National Chairman - National Vietnam Veterans Coalition
February 10, 1994
We thank you for this opportunity to appear before this subcommittee to express our views on President Clinton's decision to lift the embargo. We thank you for permitting those veterans' organizations which have waged the longest fight on the POW-MIA issue to fiinally come before Congress to express their views.
We would prefer not to be here, because we wish this hearing had never been necessary. We view the President's decision as disastrous.
As many have stated already, the continuation of the embargo is the only effective leverage we have to resolve the prisoner of war issue. Even the minor steps taken toward opening up the records in Vietnam in the last six months -- steps that COULD HAVE EASILY BEEN TAKEN YEARS AGO -- have been Ùtaken under the pressure of our failure to lift the embargo. The embargo had a symbolism far in excess of its pure economic impact. Regardless of the availability of goods and services from foreign competitors, it is clear that the Hanoi regime has placed an enormous significance, for its own political purposes, on seeing the embargo removed. We have just handed that regime a major victory, for little in return.
Our Coalition has strong ties to Indochinese resistance movements, which, in turn, have excellent sources of intelligence inside Vietnam. One surprising thing we have learned is that the President's decision last September to permit U.S. companies to bid on IMF projects was a severe blow to the prestige of the incumbent office holders in Hanoi: they had promised their constituency a total lifting of the embargo.
This broken promise was accelerating the progress of a reform movement inside of Vietnam. We have learned there have been arrests of corrupt officials and replacements of others who were obstruction progress towards good relations with the United States.
That, this decision could not have come at a worse time. Even a decision to partially lift the embargo would have been the last nail in the coffin of the credibility of the incombent dictatorship. Now the prospects for true resolution of the POW-MIA issue, for true political and economic reform and for true friendship between the United States and Vietnam have been placed in serious jeopardy.
This decision is alarming for still another reason.
When placed in context with the management (or lack of management) of POW-MIA accountability during the past thirteen months, one senses that the true motives are to benefit big business campaign contributors, to vindicate the views of the anti-war movement and to deep-six the POW-MIA altogether.
Presidential candidate Clinton pledged that he would make resolution of POW-MIA a "real priority." Presumably, that meant he felt the Bush Administration had not done so. Certainly, if his statement was true, there should have been a housecleaning in the upper reaches of the POW-MIA bureaucracy. Yet, no effort was made to appoint a new deputy assistant secretary for POW-MIA in DOD or to insert a new team. Instead, precisely those military and careerÙÉ personnel most responsbile for the perpetuation of the well-documented and historic "mindset to debunk" were promoted into positions of greater responsibility. A reorganization was announced, part of the effect of which has been to gut the autonomy and energy of Task Force Russia, the one agency which we felt was trying to do a conscientious job; * reassignments, protest re- signations and firings have ensued. In Southeast Asia, the most experienced and knowledgeable field workers in JTF have been replaced; the sacking of Bill Bell is a scandal that has never been adequately investigated. JTF field workers' notes have been systematically destroyed.
As before, progress is measured by the number of crash sites excavated and remains returned, with one new twise: we are told that we have no received, since January 20, 1993, the remains of 67 servicemen. However, this statistic was arrived at by counting all remains as returned Americans in advance of any determination that they are, in fact, American servicemen. Now that access in Vietnam is supposedly readily available, the priority has not been changed to re-analyze previously debunked live sighting reports and to check out their location.
We wish to make clear that there are many hard-working, honorable people within the POW-MIA bureaucracy. Unfortunately, due to the structuring of the work and the prevalence of the "mindset to debunk", their best efforts often go for naught. Further, as addressed in this statement, many of the most dedicated workers are the ones being purged.
Many prison sites have never been investigated. And one exception proves the rule: in response to a live sighting report at Thach Ba Lake, three on-site investigations were performed in 1992-93; it was thereupon concluded that the sighting was a fabrication, because the buildings described by the eyewitness did not exist. A few months later, a United States senator went to the location, and he found the buildings, exactly as described in the original report. He also went to two other locations, where the government had declined to go after discrediting two other eyewitnesses for inaccurate site descriptions. Again, the descriptions turned out to be accurate.
The same debunking process is responsible for reducing the number of outstanding "discrepancy" cases. One example will suffice. In the early 1990s, evidence surfaced for the first time that one MIA had been captured. The Vietnamese stated that he had died of his wounds shortly after being captured (but, of course, have not provided the remains). The man's daughter then travelled to Indochina and met her father's actual captors. They stated that his wounds were too slight as to have resulted in his near-term death. But his case is now off the discrepancy list.
In summary, we have been betrayed by our Government. We were promised a full accounting but corporate profits took precedent over our country's honor bound commitment to its servicemen adn famililies not to abandon them. A movement towards democracy has suffered from our Government's support of the Communist regime and we have lost our best leverage to make the Vietnamese account for live American servicemen being detained against their will. And it appears there is little intention to work towards a full accounting.