POWS and POLITICS:How Much Does Hanoi Really Know?

by Garnett 'Bill' Bell and George J. Veith

The recent debate concerning a possible move by President Clinton toward diplomatic recognition of Vietnam offers an opportunity to re-examine the most pernicious legacy of the Vietnam War. From a policy standpoint, the two most enduring problems were the "Vietnam Syndrome" and the POW/MIA dilemma. The "Vietnam Syndrome" alluded to a perceived public disillusionment to intervene with U.S. miltary forces in regional or ethnic conflicts, and to sustaining a strong commitment to an anti-COMMUNIST approach to foreign afffairs. A resounding victory on Kuwaiti sand allowed then President Bush in a speech given at the conclusion of "Operation Desert Storm," to declare that "we had put the Vietnam syndrome behind us." Having skewered the "Vietnam syndrome", American policy-makers undoubtedly hoped these lingering issues from the Vietnam war had finally loosened their grip on both the public and the American political elite. The slow Vietnamese march towards a free market economy had raised U.S. policy makers expectations that the U.S. and Vietnam could reexamine their strained relationship. While the Bush administration's "Road Map" spelled out U.S. requirements to re-open economic and political ties with Vietnam, the primary internal U.S. political issue was undoubtedly a satisfactory resolution of the remaining unresolved POW/MIA questions.

However, in the Spring and Summer of 1991, the surfacing of photos allegedly depicting Americans still held in captivity lead to the creation of a Senate Select Committee to investigate the war-time fate of many American servicemen. For years, family members of the missing servicemen have struggled with these questions. During the Vietnam War, family members of the POW/MIA's had organized into groups such as the National League of Families to pressure the U.S. Government into placing more emphasis on the issue. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam's (DRV) actions regarding American POW's had become well- documented, ranging from refusal to allow ICRC inspections of POW camps to brutal torture to stonewalling on who it held as prisoner. Notwithstanding Vietnamese claims to have released all the American prisoners they held at the completion of "Operation Homecoming", serious questions remained regarding Americans known to have been captured but not released or accounted for. Despite repeated U.S. efforts through various forums to achieve answers to these questions, post-war mechanisms designed to account for the remaining missing quickly collapsed.

Outraged over what many viewed as Vietnamese political manipulation of a basic humanitarian issue, an activist community arose, combining veterans of the Vietnam War with more vocal family members. The activists have also continually savaged the U.S. government over its post-war POW/MIA politics and actions, culminating in bitter charges of a politically motivated coverup of evidence indicating the presence of live American prisoner remaining in Vietnamese or Lao custody. Several books, most notably Sauter's and Saunder's, "Soldiers of Misfortune and The Men We Left Behind, Nigel Cawthorne's The Bamboo Cage, and Monika Jensen-Stephenson's Kiss The Boys Goodbye, have further developed this conspiracy theory.

The Government has vehemently denied these allegations, and has steadfastly maintained that is possesses no credible evidence that any American servicemen remained as prisoners after "Operation Homecoming." The widely reported conclusion of the Senate Select Committee, that although some evidence existed that as many as 100 men may have remained alive after "Operation Homecoming", no "proof" could be found in U.S. Government intelligence files to support the stance that men remained alive today, let alone support any wide-ranging conspiracy theory. Obviously believing itself vindicated in the January 1993 findings of the Senate Select Committee, the DOD has pressed on with its remains recovery activities in Southeast Asia under its Joint Task Force-Full Accounting (JTF-FA), an expanded organization from its prior unit, the Joint Casualty Resolution Center (JCRC). The report went further and counter-attacked some of the POW/MIA activists, exposing several fraudulent operators. The recent publication of Susan Katz Keating's Prisoners of Hope and Malcolm McConnell's Inside Hanoi's Secret Archives, has swung the pendulum even further, leaving many of the activists reputations in public ruin.

How did we get to this situation? How has the public discourse grown so rancorous over what would seem to be an obvious consequence of war, that men disappear as a result of combat. That answer may be as complex as the issue, but notably absent from this acrimonious debate has been any balanced examination by U.S. scholars of the Vietnamese system for handling American POW's and remains. With some exceptions, the mainstream media has also generally avoided investigating the complex questions of the POW/MIA issue. Apparently, most Vietnam-era pundits find no intellectual discomfort in their opposite positions of having eviscerated the military's war-time statements while now completely accepting Governmental testimony on the POW/MIA issue. Although during the Senate Select Committee hearing, after having raised several false alarms in the past, the media has now begun subtlety lumping the radical activists and more stident family members in the same community as UFO watchers and those convinced they have recently spotted Elvis pumping gas at their local convenience store.

Believing themselves abandoned on all fronts, many family members and veterans groups have grown despondent, giving in to conspiracy theories ranging from "Secret Returnee" programs to beliefs in hundreds of men still being held in Southeast Asia. Deepening the families dismay, shortly after the Senate Select Committee adjourned, some key personnel assigned to the committee tasked to investigate this controversial issue quickly seized high salaried positions within the U.S./Vietnam Trade Council, a business group designed to facilitate normalization and trade between the U.S. and Vietnam. According to a biographical sketch on the President of this business-lobby group, the U.S. Vietnam Trade Council has also developed close ties with the leadership of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). The POW/MIA families suspicions have additionally been fueled by U.S. Government claims of "outstanding" or "superb" Vietnamese cooperation, even though after receiving numerous significant concessions from the current administration, the Vietnamese have continued to slowly release to U.S. Government officials and complacent veterans groups small, piecemeal increments of remains and records.

Confronted with this situation, MIA family members, veterans, and activists have pointed increasingly to their belief that the Vietnamese kept detailed records of wartime incidents involving American personnel still unaccounted-for, and if it had the political will to do so, the COMMUNIST apparatus controlling the POW/MIA issue in Indochina could rapidly account for many more POW/MIAs. Given the political ramifications surrounding this issue, the various charges and denials have undoubtedly confused the average citizen. Additionally, for an American raised in the relatively simple aspects of democratic politics, understanding Vietnamese Communist bureaucracy and policies can be daunting. Unfortunately, little has been publisehd concerning the actual mechanisms, systems, and policies the Vietnamese communists used to process American POW's.

The sheer intransigence of the Vietnamese, manifested in their coldly calculating long-term manipulation of the issue, has obviously created a climate of great suspicion. Yet, in the U.S., reasoned discussion has vacillated between two polar extremes of unsubstantiated theorizing by misinformed individuals and increasingly defensive outright denials from the Government. The U.S. intelligence community has further compounded the difficulty for any outside reviewer to piece together the outlines of the Vietnamese POW system in this highly emotional atmosphere through a haphazard declassification process, which is often mistaken for governmental stonewalling. Even after allowing for these complexities, the adversity qualified historians face when dealing in the grey area between national security considerations and public discussions of controversial events does not explain the dearth of scholarly studies. This article seeks to take the first step in addressing that problem, and outlines our views on the Vietnamese communist prison and administrative system, and our differences with the beliefs of the Defense Prisoner of War and Missing-In-Action Office (DPMO). (1)

Sensitized from the bitter results of the peace talks and eventual prisoner exchanges during the Korean War, American intelligence labored to penetrate the inner-working of the Vietnamese bureaucracy. As a result, the U.S. military placed great emphasis on targeting Vietnamese POW installations and policies, creating a collection and recovery program code named "Brightlight". Much information on Vietnamese procedures was gleaned from interrogations of captured or surrendered PAVN or NLF soldiers and from monitoring NVN news broadcasts and publications during the war. Additionally, Allied forces captured millions of communist documents that provided elaborate detail of their plans and personnel. (2) On the post-war live prisoner issue, DPMO's position is that, after extensive wartime intelligence efforts, and combined with information provided by early American releasee's, they were able to identify with some precision both the numbers and locations where American POW's were being held in North Vietnam during the war. Upon debriefing the returned POW's after "Operation Homecoming", these locations were basically confirmed, and the returnees, desperate to prevent a repetition of the Korean POW experience, had labored mightily to ensure that every POW and camp was identified and reported to the U.S. government when they were released. Thus, the returnee debriefs, other still classified war-time intelligence, and the "lack of proof" resulting from post-war refugee interviews and all-source analysis forms the basis for DPMO's stated beliefs that no prisoners remain alive in Southeast Asia.

