vietnam and Laos developed secure landline communications to replace the radio networks used during time of war. If officials in either country were communicating about live U.S. POWs, the likelihood that these communications would be detected by the U.S. had become remote. However, during this period, the NSA did receive third party intercepts concerning the reported presence of American POWs in Laos.

In conducting its review of NSA files, the Committee examined more than 3,000 postwar reports and 90 boxes of wartime files. The Committee discovered that previous surveys of NSA files for POW/MIA related information had been limited to the agency's automated data base. Hundreds of thousands of hard copy documents, memoranda, raw reports, operational messages and possibly tapes from both the wartime and post-war periods remain unreviewed in various archives and storage facilities. Most troubling, NSA failed to locate for investigators any wartime analyst files related specifically to tracking POWs, despite the fact that tracking POWs was a known priority at the time. This failure made it impossible for the Committee to confirm some information on downed pilots that was provided by NSA employee Jerry Mooney.

At the Committee's request, the NSA and DIA are conducting a review of past SIGINT reports that appear relevant to the POW/MIA issue for the purpose of adding to the all-source database used in the accounting process. Thousands of such reports have been identified. Although it is not clear that the reports will succeed in resolving questions about missing American servicemen, they have raised questions about an individual's status in several cases and will, at a minimum, add to the context in which other POW/MIA information is considered.

The Committee benefitted from the insights of a retired NSA SIGINT analyst, Senior Master Sergeant Jerry Mooney (USAF-retired). During the war, SMSgt. Mooney maintained detailed personal files concerning losses of aircraft and downed airmen. Unfortunately, those personal files did not become part of the archived files maintained by the NSA and have been lost. Although SmSgt. Mooney has sought to reconstruct some of that information from personal memory, the loss of the files makes it impossible to check those recollections against the contemporaneous information.

The Committee found no evidence to substantiate claims that signals intelligence gathered during the war constitute evidence that U.S. POWs were transferred to the Soviet Union from Vietnam.