Appendix 6 : Selected Excerpts From Hearing Testimony - Part 12

Remains Bell 12/04/92

Sen. McCain: Mr. Schweitzer said that there was no American left, there are no warehoused remains...What is your view?

Mr. Bell: My view, sir, is that there certainly was a warehouse in the Hanoi area at one time. The mortician, I think, after he defected in 1979, he testified here in Congress that he processed some 452 remains.

The Vietnamese were confronted with that information. They denied it. They indicated that they thought the mortician was fabricating.

He actually provided about seven different items of information. I think six of those have been verified...

The Vietnamese, I believe, came to the conclusion that we were confident that the man was telling the truth. Since the mortician gave his testimony, they have returned to us approximately 450 remains.

Approximately 260 to 269 remains have now been identified, and what that indicates to me is...that we did have a warehouse but we don't have one now, and what that indicates to me is that they have admitted that the mortician was telling the truth.

They're telling us that we have given you those remains back, and the warehouse here in Hanoi is now empty.

Remains Bell 12/04/92

Sen. McCain: I think what you said is a very important point here, and if any of the other witnesses disagree with that, that there is no longer, in the view of the witnesses, a warehouse of remains, but there is in the view of the witnesses remains that still need to be recovered, and that's the job of the previous witnesses, CINCPAC and you, Mr. Bell. Is that accurate?

Mr. Bell: Yes, sir.

Remains Bell 12/04/92

Mr. Bell: Rather than concentrate on numbers of cases, prioritized a list where you have leads that can be followed now, regardless of where the case is in the country, and do the cases that have the greatest probability of success first, based on those leads. And, at the same time, have someone working on the development of leads for those cases for which you have no leads.

Chairman Kerry: That seems to make sense.

Mr. Bell: To move the thing forward.

Chairman Kerry: Well, are we not doing that in the context of having put the toughest discrepancy cases in front of them? I mean, General Vessey sat there and put them there.

Mr. Bell: Yes, sir, we have, but we're at a dead end on some of the cases, and unless we come up with some new information, it's pointless to go back and investigate them again.

Chairman Kerry: Are there a number of cases on which we really know the fate of people, but we just do not have the remains?

Mr. Bell: Yes, sir.

Chairman Kerry: So, in effect, we have really resolved some cases, but we do not take them off the list simply because we do not have remains.

Mr. Bell: But there are also some cases where we do not know the fate of the individual and also do not have remains or any possibility of further leads in the case.

Remains Childress 08/12/92

...Vietnam could solve the live prisoner issue by returning their remains. So the key question is, if they're not alive, why is Vietnam not solving it?

Remains Christmas 11/05/91

I think that it's unfair to our people in the field to suggest that their primary focus is on remains recovery. We go where the facts lead us as we identify each case and try to follow it through for the fullest possible accounting. If, in fact, the facts lead us to the notion that we can either recover the remains or that we think the Vietnamese or Laotians have those remains, we think it's important as our accounting to the families that we can give them information.... They want them to walk out of the jungle and come home, but they will tell you very quickly that if that can't be the case, please end the uncertainty for me. Give me something that I can put this to rest, I've been with it so long.

Remains DeStatte 12/04/92

Mr. DeStatte: First, I doubt that more than a few remains, if any, are in the hands of private citizens in Vietnam. It would be culturally antithetical, as well as illegal.

Chairman Kerry: Well, let me just ask you something. You know, there is intelligence that -- I mean, some people within your own house assert that there are remains being held.

Mr. DeStatte: Yes, sir, I understand that.

Chairman Kerry: You disagree with that completely?

Mr. DeStatte: That's correct. I acknowledge that there may be some instances where private citizens may have remains, but I think that that's rare. I think that we should avoid setting up a mechanism that ultimately is simply a disguised means of paying incentive rewards to private citizens.