By examining these declassified interrogation reports and reviewing selected captured documents, along with interviews of Vietnamese cadre involved in the processing of American POW's and remains conducted by members of the JCRC after the war, a picture emerges of a complex system heavy influenced by Vietnam Communist Party (formerly the Lao Dong Party) policies and goals and strictly controlled by trusted party political cadre. The obvious implication is that those critical of U.S. Government claims to the effect that Vietnam is cooperating in healing the wounds of war, are to a degree at least, justified in maintaining their views. Although the DPMO continued to study the Vietnamese prison system to identify the procedures which they used to process American POW/MIA's, it has focused primarily on the Enemy Proselytizing Department (Cuc Dich Van) of the Peoples Army of Vietnam (PAVN).

However, the authors believe that the systems for handling of American POWs organized by the Vietnamese Communist Party were far more complex and multi-channeled, reflecting and long-term propaganda concerns. This is not to be confused with the so-called "second prison system" which the Vietnamese allegedly used for hiding a group of POW's separate from the main body of POWs, but rather a delineation of duties between the military forces, the public security forces, and the Party Central Committee Propaganda Organ. This delineation not only prevented duplication of effort, but it served to compartment the intelligence gathering and overall exploitation effort from a security standpoint as well, and served both the short-range and long-term interests of the Party. It is this least understood aspect of war-time communist methodology that has had the greatest impact on American post-war POW/MIA efforts since the ending of that tragic war.

Vietnamese POW Policies and views:

The Vietnamese philosophy of liberation known as dau tranh, (literally struggle), evolved into what the Viet Cong termed the "three pronged struggle" comprised of "armed struggle" (Dau tranh vu trang), "political struggle" (Dau tranh chinh tri), and "proselytizing" (van). (3) In the English language the term "proselytize" means to convert from one belief or faith to another. Since during the war years religious activity was not encouraged, and the Vietnam Communist Party was the sole political party allowed to exist, the term proselytize came to mean in the Vietnamese language to accept the leadership and doctrine of the Vietnam Communist Party. In transforming the idea of proselytizing into a usable process, which former PAVN Commander General Vo Nguyen Giap called "disintegrating the enemy," party planners divided the members of the opposing force into three basic categories: soldiers of the enemy, cadre of the enemy, and the civilian masses.

It is necessary, then, to understand the communist view of the difference between "soldiers" and "cadre" of the enemy. The Western mind normally first considers the rank, or position, of the individual to determine which category will be applied. In the eyes of teh Asian communist, however, although rank is often considered important, it is the attitude and political awareness of the individual that will ultimately enable one to make this crucial distinction. Thus, each category was handled by a separate proselytizing cadre section. "Soldiers" of the enemy were handled by Military Proselytizing cadre (Binh van), "Cadre" of the enemy by Enemy Proselytizing (Dich van), and the "masses" by Civilian Proselytizing (Dan van).

The cadre system, borrowed by the Vietnamese Communist Party from the Soviet and Chinese models, was designed to insure control of the military and political "struggle" to liberate South Vietnam. In order to institute this process, General Giap linked armed military struggle with political struggle, and as a result every PAVN military organ, down to and including company sized units, had both a commander and a political officer. While battalion and smaller sized units were managed by "party subchapters" (Chi bo) under the leadership of the political officers (Chinh tri vien), larger sized units were managed by "party chapters" (Dang bo) under the direction of political commissars (Chinh uy).

Although the military commanders were primarily responsible for tactical operations on the battlefield, all major decisions were ultimately approved by the political commissar. These military politicians were also responsible for writing detailed performance evaluations, and for assessing the reliability and suitability of all members occupying key positions, including the unit commanders. In addition to monitoring the commanders, other important responsibilities of the political officers included the evacuation, detention, medical treatment, and exploitation of prisoners of war. In outlining the role of the party in dealing with American prisoners, some of the following points were emphasized: "The battalion Party Committee and the Chapter Committee should consider the mission and capability of the unit before prescribing criteria ((for the capture of prisoners)). In meetings, Party Chapters must use their time ((to study)) to thoroughly understand the importance of PW's. Party Chapters are also responsible for detecting the ideological weaknesses of soldiers and Party members in capturing and handling prisoners in order to provide appropriate leadership." (4)

Party cadre attached to PAVN or VC units were responsible for implementing the POW policy when they captured U.S. personnel by properly training their soliders in Party policies. Both the Enemy and Military Proselytizing cadre were assigned to sections attached to the various commands ranging from COSVN to Military Region or Front and below. These cadre would inspect the different units or POW camps in their areas for compliance, and would write monthly, semi-annual, and annual reports, which were forwarded to higher echelons. In the more southern parts of South Vietnam and in Cambodia, these reports were sent via courier along the commo-liaison routes. Further north, the cadre could transmit using the telephone wire nets which extended down the Ho Chi Minh Trail into MR-5 and the B-3 Front.

Prisoners, especially American prisoners, were considered a strategic asset to the North Vietnamese. NVA/VC policy on foreign POW's, which dated back to the war against the French, was still applicable towards U.S. POW's. Instructions by the NLF in December of 1963 after the release of some early captured Americans stressed both the propaganda and document collection themes. "Take advantage of prisoners for international propaganda purposes. The prisoners must express good impressions about the Liberation Front records of the deceased Americans were kept, and their remains were carefully maintained...You must understand the experiences and procedures for the release of prisoners in order to provide the necessary documents in the propaganda program." (5)

Reinforcing the argument against claims of outstanding Vietnamese cooperation by the current administration, captured wartime documents and Sources provided overwhelming evidence that as a part of their training, PAVN forces were given detailed instructions concerning the handling of American personnel captured or killed on the battlefield. According to those instructions "a detailed file was to be prepared on each POW as soon as he was brought into a detention camp. With regard to the deceased ones, records should be maintained, listing such information as deceased date and burial location. Personal belongings of the deceased should be carefully kept. Similar records were to be prepared for the U.S. POWs who escaped, were missing, became lost, or were killed by enemy bombing." (6)

The communists had many reasons for actively managing this POW exploitation program. "There is a threefold purpose in taking U.S. prisoners: They can be exploited for intelligence purposes; they can be exploited for propaganda and counter-propaganda purposes through radio broadcasts and interviews published in the neutralist and pro-communist press; they can be used politically to further the cause of communism beyond the limited context of Vietnam by propagandizing them, brain washing them, and converting them into communist or pro-communist cadres who will work actively for the Party in their own country after they have been released." (7)

The authors are not suggesting that NVA/VC policies were always perfectly adhered to, or that documents pertaining to captured U.S. may not have survived the journey to Hanoi or were simply lost due to the ravages of war. Indeed, at times VC troops or North Vietnamese militia were either unaware of Central Committee policies or failed to carry them out, especially in the early years of the war. However, Party cadre labored hard to educate their soldiers and civilians to capture Americans alive, and to collect all their documentation. Proselytizing sections were urged to emphasize care of the POW, "for to do otherwise harms the revolution, decreases the chance for prisoner exchanges, and limits the international propaganda impact." (8)

In reviewing dozens of captured documents and interrogation reports, a consistent theme emerges of careful handling of not only American prisoners or their remains, but any documents or material possessions captured with them. Nothing was overlooked that could be used for implementing Party policy, a policy which was driven by communist idealogy to both extract as much useful intelligence information from U.S. prisoners as possible, and even more importantly, create the seeds of communist revolution in the prisoners home country by "educating" the POW's in communist beliefs. To accomplish this task, the North Vietnamese leadership invested POW responsibility with several ministries.

