by George A. Carver. Jr.
John M. Olin Fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies
February 10, 1994
Mr.Chairman, distinguished Members of the Committee:
Thank you for doing me the honor of inviting me to testify, and for graciously allowing me to make this fuller written submission for the record, on a subject that I commend you for addressing, forthrightly and frontally --- a subject of great importance but one that many do not relish confronting. Indeed, many find this subject -- on which there is never likely to be anything approaching total agreement --- both awkward and inconvenient. Hence they would very much like to brush it aside or, even better, have it quietly go away -- which it stubbornly refuses to do, for reasons I consider eminently understandable.
No lingering legacy of the Vietnam War is more contentious or has caused more heartache than the complex "POW" issue, which involves such emotionally charged questions as whether any American prisoners of the Vietnamese Communists were left behind, or worse, deliberately "held back" by their captors -- with or without U.S. government knowledge -- when the United States disengaged from Indochina in the spring of 1973. It involves the vicissitudes and ultimate fates of the 2,266 Americans still officially listed as "Missing in Action" and, above all, whether any of these Americans might possible still be alive. A melange of unpalatable ingredients, this issue has left a sour taste in American mouths ever since the spring of 1973.
This is an issue with which I wrestled extensively at the time and which has concerned me a great deal ever since. From October 1966 until October 1973, I served three seccessive Directors of Central Intelligence --- Richard Helms, James Schlesinger, and William Colby -- as their Special Assistant for Vietnamese Affairs; and during 1972 and 1973 -- at Dr.Henry Kissinger's behest -- I also served, concurrently, as Chairman of the Washington Special Action Group's Sub-committee on Indochina Intelligence. In October 1973, I gave up my "Indochina Portfolio" to become Deputy to the Director of Central Intelligence for National Intelligence --- serving first William Colby and then George Bush in that capacity. My interest in activities and developments in Indochina of course continued, however. Indeed, in the spring of 1975 -- again at Dr.Kissinger's behest -- I accompanied U.S. Army Chief of Staff ÙÉ General Fred Weyand on the latter's inspection trip to then-collapsing South Vietnam and wrote much of the initial draft of General Weyand's report to President Ford.
In late 1972 and during 1973's initial months, a number of government officials with Indochina responsibilities -- myself included -- were convinced that the Vietnamese Communists were not levelling and never had levelled with the United States on the matter of American POWs. On details, I can speak only for myself; but I was certain that at a minimum, they were lying about the number of Americans that had been initially captured or were then being held in Laos.
Also, a good deal of admittedly circumstantial evidence -- every single piece of which could be challenged but which I nonetheless considered fairly persuasive, in the aggregate -- led me to believe that the Vietnamese Communists had probably segregated the American POWs into three groups, and taken considerable pains to keep each group unaware of the others' existence: The first, I believed, was probably made up of POWs who had "cooperated" with their captors, in some manner or to some extent, and hence were deemed to merit a "reward," plus prisoners whose release would do the Vietnamese Communists no harm -- and might even do them some good, in propaganda terms. The second group, I felt, was probably made up of those whome the Vietnamese Communists wanted to "punish," for some reason, and hence were likely to be held in captivity long after prisoners in the first group had been released -- then doled out over the course of ensuing months and years, individually or in small packets, whenever the Vietnamese Communists considered it in their interests to let another batch go. The third group, I reasoned, was probably made up of prisoners who knew things the Vietnamese Communsits would not want the outside world to learn -- such as prisoners with their own first-hand experience of torture and/or who had personally observed other prisoners being tortured, or murdered. Those in this group, I feared, would never be released to tell their incriminating tales to the world beyond Vietnam's borders.
I was concerned that the American prisoners whose existence the Vietnamese Communists were acknowledging in 1972 and 1973, and were on their lists for release, were drawn largely if not entirely from this first group -- not the second, or, even less, the third. Also, as just indicated, I had grave doubts about the Vietnamese Communists' candor, and the completness of their accounting, with respect to Americans initially captured and/or still being held in Laos -- and in South Vietnam or (even more) in Cambodia.