I think what we should be doing is providing Vietnam's official organs, such as we are doing with the museums, means by which they can help us find the answers we're looking for and the return of the remains, and rely on -- and also articulate, for Vietnamese leaders, problems as we understand those problems, and rely on Vietnam and Vietnam's leaders to resolve the internal problems of recovering remains; to resolve the internal problems of recovering information and sharing that with us. And I think that's the appropriate approach, myself.

Remains Ford 12/04/92

...I am struck by the fact that the cases that bother me, that gnaw away at me on this issue, is the cases that they should know the most about: the ones where we have the photographs of people on the ground dead in Vietnamese control, the last known alive cases that we've investigated that they had custody of them, based on our joint investigations.

Those are the ones that are not showing up. Now, I can understand, as some have said, that they've lost the coordinates, a bomb went off and when they went back to get them they didn't find them, somebody took them home when they retired as a gold bar, they were going to sell them back to somebody at some time in the future.

I can understand that for, give me a number, 25 percent, 40 percent, but not all of the most likely cases where we know they had control over an American that was dead on the ground. They don't lose them all.

Remains Ford 12/04/92

Mr. Ford: ...I remember being told two years ago in Hanoi: There are no archives; we have no archives; why would we not give them to you if we had them? They have been eaten up.

Chairman Kerry: I remember that. Vessey spoke to that, though.

Mr. Ford: But why is that different than the remains?

Remains Ford 12/04/92

This is one that I have a nightmare about, and that's that something Carl Ford will say or do to his superiors will give the Vietnamese the impression that they don't have to give us those remains and they destroy them, they get rid of them.

I shuddered when all of the people told the truth as they saw it today, because if the message ever gets to the Vietnamese that the U.S. Government believes they don't have remains we aren't going to get any. And I just can't for the life of me - - I will err on the side of trying to provide the answers for the families as long as I can. That's my bias.

Remains Ford 12/01/92

The fact is that every piece of evidence that we have gotten in the breakthrough suggests that they do have far more information than they have provided thus far, that they, in fact, have to explain to us if they do not have the remains, why not.

Remains - Excavations Gadoury 12/04/92

Chairman Kerry: What did you pull out of this crash site?

Gadoury: The aircraft involved was an AV/OV-2, which crashed into the side of a mountain. It's scattered over a large area. The exact dimensions were -- I don't recall the exact dimensions, but it was over 100 meters wide, and probably about the same distance going from the bottom of the slope up a 60 degree slope to the top. And there was a wide distribution of wreckage.

As we started going, meticulously following the Identification Laboratory's excavation procedures from the bottom to the top --

Chairman Kerry: So, you literally began to sift through soil, right?

Gadoury: Right.

Chairman Kerry: You would sift through soil, and you would clean it out, and you would find fragments of bone; you would find fragments of teeth.

Gadoury: On this last situation, we were not able to finish the site, but we found over 300 bone fragments, and a number of teeth, and quite a few personal effects and personal equipment.

Remains Larson 12/04/92

General Needham said that -- and I do not want to misquote him, but the impression I had is that he believes that there are remains that are known to exist being held by individuals, as well as perhaps local government officials. There is some expectation, of course, that some bounty would be paid for remains. We have made it clear that that is not the policy of the United States.

Remains Larson 12/04/92

...There are remains somewhere, because we have photographs of bodies that they had at one time that we do not have remains for. So there are some that once were available that we do not have, and we don't know where they are.

Remains Needham 12/04/92

Sir, the one area that I don't know what to tell you is the answer to the remains. I can give you a scenario that Morrissey was buried in an area and maybe they lost the records. However, we are working with them and we have presented those cases to them. We're going to talk to them more about it next week.

I believe, as Admiral Larson said, they are trying to find a way to get themselves out of this situation, because they are concerned about the laws. They're also concerned about taking remains from individuals and convincing them that they have no chance of getting any money somewhere down the road.