The Ministry of Public Security:

The primary responsibility for handling American POW's rested with the Ministry of Public Security. The relationship of the public security apparatus to the overall process of exploiting American personnel was described by the CIA in a 1975 study, which clearly outlined the responsibilities of the MPS: "The MPS is similar in organization and mission to the Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB). The MPS is the executive arm of the communist party (Dang Lao Dong-Workers Party) of the DRV. It is responsible for the overall security of the party, internal security within the DRV, and for foreign intelligence operations. It has the overall responsibility for the administration and detention of POWs. Within the MPS, the two organizations responsible for evaluating information obtained from American POWs by the MPS or MND were the General Research Organization (Co quan Nghien cuu Tong Hop), and the National Intelligence Organization (Co quan Tinh bao Quoc gia), with the former concentrating on follow-up interrogations for exploitation of western technology, often shared with the USSR and the PRC, and the latter concentrating on operational leads and recruitment in foreign countries. These two organizations coordinated their efforts to identify, evaluate, develop, and gain the cooperation of prisoners for foriegn operational leads used in long term planning. In general, the MPS conducted the basic intelligence screening of all U.S. POWs for the DRV intelligence community. It disseminated knowledgeability briefs (KB's) to various interested DRV agencies and ministries. It solicited requirements, except from the MND which interrogated prisoners on its own requirements. As noted previously, the MPS collected information on economic, political, scientific, and strategic military topics, as well as foreign operational leads. Information was shared with both the Soviets and People's Republic of China (PRC). Within the DRV, the MPS forwarded its KB's and interrogation reports through Party channels to the MND and the Office of the Prime Minister for coordination throughout the remainder of the DRV government."

Although the Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of National Defense shared some responsibilities relating to captured Americans, the MPS was vested with the overall responsibility for all American and other foreign prisoners captured in North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and therefore maintained the most detailed lists of American and foreign prisoners held throughout Southeast Asia. In southern Laos along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, captured Americans were moved to the nearest PAVN military station (Binh Tram) and transferred to the control of Logistics Group (Doan) 559. The system in South Vietnam and Cambodia was controlled by forward commands of the MPS and the MND attached to COSVN. With the breakup of MR 5 into 3 distinct regions in early 1967, Hanoi assumed direct responsibilities of the northern provinces of South Vietnam, leaving COSVN in charge of the southern half. (9)

The MPS has two main offices in Vietnam, with office "A" in Hanoi and Office "B" collocated with the Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN) in the South. The southern office of the MPS also maintained detention facilities in the outskirts of Hanoi at Thanh Tri. This prison, where U.S. POW's captured in South Vietnam and later moved to the north were detained, was designated "Hanoi B". Detention facilities of the MPS Office "A" in northern Vietnam were staffed by personnel of Prisons Department C-51 in Hanoi, while those in southern Vietnam fell under the authority of Prisons Department C-53, located in the Lo Go area of northwestern Tay Ninh province. Some remains of U.S. POW's held in C-53 were repatriated after the war ended, but other prisoners executed there on orders of the party have never been returned. Live-sighting reports on American prisoners held in the C-53 prison continued to be received by the U.S. Government until last 1974, but were never acted upon due to procrastination and the sudden collapse of the Saigon Government. In the north, intelligence interrogations of American POWs were conducted by Interrogation Department C-44 in Hanoi. In the south, interrogations were conducted by public security cadre attached to the various Party Regions and provinces throughout southern Vietnam, or by cadre assigned to the Security Section of COSVN. In selecting cadre for duty with the security services the party was at the forefront: "The party should be regarded as the sole body that provides absolute and direct leadership. Whenever possible, security sections at various echelons were to be staffed by Chapter Party Committee members exclusively, and individual Party Chapters were as "steering" nucleuses in the various security and intelligence communities. (10) Information gained from interrogations of American POWs was processed and forwarded to the MND and the Office of the Prime Minister for coordination througout the remainder of the government. (11)

Coordination with the Office of the Prime Minister is considered noteworthy, since the Vietnamese Office for Seeking Missing Personnel (VNOSMP), established after the war to work with American POW/MIA specialists, also reports to the Office of the Prime Minister. The Office of the Prime Minister also managed part of the war-time propaganda effort through the Vietnam News Agency Radio Hanoi, like the Vietnam News Agency (VNA), while under the control of the Central Party Propaganda and Training Department (Cuc Tuyen Truyen Dao Tao), was attached to the Office of the Prime Minister. When considering the relationship between the Office of the Prime Minister against the long term implications of Vietnam's propaganda efforts, it is not surprising that such radio broadcasts and the recent "discovery" of VNA photographs of deceased American personnel have formed the basis for the U.S. Government's categorization of literally hundreds of cases, where neither the missing man or his remains have been returned, as so-called "discrepancy cases." As the U.S. began to conduct the first joint field investigations in Vietnam during 1988, the Radio Diffusion Board continued to send signals to the U.S. concerning the POW/MIA issue when the following broadcast by Radio Hanoi was monitored:

"At a press conference on 4 July held in the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs Press Center, Comrade Sukaret (Translater's note: spelled phonetically) the head of the public prosecutor's office raised the issue of Soviet soldiers who were captured as POWs in Afghanistan. He rejected the fabricated themes of a number of reactionary circles that apparently some repressive cases are being prepared in regards to the Soviet POWs captured in Afghanistan in case they return home. He emphasized that the military personnel who belong to the element of Soviet voluntary forces engaged in the fighting in Afghanistan who were captured as POWs and returned to the Fatherland from aboard will entirely enjoy the rights of political society and other rights of every Soviet citizen as specified in the Soviet constitution. Stemming from the lofty humanitarian viewpoint of socialism, the Soviet State, is prepared to be lenient to all those Soviet POWs whose actions, because they were unable to withstand enemy torture, have caused damage to the interests of the Soviet State. Comrade Sukaret stated that approximately 312 Soviet military personnel have been captured in the Afghanistan conflict. A number of them were sacrificed while searching for a way to escape from the prison camps of the Afghan counter-revolutionaries. Currently, there are approximately 200 people being held in Afghanistan, a few tens of people in America, and a small number in Canada and western Europe. He hoped that the administrations of the countries involved in this issue, especially America and Pakistan, would create conditions for the Soviet POWs to soon return and reuinte with their families." (12)

In addition to military prisoners, Public Security camps also processed "civilian" prisoners. In a document of the Binh Dinh Province Security Committee pertaining to captured Vietnamese personnel, "Camps for POWs and defecting soldiers should only be used to confine personnel from military or semi-military units. GVN cadres such as Inter-family Chiefs, Hamlet Chiefs, administrative personnel, "plainclothesmen," reconnaissance unit personnel and civilians should be placed under the control of Security Sections." (13) Other documents of the Binh Dinh Province Party Committee captured during the war indicate that personnel transferred from regular detentin camps to security agencies were scheduled for "further investigation."

Also included in the security system were American civilians who performed other than normal military duties. These personnel were considered as "spies," and subjected to very thorough interrogations. Even American female volunteer workers, such as school teachers and medical specialists captured in Hue during the 1968 "Tet" offensive, were suspected of being "spies." In some cases, those prisoners who were not successful in explaining their backgrounds either disappeared, died in captivity due to brutal interrogations, or were executed after capture. Those who were able to convince their captors that they were qenuine volunteers, such as the female prisoners captured in Hue, were required to sign statements to be broadcast over Radio Hanoi, and then released to American control. In the case of the American females captured in Hue, the unedited radio broadcasts were made from Hanoi only days after the statements were recorded near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). On the other hand, Chief Warrant Officer Solomon Godwin, from Hot Springs, Arkansas, who was also captured in Hue, died while undergoing a lengthy period of interrogation by the Public Security Police. Due to his assignment as an Intelligence Advisor to the RVN National Police Special Branch in Hue, both CWO Godwin and captured CIA agent Eugene Weaver were held in a highly secret camp far removed from other American prisoners. Mr. Weaver, survived the ordeal, and more recently the Soviet KGB has admitted to U.S. officials that not only did they have direct access to Mr. Weaver for interrogation in Vietnam, they also attempted to recruit him for intelligence operations here in the United States. ALthough an American eyewitness account provides proof that CWO Godwin was in the custody of communist forces at a fixed location, his remains have never been returned. Another clear example of Vietnamese intransigence is the case of SSGT Harold Bennett from Perryville, Arkansas. Another American captured with SSGT Bennett was told by guards that he was executed, because he had been wounded and unable to keep pace with the movement to a new camp. Although the American survivor provided a location for SSGT Bennett's burial, his remains have not been returned by Vietnam.