In early 1973, both Richard Helms and then James Schlesinger (who replaced Helms as DCI on 2 February) were empathetically receptive to my, and others,' POW-related concerns, as was Melvin Laird -- Secretary of Defense until theÙÉ end of January. Given the pace of events and the rapidly souring mood of the country, however, the Nixon White House had little time or patience for the unproved and unprovable doubts of second echelon officials or intelligence officers. In the public at large, in the media and, particularly, in Congress, opposition to any continuation of the Indochina struggle was steadily mounting. On 8 January 1973 -- after the 1972 "Christmas Bombing" -- Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho resumed peace talks in Paris. On 27 January, the "Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam" was formally signed. On 12 February, the first American POWs were released, under Operation Homecoming. On 29 March, the last American troops left Vietnam; on 1 April, the last "Homecoming" POWs were released; and on 12 April, a Pentagon spokesman publicly stated: "We have no indications at this time that there are any Americans alive in Indochina." This was not quite an official U.S. endorsement of the Vietnamese Communists' official position on American POWs -- that as of Mid-April 1973, there weren't any -- but to a lay eye, it came awfully close.
At this time, there was absolutely no inclination in the White House or, even less, in Congress to let "nit picks" disrupt this flow of events, or any inclination to look closely into the mouth of the gift horse of the 591 U.S. prisoners that the North Vietnamese did release from 12 February - 1 April 1973. There were doubts and questions aplenty -- particularly about the number of U.S. prisoners who might still be being held in Laos -- but only a credible threat of force could have impelled the Vietnamese Communists to give even partially candid answers to such questions, and Congressional action eliminated the credibility of any such threat. Consequently, loose threads and lingering concerns related to the POWs and MIAs were not pursued. Instead, after expressing its initial doubts, the Defense Department -- along with the rest of the government -- fell into line behind the White House, at least publicly.
I do not want to seem to be making excuses for what the Executive branch did, or failed to to, with respect to the POW issue in late 1972 and early 1973. Nor do I want to be seen as casting retrospective blame on Capitol Hill. If you want to understand why this issue was handled as it was, however, you have to remember the mood in the country -- as reflected in and, also, as fanned by the media -- and in Congress.
The storm clouds of Watergate were steadily building, there was a great desire to "put Vietnam behing us," and absolutely no stomach for continuing the struggle -- in any form. The last thing anyone on either end of Pennsy- lvania Avenue wanted to do was take positive action with respect to Indochina. In some Capitol Hill quarters -- exaggerating slightly for the sake of emphasis, but not much -- there was more inclination to give credence to Jane Fonda's interpretations of Vietnamese Communist actions and predictions of future Vietnamese Communist behavior than Richard Nixon's, or Henry Kissinger's. Indeed, had the asministration proposed using force to compe the Vietnamese Communists to honor their word -- on prisoners or on anything else -- many would have rejected this as a cynical ploy on the part of Nixon and Kissinger who, it would have been contended, were simply looking for an excuse -- any excuse -- to prolong the war.
The Vietnamese Communists were, of course, well aware of these mood trends and political developments within the United States; indeed, they played America's media and its government with the skill of Jascha Heifetz playing a Stradivarius. The Lao Dong never had any intention of honoring the 1973 Paris agreements; for to do so would have spelled defeat. If honored, those agreements would have required the Vietnamese Communists to take power in the south not by the gun but by the ballot box -- which the Lao Dong knew it could not do. After a brisk Politburo debate, however, the Lao Dong decided to sign these agreements as a way of getting the U.S. out of Indochina with, in reality, minimal risk -- since the Lao Dong was confident that the United States did not have the political will, or, hence, ability to enforce them. Similarly, with respect to their specific agreements on POWs, the Lao Dong blandly ignored any commitments they did not want to honor -- secure in the knowledge that the U.S. would not retaliate, or do anything other than remonstrate ineffectually.
Neither individuals nor institutions, particularly governmental or military institutions, relish admitting that they may have made major mistakes; and this very human trait has significantly influenced the U.S. Government's handling of information or alleged information on or about POWs and MIAs that has come to light since 1973 -- by the White House, the State Department, the Defense Department, and the intelligence community -- in ways that have done much to exacerbate some already very difficult problems.
The families and relatives of the MIAs have been understandably reluctant to believe that their loved ones are dead and have hungered for any scrap of information indicating or even raising the possibility that they might still be alive. Unscrupulous, clever and resourceful con artists of several nationalities have maliciously fanned and preyed on these hopes in the pursuit of profit. To make matters worse, a long succession of U.S. officials -- reflexively hewing to 1973's official line -- have been instinctively inclined to denigrate, and very reluctant to investigate, any evidence or suggestion that some American MIAs might possibly still be alive in Indochina. For, now, over two decades, the "POW/MIA" matter has been regarded by six successive administrations, of both parties, as a Pandora's box best left unopened -- and the result has been a very messy, unfortunate situation that reflects credit upon no one.