Remains Schweitzer 12/04/92

Sen. McCain: Mr. Schweitzer, I asked General Vessey this morning on the issue of the allegation of the warehousing of remains. One, have you seen any evidence of warehousing of remains? And, two, what is your opinion about that theory that there may be several hundred American remains kept somewhere in Hanoi, or somewhere in Vietnam?

Mr. Schweitzer: There is no such warehouse, sir. If, at one point in the '70's or early '80's, if there were some remains somewhere in Hanoi, those remains have by now, as the officials retired who were in the program, as they went back to their provinces, various memorabilia, maybe even remains, have gone back with them. And while there may have been some remains at some point -- I don't know that, but if there were, they are now in private hands.

Sen. McCain: You are absolutely convinced there is no warehouse for the large number of U.S. remains somewhere in Hanoi?

Mr. Schweitzer: Yes, sir. There is no such warehouse.

Remains Schweitzer 12/04/92

Mr. Schweitzer: Well, after our meeting I had meetings with the Vietnamese all that day, and into the night... the importance of this historic trip of yours to Vietnam [was stressed], and what could be achieved during this trip.

And I was told to me that they simply have no remains. That if the success or failure of this trip and of establishing relations with the U.S. is dependent upon their turning over the remains they have in their possession, or that is believed they have in their possession, then it's going to fail. They have no remains.

Now, I don't mean to indicate to you that there are not remains out there. There are, and the investigators that are there, the analysts are going to get them as the people of Vietnam --

Chairman Kerry: But you are suggesting those are the ones in private hands?

Mr. Schweitzer: Private hands.

Chairman Kerry: Or in provincial hands.

Mr. Schweitzer: Or, possibly, that haven't been excavated yet. The location of the grave sites is known by -- you were given the example by Colonel Dai, a very vivid example. He knows the location of four graves.

Remains Schweitzer 12/04/92

Sen. McCain: You do not disagree with that, Mr. Schweitzer, that there are remains in different parts of the country.

Mr. Schweitzer: I wouldn't disagree with anything Bill Bell says. He's the real expert on this.

Remains Schweitzer 12/04/92

However, this does not mean that remains, or even partial remains may be found for most of these cases. The majority of the remaining MIA cases in Vietnam may eventually be resolved by means of other factors. These will include photos, documents, aircraft wreckage, memorabilia, and personal stories told by a farmer, a People's Army Vietnam soldiers, and civilians.

Remains Vessey 11/05/91

. . . U.S. analysts have combined these facts to build a case which suggests that the Vietnamese government could be holding as many as several hundred sets of remains.

Remains Vessey 12/04/92

...for example, if there were an air crash they were to find -- the local people were to find the crash, find the pilot if he were alive, capture him; if he wasn't alive, find the remains then bury them on the stop and then report the location of those -- of the grave to the central authorities. And then the central authorities clearly had a system for recovering those remains at a later date, one, two, or five years later, and then sending those remains to central storage.

Remains Vessey 06/25/92

In the past five years we've received 332 sets of remains... Of those, 125 have been identified and returned to their families. Another 107 might be those of Americans, but have not yet been identified, and the remaining 100 sets are not remains of missing Americans.

In the 119 discrepancy cases which have been the focus of our joint field investigations, 22 have been resolved through recovery, return and identification of remains. In 39 other sets we and the Vietnamese have agreed that the individuals involved are dead which confirms an earlier presumptive finding of death. in four of those cases we agree that we will not be bale to recover remains.

For the other 35 of those cases we believe that there still may be an opportunity to recover the remains... The other 58 cases continue to be investigated. They all have been investigated at least once and most several times... none of the new evidence gathered... points toward any of the individuals being alive.

Remains Vessey 11/05/91

...U.S. analysts have combined these facts to build a case which suggests that the Vietnamese government could be holding as many as several hundred sets of remains.

Reparations Kissinger 09/22/92

...we did not want to create the impression of ransom and reparations.