During interrogatins, the MPS was supported by its subordinate "Medical Office." Some known functions of this office included: "providing medical and psychological techniques in exploiting and gaining the cooperation of American POWs in the DRV". (14) This included the use of various drugs and serums and other techniques which might induce the POWs to provide information while in a semi-conscious state, and providing the necessary medical care after the use of torture. These forms included: propagandizing the POW and of influencing him through the appropriate exposure of different equipment, weapons and torture techinques or by exposing the prisoners to others who were tortured, and preparing studies and performing research on the most effective Soviet, French, Communist Chinese and other oriental and western medical techniques which could be used in public security activities. The preparation of such research studies included working with Soviet and Communist Chinese intelligence advisers who were qualified in the use of medical techniques for intelligence purposes and coordinating medical matters with the MPS Laboratory in regard to the analysis and preparation of devices/equipment for use by the MPS Medical Office in its support of the MPS interrogation elements. (15)

Some insight as to how information obtained from American personnel was shared with the USSR and PRC was reported by the CIA in Saigon just prior to the withdrawal of American forces: "Starting with the 1960 visit to NVN of a deputy chief of the KGB and the initiation of professional training for MPS cadres in the Soviet Union sponsored by the KGB, the MPS maintained a close but controlled liaison with the Soviet KGB officials in Hanoi. Conversely, although the Chinese Communist advisors to the MPS were withdrawn in 1958, the MPS continued to maintain liaison with the Communist Chinese Ministry of Public Security officials attached to their Hanoi embassy to exchange information. (Field Comment: Although the Source does not claim the MPS also maintained a field relationship with KGB or Chinese MPS officials in other countries, he has identified MPS officials under North Vietnamese Embassy cover in Laos and Cambodia with known and frequent contact with Soviet and Chinese Embassy officials in those countries.) The Soviet KGB, with its wide range of activity against the United States, has provided political and military information to the MPS. In exchange the MPS and the North Vietnamese Army have furnished the KGB information on US pilots imprisoned in North Vietnam and on other US military and civilian prisoners in North Vietnamese hands. In addition, the KGB worked with the MPS in establishing the original interrogation requirements for all US Prisoners and, although neither the KGB nor the Chinese Ministry of Public Security was allowed direct access to any US prisoner, the MPS accepted specific intelligence requirements from the Soviets and Chinese which it used in prisoner interrogations. (Source Comment: The primary Chinese concern was with the capabilities of US aircraft. MPS officials speculated that the Chinese intended to use technical interrogation and examination of US aircraft to suppliment Chinese Communist aircraft design.) (16)

There is additional information available indicating that the intelligence shared by the MPS with the USSR and the PRC was considered valuable to the extent that it created competition between the two countries: "In spite of the obvious great importance for both sides of this collaboration, our military-scientific specialists in the DRV continue to operate under difficult circumstances, which are often artifically complicated by our Vietnamese comrades. It is known that trips to the sites of downed aircraft is the Soviet specialists' main method of collecting pieces of equipment. This system is set up by the Vietnamese side. The Vietnamese, however, hide the aircraft crash sites for us using various pretexts. They delay our trips, even after giving us permission to go to the crash site. It is for this reason that the main source of information regarding aircraft crash sites comes from the observation of Soviet specialists. There have been many times when downed aircraft were examined by qualified specialists before the arrival of our specialists. That has not been cleared up; it turned out to be Chinese." (17)

The Ministry of National Defense:

As mentioned, the MPS and MND shared responsibilities for the exploitation of American prisoners. While some of the prisoners who entered both the security and propaganda systems were later released, swapped, executed, or simply disappeared. Civilian prisoners screened by the MPS and found not to be "spies", but still not released to American control, were transferred to the custody of the Dich Van (Enemy Proselytizing) Element. It is this element that the DPMO has concentrated most of its research efforts.

The military system for handling American POW's began at the capturing unit on the battlefield, and extended to Hoa Lo Prison in Hanoi. Although this system was managed by PAVN military forces, such operations were nevertheless controlled by the party, through the various political officers or political commissars, up to the General Politburo Directorate (Tong cuc Chinh tri) of the military high command in Hanoi. Almost all of the captured Ameicans who lived to return home went through this system. All prisoners were carefully screened and evaluated by experts of the Ministry of Public Security, which made recommendations concerning the further evacuation and future potential of captured personnel.

The three service components of the Ministry of National Defense (MND) function as the Ministry's intelligence, security, and proselytizing arms. All the srevices have a role in the prisoner system and the exploitation of captured or detained Americans. The elements included the Central Research Department, which collected military intelligence and was organized similar to the Soviet "GRU", the Enemy Proselytizing Department, and the Military Security Department. This Enemy Proselytizing Department (Cuc Dich Van ) was the senior PAVN authority for POW matters and, "had the primary responsibility for the administration and indoctrination of American POW's. The CDV closely coordinated with the MPS regarding the placement of U.S. POW's in MPS-run facilities. The CDV drew up indoctrination plans and recommendations for the interrogations of U.S. POW's by the Research Department." (18)

The Research Department maintained several separate offices tasked with the exploitation of American POWs, the Research Office (Phong 70), the Reconnaissance Office (Phong 72), and the Foreign Countries Intelligence Office (Phong 76). The Military Proselytizing and the Enemy Proselytizing Departments maintained offices designated C-12 and C-14 respectively, located near the "Citadel" POW Camp in Hanoi. Both the Research and the Enemy Proselyting Departments maintained master lists of all captured American POWs. The Military Security Department Office (Phong 50), which coordinated closely with the General Department for Security (Tong cuc An ninh), of the MPS designated PH-46, was later changed to KP-36, and finally KH-50.

Enemy "cadre" targeted by the Dich van element were perceived as being more loyal to the opposing force, and, therefore, not worthy of trust for the long term propaganda aspect. Since Americans, like the French before them, were obviously foreigners, and far removed from loyalty to Vietnam, they were normally considered as "cadre" and placed under the control of the Dich van element. Due to the amount of tactical and technical knowledge possessed by enemy cadre, a principal mission of the Dich van element was the extraction of military information to be shared with the various PAVN Commands. In some areas where there were large concentrations of American forces, such as the Hue-Quang Tri area, a specialized sub-element designated My van (American proselytizing ) was added to the existent structure. There is no indication that the third main proselytizing element, Dan van, designed to sway the civilian masses of the countryside, had any relationship to POW's.

The Unknown Military Proselytizing System:

The general purpose of Binh van was to destroy Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and U.S. military strength, or at least reduce its efficiency, through a spectrum of politically motivated acts. This was the main thrust of General Giap's "disintegrating the enemy" process. The Binh van element was oriented toward "soldiers" of the enemy, rather than "cadre", because this particular element sought not only to persuade soldiers to cross over to the communist side themselves, but to elicit their assistance in luring other soldiers to cross over as well. Due to the degree of importance placed by the communists on the motivation propaganda efforts, any individual who voluntarily crossed over to the COMMUNIST side would be considered a "soldier", and would, therefore, be under the control of the Binh van, rther than the Dich van element. This policy was apparently consistent without regard to the rank or position of the individual. This, however, is an assumption, since no known senior U.S. personnel defected to the COMMUNIST side during the war.

Such distinctions may also have been considered as a point of law, since anyone who crossed over would normally be considered as a Hang binh, or deserter, and not subject to the law of land warfare. According to Vietnam's law on Vietnamese nationality "Foreign citizens and apatrid (sic) persons residing in Vietnam, abiding of their own free will by the Vietnamese Constitution and law, are eligible to Vietnamese naturalization if they fulfill the following conditions: to be eighteen years old or more; knowing the Vietnamese language; having resided in Vietnam at least five years.

In special cases, foreign citizens are eligible to Vietnamese nationality without being asked to fulfil (sic) the above mentioned conditions: have made contributions to the cause of protecting and defending the Vietnamese homeland." During oral history interviews conducted in 1988, when questioned concerning the differences between the Military and the Enemy Proselytizing elements, knowledgeable communist cadre summed up the situation by stating that the difference between the Binh van and Dich van elements was very similar to the difference between teh Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency of the United States. (19) Such interviews also revealed that while the Dich van element was under the military control of either the headquarters of the South Vietnam Liberation Armed Forces (SVNLAF), code named "Mien" (i.e. "Region) in southern Vietnam, or the General Political Directorate of PAVN in Hanoi, the Binh van element was under teh direct control of either the southern arm of the Politburo in the Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN) in South Vietnam, code named "R," or the actual Politburo in Hanoi. (20)

This is a critical point, and represents the most important divergence between DPMO's position and ours, because the Binh van element had the responsibility of coordinating with the Politburo in arranging prisoner exchanges or in obtaining approval for scheduled executions. In the case of American POWs held in southern Vietnam, a directive issued by COSVN head and Politburo member Pham Hung in 1969, and forwarded to units of the South Vietnam Liberation Armed Forces (SVNLAF) stressed the importance of cooperation between the Military and Enemy Proselytizing Elements: "Close liaison with the Military Proselytizing Section was to be conducted to obatin an understanding of the psychological campaign could be carried out to intensify further the anti-war movement and decrease the enemy's combat effectiveness." The directive further stated that "American POWs constituted valuable capital assets and were an effective weapon in the field of the VC political and diplomatic struggle. " (21)

The Binh van element maintained both foreign and domestic interest, since it was responsible for influencing the families of the captured men, in the hope that dissention would spread throughout the masses inside Vietnam, as well as the homelands of the invading force (i.e., France or America). Personnel from the Propaganda and Training Department assigned to Military Proselytizing duties held no government positions, but were simply referred to as Party Cadre (Can ho Dang). In most cases, such cadre were graduates of the Communist Party Ideological School designed to train party cadre for critical positions. This elite course was called the "Nguyen Ai Quoc" school (Truong Nguyen Ai Quoc), i.e., Nguyen the Patriot, a pseudonym used at one point by Ho Chi Minh. Although the principal location for this school was in Hanoi, some cadre reassigned to Binh van duties during the war were trained at a southern branch of the school located inside Laos and adjacent to Kontum Province, Vietnam. (22) Due to the agitation-propaganda aspect, and the sensitive nature of operations designed to lure both Vietnamese and American personnel to desert and collaborate, the Binh van function was considered a propaganda matter, and, therefore fell within the purview of teh Propaganda and Training Department of the Communist Party Central Committee, but coordinated closely with the Ministries of Public Security and National Defense.

By building on the World War II era "Armed Propaganda Teams" (Doi Tuyen truyen Vo trang), of which General Giap served as a Team Leader, the Vietnamese leadership was able to utilize trusted party cadre in re-orienting those teams toward both foreign and domestic opposing forces for long term guerrilla war. By operating solely on instructions issued by the Politburo, the Party cadre were able to instill the will of the party through assassination, extortion, coercion, intimidation, and political/diplomatic maneuvering. Foreign (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, French, American, Cambodian) prisoners and remains were considered as a key part of their near and long term negotiating strategies. At the same time, they stressed the lenient policy of the "Revolution" for those who willfully cooperated with their efforts to place the COMMUNIST Party in complete control of the nation.

Directives issued in 1970 by the Standing Committee of the southern arm of the Politburo, COSVN, as well as the headquarters for Military Region 5, in central Vietnam southwest of Danang, called for all units to increase efforts aimed at capturing American personnel. Such units were instructed to hide the bodies of Americans killed-in-action (KIA), and to collect all personal documents for forwarding to Hanoi. Such documents were needed by the Binh van element, in order to develop propaganda broadcasts oriented toward POW/MIA family members in the United States. One such release came in November 1967 when Hanoi announced the death of USMC Lance Corporal James O. Pyle. Actually Pyle was alive and well, but his field pack with letters containing the address of his parents in America was captured by PAVN forces during an attack. Thus Pyle's personal documents, lost in the area od Danang, found their way to Hanoi, far north of the battlefield. (23)

According to one Source, arrangements were made by the Binh van element whereby any American families notified concerning the capture or death of a relative in Vietnam would be able to establish contact. All such arrangements were to be made through the Permanent Office of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam in Cuba. "The POW's family would be notified of his detention through this office which would recieve at least the man's name, rank, and serial number from COSVN. COSVN was often able to furnish family data from memorabilia carried by the prisoner. COSVN would forward all this information together with a current photograph of the prisoner to the Liberation Front's office in Cuba. (24)

Upon being captured, each American POW was required to complete a standard questionnaire. The purpose of the questionnaire was to collect information which would be used to promote the overall goals of the Binh van element (i.e., persuading American military personnel in Vietnam to ask the U.S. Government to send them home; persuading the American military not to fight the Viet Cong and that the latter were fighting a just cause; persuading the U.S. Government not to support the Army of the Republic of Vietnam nor to condone the killing of innocent civilians in "liberated" areas. (25) The Binh van element were also interested in personal information from POW's concerning relatives, including their mailing address in the United States. Such information was obtained in an attempt to gain the "support of the individual POW, his family and friends, and the American public. "American POWs were categorized according to their perceived intelligence and propaganda value. POWs were categorized as "A" (i.e. special due to the important information they possessed), "B" (i.e. those who had the same intelligence value as "A", but who were uncooperative, "C" (i.e. those whose continued presence in teh DRV, after thorough debriefing, offered little or no advantages to the DRV. These POWs were released whenever it best served the DRV's purpose). No attempt was made to contact relatives in the U.S. of certain categories for the following reasons: "Prisoners in categories "A" and "B" were not exploited for the purposes of collecting information through their contacts in the U.S. or by attempting these contacts to engage in anti-war activities. This was not done because it might have led to the surfacing of their identities. The identity of category "A" prisoners was carefully guarded because identifying them as POWs rather than as missing or killed-in-action would permit the U.S. to emply countermeasures to negate the value of the information they provided. Similarly, the identity of the category "B" prisoners was kept secret because they may not have survived the interrogations or other techniques used to make them cooperate. (26)