Reparations Kissinger 09/22/92

The North Vietnamese, in what turned into a constant pattern, immediately began to violate the agreement, especially with respect to a full accounting of MIAs. They did not hand over the POW list for Laos as required on January 27th.

In response, we delayed deliveries to them of the confidential Presidential letter on recommending to Congress reconstruction assistance after peace had been established. The letter was kept confidential only to prevent a linkage between the agreement and what we presented as a unilateral American act. A Presidential report to the Congress in February 1972 had affirmed this undertaking, and have a figure of $2.5 billion. It was again repeated in the Presidential speech of May 8, 1972. Mr. Chairman, some suggestions have been made, including this morning, that the North Vietnamese may have withheld some American prisoners in an effort to get this economic aid. I find this reasoning difficult to understand.

Reparations Kissinger 09/22/92

I don't believe that reparations were their primary objective. Their primary objective was to take over Indochina, and if all they had wanted from us was economic aid, all they would have had to do was observe the agreement...

Reparations Kissinger 09/22/92

I certainly told them innumerable times that we were not paying ransom, we were not paying reparations, and they have never used it. They never said, you owe us economic aid, and therefore we are holding prisoners. If they had done it, I wouldn't have been astonished.

Reparations Kissinger 09/22/92

To encourage compliance with these commitments we held out the inducement first offered by President Johnson in 1965, and frequently reiterated since, at least three times by President Nixon in 1972, of economic aid to North Vietnam.

Reparations Kissinger 09/22/92

Finally, it is curious that Americans would make such an argument when the North Vietnamese did not. As the bipartisan House Select Committee reported in 1976, not once in all their discussions with the North Vietnamese, did they cite the American failure to provide economic aid as an excuse for their failure to provide a complete accounting. They have never denied their obligations. They have only denied that they have prisoners.

Why should Americans now put forward an alibi for Hanoi which even Hanoi has never asserted?

Reparations Robson 09/24/92

Vice Chairman Smith: ...Dr. Kissinger was very clear about that -- no linkage. Now, why would they bail out if they did not feel there was linkage?

Colonel Robson: I know there was not supposed to be any linkage, Senator, but in fact there was. They were constantly trying to link things...

Vice Chairman Smith: Is Dr. Kissinger wrong in that perception?

Colonel Robson: I know that he had the agreement, the understanding that there would be no linkage. But what happens in Washington and what happens in that little dusty room in Saigon is two different things, Senator.

Reparations Smith 09/22/92

[Habib] said in one of the first lists of negotiating points put forward by the North Vietnamese, "The communist side bracketed the release of prisoners with what they described as U.S. responsibility for war damage in Vietnam in a single numbered point. I know of no instance in which an adversary so openly treated this humanitarian problem in this way. We recognized from an early date what we were up against."

Reparations Walters 09/21/92

...My understanding was this is what they really wanted from us, the postwar reconstruction aid and obviously they knew what we really wanted from them short of surrender was the prisoners.

Returned POWs Ford 12/01/92

Vice Chairman Smith: I think one area that could be very helpful and, frankly, it has been a real problem, is the POW debriefs. Not regarding anything in there other than the names of individuals that they saw. I have only -- we are restricted to the Chairman and myself. There are 590 of them, and it is impossible to get through those with the two of us doing it...

Ford: Is there any possibility that as a compromise, Senator Smith, that you might allow us to go through that and do this work ourselves? I mean part of this is a contract that we have. It's not a legal contract, but it's certainly a contract in principle, not only to the past POWs but any future POWs.

That when we talk to them after they come back, we know that they've been through hell. We don't expect them to be anything other than human but we want to know, we need to know what happened to them. And we've always made it clear in that process that these would be guarded as sort of nuclear weapons secrets or something, and that's the reason that we've done that.

Returned POWs Trowbridge 06/24/92

I know of no prisoners that came home that said, I saw an individual that was alive that we left behind, without other information that may have supported the fact that he died.