Regarding the manipulation of public opinion in America, the Binh van element was responsible for both penetration of, and recruitment from the POW population. This element was charged with the mission of "promoting the antiwar movement and urging US and satellite troops to refuse to take part in operations and to demand prompt return home." The Binh van element also played a key role in advancint the strategy of the party far into the future. Charismatic Binh van cadre were also tasked with developing lasting friendships with some selected U.S. POW's believed to have the potential for influencing public opinion after being released to go home. Documents captured during the war included one Military Proselytizing cadre's guidebook, which in addition to essays by American antiwar critics, contained the following instructions: "Special treatment was to be granted to U.S. PW's having special social standing, such as those who were the sons or relatives of American celebrities or high ranking officials in the U.S. Government. Intense propaganda and motivation should be imposed on these PW's." (27) An interrogation report compiled in 1969 indicated that "Before 1968, North Vietnamese military and civilian personnel were hostile to U.S. military personnel and often killed those who were captured. In 1969, however, the North Vietnamese Government issued an order stipulating that captured U.S. military and civilian personnel be kept alive for anticipated exchange and compensation. Moreover, it was specified that special attention should be paid to captured Americans who had made specific achievements, or came from wealthy families. (28) It had been hoped that the Americans could possibly be exchanged for gold." Concerning postwar efforts to influence U.S. public opinion, after the collapse of the south in 1975, cadre assigned to teh Binh van were transferred to duties placing them in positions insuring continued contact with American targets with potential for exploitation regarding political and economic concessions, such as removing the trade embargo and improved U.S./Vietnam relations. For example, MR-5 female Binh van cadre, Ms Nguyen Thi Ngoc Suong was reassigned as the Vice-chairman of the Vietnam Petroleum Organization dealing with representatives of American oil companies. MR-5 Binh van cadre Nguyen Chinh was transferred to become the Deputy Director of the Religious Affairs Department in Hanoi dealing with U.S. officials concerned with human rights. Cadre Ho Nghinh was assigned to the Committee for Economic Development. Former Binh van cadre and Deputy Minister of Defense LTG Tran Quang, was assigned as head of the National Veterans Organization of Vietnam and targeted against U.S. veterans organizations.

As American strategists began to withdraw United States forces from the battlefields of Vietnam, the two elements of Binh van and Dich van became almost synonymous, thus the term which began to appear in captured Communist documents in the late 1960's and early 1970's indicated a combining of the two; Binh/dich van. (29) Subsequent to the ending of the war in Vietnam, the Binh van element was reorganized as the propaganda element of the restructured "Enemy Proselytizing and Special Propaganda Department" (Cuc Dich van va Tuyen Truyen Dac Biet). During the war years, other specialized Van elements were created when the situation dictated, including intellectual proselytizing (tri thuc van). (30)

An interrogation report from a former member of the Dich van element in southern Vietnam provided the following: "The Enemy Proselytizing Office of the South Vietnamese Liberation Army (SVNLAF) Political Staff has the primary responsibility for the administration, indoctrination and interrogation of foreign military and civilian prisoners as well as for Army of Vietnam (ARVN) captured personnel. It had no jurisdiction over captured VC deserters, captureds Vietnamese civilians, or U.S./Allied/ARVN deserters who voluntarily rally directly to VC organizations." This category included both McKinley Nolan and Robert Garwood. Concerning the relationship between the Binh van and Dich Van elements, the same document states that "the only other COSVN-level organization which was in contact with the PDV (Phong Dich van) detention facilities was the COSVN Military Proselytizing Section (Ban Binh van). The PDV (Phong dich van) sent information copies of all its indoctrination and interrogation reports to the Military Proselytizing Section via the SVNLAF Political Staff. (31)

Another document underlining the coordination between the Binh van and Dich van elements issued by the Dich van Section, Political Department of the SVNLAF is titled "Public Presentation of U.S. Prisoners of War": "To make a rational use of POW's during their detention [period], the Political Department of Mien [Zone] (i.e. Party Committee Region, Khu uy), organized meetings during which U.S. POW's were publicly presented to the masses with a view to propagandizing our military victories and motivating the masses' hatred of the Americans and readiness to fight any American move in the Western Zone [of South Vietnam's Delta]." (32)

Concerning Vietnamese knowledge of the 505 MIA cases remaining in Laos, several advisory units were deployed by Vietnam to that country during the war. One recently declassified study of the CIA describes Vietnamese involvement: "In support of increasing requirements for PAVN involvement in Laos, the Lao Dong Party established in 1959 a central control authority over all PAVN activities in Laos. Designated after the date of its establishment, Group (Doan) /Office 959 was under dual command of the Central Committee's Central Western Affairs Department (Ban Cong Tac Mien Tay Trung Uong) Military Staff and the Ministry of National Defense. Until 1968, Office 959 was responsible for control of all PAVN units in Laos. In 1968, control over PAVN combat units and advisory personnel to the LPLA was reorganized. Office 959 relinquished its control over PAVN units in north to the PAVN Northwest Miitary Region, and its control over PAVN units in central and south Laos to PAVN Military Region 4 group 68, which later became known as Group/Division 967. Office 959 and its subordinate advisory groups became solely responsible for advisory assistance to the LPLA, although it continued to coordinate its activities with the PAVN Northwest Region and with PAVN military Region Group 68. This organizational system for PAVN operations in Laos remained intact through at least 1975". (33) At differing times, PAVN adivsory groups operating in Laos included Groups 6, 95, 100, 363, and 763. The Lao High Command Political Staff's Military Security Section (Suan Sua Ka Suc) (i.e. Binh van element) had approximately 200 personnel, and engaged in recruitment and penetration operations against enemy forces. Coordination for interparty liaison between Vietnam and Laos was the responsibility of International Liaison Group 101.

Approximately 85 per cent of the remaining MIA cases in Laos, involving U.S. personnel, have incident locations in areas that were under the wartime control of Vietnamese forces. The PAVN-advised Lao Binh van efforts were similar to those conducted unilaterally by the Vietnamese in Vietnam. An example of Lao record-keeping is evidenced by the acquisition of a document pertaining to CPT Walter H. Moon from Rudy, Arkansas. This document was obtained from refugee sources in Thailand, and was titled "Biography of a Prisoner." It was obtained from a collection of similar documents from the Lao Military High Command Headquarters in Vientiane during the early 1980's. Although CPT Moon was executed while being held prisoner in a fixed camp, his remains have not yet been returned. Lao Military Security personnel observed in the same office where the document was obtained have been identified as having been involved with U.S. POW's during the war, and having participated in meetings with U.S. officials and MIA family members arriving in Laos to discuss the POW/MIA issue. Moreover, the government of Vietnam has already returned the remains of two U.S. pilots with incident locations inside Laos, with one of the locations in the Plain of Jars.

Other Vietnamese Offices:

The Intelligence and Security Services also played a key role in security matters involving American prisoners. In addition to monitoring foreign diplomatic communications in Hanoi, the Technical Reconnaissance Office, KG-3, of the Ministry of Public Security was responsible for the censorship of all letter mail and parcels sent to or from U.S. POWs. KG-3 also planted audio and video surveillance devices in both detention cells and interrogation rooms occupied by U.S. personnel, and monitored POW "tap" codes in use during the war. Some foreign journalists working on postwar film projects in Hanoi have been provided motion picture footage of U.S. POW's, which was obviously filmed without the knowledge of the subjects. Concerning the processing of the remains of Americans who died in captivity, Office KG-5 of the MPS performed forensic science duties in examining the remains to determine the cause of death. KG-5 personnel were included in Vietnamese delegations that visited the JCRC and the Central Identificaion Laboratory (CILHI) in Hawaii. KG-5 personnel normally examined U.S. remains at the Forensics Laboratory located in the Da Phuc area northwest of Hanoi, or the Criminal Science Institute located at 66A Yet Kieu Street in Hanoi. To accomodate the processing of remains of Americans who died in the south, KG-5 established an additional section in Office "B" of the MPS located in southern Vietnam designated KG-5B. In processing skeletal remains for repatriation to the United States, Office KG-5 coordinated with the Policy Office of Enemy Proselytizing Department (also referred to as the Graves Managment Agency (Co quan Quan ly Mo Ma)) of the PAVN General Political Directorate, and military hospitals, such as Military Hospital 108 (Quan y Vien 108) in Hanoi. Concerning the recovery and examination of U.S. remains, artifacts, weapons, and aircraft parts throughout the provinces, Offices KG-5 and KG-5B coordinated closely with the Political Security Department, PH-16, in Hanoi, or Office X-16 in the south. The Political Security Department was comprised of several offices including a Political Security Section, Legal Section, Technical Reconnaissance Section, Foreign Personnel Contacts Section, Records Section, and Intelligence Collection Section.

Another document described the relationship between the Military Justice Department (MJD, now reorganized in the General Political Directorate as the "Military Police and Criminal Investigation Department") and the MPS: "Between 1964 and March 1973, the MJD worked jointly with the Ministry of Public Security (now known as the Ministry of Interior) in guarding U.S. prisoners of war (POW's) in the northern SRV. During this period, the MJD was tasked with providing physical protection for U.S. POW detention facilities, such as the Son Tay facility. It had no jurisdiction over the central Hoa Lo Prison in Hanoi, which was guarded by, and under the administration of, the Ministry of Public Security. Although the MJD provided external guard forces for other U.S. POW detention facilities, the internal administration of these facilities was under the Ministry of Public Security, which maintained U.S. POW records and directed the interrogation of U.S. POW's." (34)

The Political Security Department also maintained offices in each province, with increased manning in areas with high rates of incidents involving U.S. personnel, such as Ha Dong, Hai Phong, Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, and Quang Binh. According to the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, the combined efforts of teh MPS and MND resulted in a very efficient system for recovering and storing U.S. remains and personal effects. A 1991 memo of the lab indicated that "CILHI had prepared a bar chart displaying the number of identified received during official repatriations from the SRV since March 1973, with contrasting bars showing the number of remains exhibiting some evidence of storage. The chart and supporting statistics were as of 31 January 1991. The total number of identified remains was 260; the total number showing evidence of storage was 158." (35)

After reviewing all available information concerning Vietnam's handling of the remains issue, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) produced a detailed report outlining the U.S. Government's expectations for cooperation on the part of the Vietnamese in unilaterally turning over both remains and records. This study incorporated information obtained from defectors involved with processing or storage of remains, scientific analysis of remains, wartime interrogation reports, wartime captured document translation and analysis reports, and a detailed survey undertaken by the highly respected Joint Casualty Resolution Center (JCRC), indicating that 1485 remains could be recovered and repatriated by the Vietnamese, without the depolyment of U.S. field teams in Indochina. <(36) There was no emotion or motivation displayed in the straightforward presentation prepared by professional Pentagon analysts. According to a key point of the DIA briefing: "Finally, our forensics experts tell us that approximately 70 percent of U.S. remains returned by your government show evidence of long-term storage. By this we mean they exhibited minimal bone mass loss, commingling with other remains of individuals lost in widely disparate areas, and coating with preservatives and/or disinfectants. Thus, while your government has returned many sets of remains that exhibit evidence of storage, the information available to us leads us to the conclusion that there are still American remains that are readily available or easily retrievable and the could be repatriated to the U.S. in a very short period of time." Concerning the ability of Vietnam to provide records, the briefing indicated that: "Based on information acquired through original documents, wartime and refugee interviews, and other sources, we have learned that PAVN developed a specialized cadre and a dedicated organization to handle foreign prisoners and casualties during the first Indochina War. That cadre and organization, which appear to have continued to operate into the early 1960's, was adapted to deal with U.S. Forces when they were introduced into Indochina." (37)

Already embarrassed by reports of "warehousing and storage" provided by a Vietnamese mortician who escapted by boat from Vietnam in 1979, and who later testified before a concerned U.S. Congress, Vietnam's Propaganda Department moved to counter the DIA briefing by raising the issue of "grave robbert," and "remains traders." This was not altogether unexpected by skilled U.S. negotiators with long-time experience in dealing with Asian Communists, but at least some officials responsible for the issue sought to give the Vietnamese the benefit of the doubt, and attempted to gain sympathy for Vietnam's position from key White House officials. The President's Special Emissary for POW/MIA Affairs in Vietnam forwarded a memo stating "It appears to me that the difficulties of terrain, the effects of high-G impacts on the human body, the effects of climate on the remains, the errors in location of remote area graves and associated difficulties of finding them several year later, and the questionable efficiency of a reporting system under wartime attack might push the probabilities in the various steps well below that which the DIA has implicitly assumed. Further, I don't believe we have any real handle on the extent civilian scavenging of crash sties and battlefields has disrupted the government's attempts to collect reamins. Simply put, there are a lot of unknowns in Vietnam. Getting remains into "the warehouse" was not so easy as the hearer of the DIA briefing may infer." (38)

Incoming President Clinton's so-called "point-man" on the POW/MIA issue, Veterans Administration Deputy Secretary Hershel Gober, himself a Vietnam veteran and native Arkansan, travelled to Vietnam to observe digging operations west of Danang during 1994. After returning to the U.S., Deputy Secretary Gober began calling for more movement in the normalization process. In September 1994, a delegation from the Arkansas Governor's Task Force on POW/MIA coordinated a "fact finding" trip to Vietnam with Deputy Secretary Gober. After a four day visit to Joint Task Force-Full Accounting (JTF-FA) and Vietnamese Office for Seeking Missing Personnel (VNOSMP) in Vietnam, the delegation included the following in their trip report: "The United States needs to expedite the normalization process with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam at the earliest possible moment. The strategic benefits to be gained by an alliance with this country to offset the influence of Communist China should be paramount in the long range goals of the United States. The Defense Department is apparently hamstrung in its efforts to completely resolve the MIA issue because of the standards imposed upon them for resolution of the identity of remains. We therefore strongly recommend that the President ask the United States Congress to enact legislation to establish a final, definitive, category, with the approval of the next of kin of the missing Americans, to reach conclusions based on reasonable standards without having to depend upon identification techniques not yet technically feasible." In the report, the delegation acknowledged several organizations for making the trip possible including: the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission, the Maybelline Company, Remington Arms, and Delta Airlines." (39)

Mention by the Arkansas delegation of the situation wherein the members came away with the conclusion that the Defense Department was "hamstrung in its efforts to completely resolve the MIA issue," and the President should recommend that Congress enact legislation to establish a final conclusion without having to depend upon "identification techniques not yet technically feasible," indicates far mor profound political insight than could normally be expected of a delegation of state-level officials from Arkansas. A review may shed some light on this particular aspect. One month prior to departure of the delegation from Arkansas, the Military Command in Hawaii held a roundtable discussion dedicated to approaching this same delicate issue. According to the results of the meeting: "The purpose of this message is to encourage submissions of cases through established AFIRB procedures where insufficient biological remains exist to establish identity of the remains. USACILHI is currently preparing cases for submission that will rely on acceptance of non-biological evidence to establish the identity of the remains." (40)

Thus it becomes increasingly obvious that regardless of the amount of hard intelligence and scientific evidence concerning Vietnam's duplicity made available to Washington and Hawaii, the White House has been repeatedly counseled to move forward in the normalization process, under the guise that Vietnam is not only cooperating for the present, but for unexplained reasons is expected to be even more forthcoming in the near term. In order to lay the ground work for explaining this phenomenon the Defense Department has released subtle indications to the effect that "we have previously been operating under false assumptions." This new, progressive attitude has been well received by major American corporations seeking to do business in Vietnam, as well as some aging American veterans of the Vietnam War, who still suffer from psychological problems due to their wartime service, and who now return on "Veterans Intitiative Trips," to heal. However, for professional historians and researchers, who much be content to work with facts, rather than the emotional aspect, a 1987 DoD memo resulting from an extensive Rand Corporation analysis of the French experience in coping with the POW/MIA issue provides a dramatic illustration of Vietnam's coldly calculated intent: "Despite the substantial political and economic concession the French have made to Hanoi since 1954, France has never received a full accounting for its missing and dead. The Vietnamese COMMUNIST government has consistently circumvented and violated the terms of the 19544 agreement concrening the accounting for France's missing servicemen. Hanoi's actions clearly demonstrate that its only interest in the French military graves in Vietnam and the requests for remains by the families of the deceased in in the economic and political benefits that the Vietnames Government can derive from control of these remains. We should keep this in mind in dealing with Hanoi. We can anticipate that Hanoi's objective is to obtain increasingly large economic and political concessions in exchange for piecemeal releases of remains and information about our missing servicemen." (41)

Conclusions:

Although the U.S. Government claims that Vietnam is doing everything it can do to account for the 2,200 American personnel still unaccounted-for in Indochina, this contention is not supported by facts. On the contrary, all available evidence suggests that the Vietnam Communist Party could rapidly account for a significant number of MIA cases, especially the 95 men associated with the "Special Remains" cases, who either died dur to disease or were executed in wartime prison camps, or whose remains have been depicted in photographs released by Vietnam. Evidence of a complex wartime record keeping system indicates that Vietnam could also provide important information on many of the 305 last-known-alive discrepancy cases, as well as crash sites and grave sites.

The postwar reassignment of experienced proselytizing cadre into political, economic, human rights, and veterans affairs organizations involved with the United States indicates that the Vietnam COMMUNIST Party intends to continue its long established process of exploiting U.S. officials, business groups, and veterans organizations. The extent to which this has already occurred, to the detriment to MIA accounting, can only be determined by careful scrutiny of the official and unofficial contacts by representatives of organizations from both sides over the years. The amount of influence that Vietnam's proselytizing efforts have had on postware policy-level decisions made in Washington can only be assessed by comparing concessions made to Vietnam by the White House with those made to the United States by the Politburo in Vietnam.

Resources - References:

1. The Defense Department's agency for handling the POW/MIA issue is called the Defense POW/MIA Office, known by the initials DPMO. Specialists of the DIA working on the issue since the war years have now incorporated into this organization.

2. Known as the Combined Document Exploitation Center, or CDEC by its military acronym, an enormous cache of enemy documents were screened, translated and reproduced on microfilm. The collection currently resides at the National Archives in Washington, DC in Record Group 472.

3. Pike, Douglas. PAVN: People's Army of Vietnam, Presidio Press, 1986, p. 153.

4. "Experience gained in capturing U.S. prisoners". Captured North Vietnamese documents of the Combined Documents Exploitation Center (CDEC) Document Log #02-2090-70, Roll 941, Records of the Military Assistance Command, VIetnam Record Group 472, National Archives, Washington.

5. "NLF Instructions on Treatment of American Prisoners." Indochina Archive, Unit POW/MIA file 12/63, Institute for East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, CA. The Archive currently resides at the Center for Vietnamese Studies at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX.

6. "Guide for Interrogatin od US Prisoners of War, Military Proselytizing Section, VC MR-5", CDEC Bulletin 48,829, Log # 4-1654-72, Roll 903, RG 472, NA, hereafter referred to as "Guide."

7. "Viet Cong Policy Toward and Exploitation of U.S. Prisoners of War." CIA Intelligence Information Report, dated 14 March 1967, LBJ Library, NSF Country File, Vietnam, Folder 81, Document 70, Austin, TX. This document is also located in the CIA's ORIS database, avaialable by FOIA. Due to heavy and often uneven redaction policies, CIA cables are often missing cable numbers and other identifying media. Again, the authors have attempted to provide as much information to the reader. All CIA documents listed are in the Authors' possession. All CIA cables hereinafter referred to as CIA cable.

8. "VC Treatment of US Prisoners of War", Strategic Research & Analysis Division, Directorate of Intelligence Production, dated 15 October 1969, p.2, quoting a captured document.

9. "The Responsibilities of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam Intelligence and Security Services in the Expoitation of American Prisoner of War", Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), dated 17 Nov. 75, page 3 - 7, Roll 513, Folder 31, Vietnam-era POW/MIA documentation collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Hereafter referred to as Responsibilities.

10. Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN) Directive # 165.

11. Responsibilities, page 6.

12. Radio Hanoi Broadcast July 6, 1988.

13. "Special Reports on RVNAF POWs Detrained in Various Camps in Binh Dinh Province". This document can be found in the Indochina Archive, POW File for September 1972.

14. Responsibilities, page 17.

15. Responsibilities, page 18.

16. "Exchange of Intelligence Information by North Vietnam with the Soviet Bloc Countries and Communist China between 1958 and 1968," CIA cable dated 30 April 1973, L.O.C. Vietnam-era, Reel 513, Folder 27.

17. Task Force Russia Document TFR-136-11.

18. "Delineation of Responsibilities of the North Vietnamese Army Enemy Proselytizing Department, The "Cuc Nghien cuu", and the Ministry of Public Security in the Handling and Interrogation of US POWs in NVN", CIA cable dated 15 July 1970, L.O.C., Reel 320.

19. Discussions with SRV Military Police and Criminal Investigation LTC Pham Van Khoi. The information presented is the result of many converstation Bill Bell had with LTC Khoi concerning Vietnamese wartime organizational structure. LTC was a member of Office 22, Group 875, and was involved in field grade U.S. POWs during the war.

20. JTF-FA Oral History Interview by Bill Bell with Senior Colonel Pham Van Ban, aka Ba (3) ban, Hanoi 7 Jan 93.

21. "South Vietnam Liberation Army (SVNLAF) Directive 1/H Exhorting Subregion 1 Troops to capture Many Prisoners of War, Particularly Americans, to Serve the Political and Diplomatic Struggles"' CIA cable, dated 24 Jun 71.

22. JTF-FA Oral History Interview by Bill Bell with former Military Proselytizing Chief, Major General Vo van Thoi, Saigon, SRV, 18 Jan 93.

23. Stars and Stripes, 18 Dec 67, page 6.

24.CIA Information cable, Saigon, Vietnam, 12 Feb 68.

25. CIA Information cable IN 636181, TDCS-314/04542-72, 15 Jun 72.

26. Responsibilities, page 20.

27. Guide.

28. CIA, FIR, 1969 North Vietnamese Policy on Prisoners of War.

29. Thuan Thuy District, Binh Thuan Province Part Committee Directive 62/CT/TT, dated 19 May 1973, MR-5 Party Committee Directive 25/KHBV, dated 26 May.

30. CAS Report, Saigon, RVN

31. "South Vietnam Liberation Army Enemy Proselytizing Office Handling of Prisoners of War," CIA cable, 25 Mar 71.

32. Vietnam Documents and Research Notes, Document #65, Aug 1969.

33. "Intelligence and Security Operations of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Ministry of National Defense Enemy Proselytizing Department," CIA Study, Dec. 1979.

34. "The Miltary Justice Department of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) Ministry of National Defense; Past and Present Responsibilities for the Detention of Prisoners; Past Guarding of U.S. Prisoners of War (DOI:1964-june 1981), Cable, CIA dated 8 Sep 82, L.O.C., Reel 320.

35. Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii Memo, 8 April 1991

36. Survey Conducted by the Joint Casualty Resolution Center, undated, Raymond Spock & Joe Bob Harvey, (Document in the author's possession).

37. Defense Intelligence Agency, Records and Remains Brief, undated, (Document in the author's possession).

38. Gen John Vessey memo for Secretary Baker, Secretary Cheney, and General Scowcroft, 12 Jan 92, (Document in the author's possession).

39. Report of the Arkansas POW/MIA Verification Task Force Delegation Visit to Hanoi, Vietnam September 9-16, 1994.

40. HQ, U.S. Pacific Command, Deputy for POW/MIA Affairs J/30M, dated 3 Aug 94.

41. Office of the Asst Secretary of Defense (ISA) Fact Sheet, dated October 1987.

Suggested Reading by AII POW-MIA:

By the Author:

POWS and POLITICS:
How Much Does Hanoi Really Know?

Testimony of George J. Veith - June 19th, 1998
Before the House Subcommittee on Military Personnel

Testimony of George J. Veith - September 17th, 1996
Before the House Subcommittee on Military Personnel The '1205 Document': Another View

The 'Real' Tailwind: The First POW Raids and the Tear Gas Controversy of 1965 Another