This long-simmering, politically and emotionally volatile "POW/MIA" issue has recently been brought to a roiling boil by Harvard researcher Stephen J. Morris -- who is among those who will be testifying before this Committee this morning.
Last January, while researching Soviet archives in Moscow, Mr.Morris discovered what purports to be the Russian translation of a detailed 12 September 1972 briefing on the U.S. POW situation given to the Vietnamese Communist Party (Lao Dong) Politburo by General Tran Van Quang -- identified as Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the North Vietnamese Army (PAVN+) and head of a Lao Dong Politburo committee responsible for POW matters. According to this document, General Quang says in his briefing (among other things): "The complete number of American prisoners of war captured to this day on the fronts of Indochina, that is, in North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, stands at 1,205 men...One thousand two hundred and five prisoners of war [are] located in the prisons of North Vietnam --this is a big number. Officially, until now we published a list of only 368 prisoners of war, the remainger we have not revealed."
This 1,205 figure, of course, squares ill with the total of 591 Americans actually released by Hanoi from 27 January 1973 (when the Paris peace agree- ments were signed) through 1 April 1973 -- under "Operation Homecoming." The fit gets even worse when you remember that of those 591 repatriated POWs, only 482 were from prisons in North Vietnam -- the other 109 came from prisons in the South. Hence if the September 1972 figure of 1,205 American prisoners in North Vietnam (as of that date) is /was correct, some 723 American prisoners were perfidiously "held back" by the North Vietnamese in 1973.
Actually, the fit is worse than that; for even if the 109 "imprisoned in South Vietnam" figure was/is accurate, the September 1972 1,205 figure does not include any Americans subsequently captured (prior to 1 April 1973) in Laos, Cambodia or North Vietnam -- including any of the 60-odd Americans in planes shot down during the December 1972 "Christmas bombing" of Hanoi, at least some of whom presumably made it to the ground alive. If the document Mr.Morris unearthed is genuine, in short, Hanoi is responsible, and account- able, for the fate of well over 700 American servicemen -- and citizens -- that it has never admitted having in its custody.
Mr.Morris found the document in January, tried in February -- unsuccessfully -- to interest Deputy National Security Advisor Sandy Berger in it, and released it publicly on 11 April. (The Pentagon apparently got a copy in February from the Russians -- via Ambassador Malcolm Toon.) Since then, a brisk cottage industry has sprung up on both sides of the Pacific endeavoring to denigrate the document's authenticity and/or accuracy -- though if youÙÉ accept the former, the latter is difficult to disparage with any measure of plausibility. In this effort, the Vietnamese government is leading the pack with a frontal assault claiming that the document is a patent forgery.
A number of people on this side of the Pacific have also challenged the document's authenticity, on a variety of grounds. Some, for example, have tried to denigrate the document by contending that it is wrong with respect to the number of American colonels held by the North Vietnamese -- though this argument actually cuts in the other direction. The document says that, in the fall of 1972, the North Vietnamese held seven Air Force colonels -- which, indeed, is exactly the right number. Four USAF colonels were released in 1973, at the time of "Homecoming" and three are carried on U.S. rolls as "unaccounted for."
There are also other indications that if the Morris document's purported 12 September 1972 date is anywhere near accurate, whoever wrote the document was very much "in the loop" on POW matters. The document says the number of U.S. POWs that the Vietnamese have officially acknowledged holding is 368 - -- and that happens to be the correct number, as of September 1972. Also, the document says "in the near future, we will free several prisoners of war from here, in order to put pressure on the Nixon Government" -- and on 25 September, three American pilots were in fact released.
In any event --- to my perhaps less than totally objective eye-- Mr.Morris quite effectively disposed of most of the challenges and cavils levelled against his document. My judgement may be colored, however, by the fact that if the Morris document it authentic, it confirms what I have believed for, now, just over two decades, but have never previously been able to prove. In this context, I was particularly intrigued by the Morris document's assertions that the Vietnamese Communists had indeed divided their American prisoners into three separate groups -- each of which was kept rigidly apart from the other two. The detailed reasons for group assignments were not quite what I had surmised, but the general principles employed were very much the ones I had postulated two decades ago -- when the Morris document was allegedly being drafted.
?In a less personal vein, it should be noted that two earlier sources have, in essence, corroborated the Morris document's allegations about the number of U.S. POWs actually being held by the Vietnamese Communists during the Second Indochina War -- or, you could say, the Morris document has supported these earlier reports.
In 1969, a Vietnamese Communist defector named Dr. Dang Than professed to know a lot about North Vietnam's policy toward U.S. POWs and claimed to have treated some of them. At a 1971 press conference blessed by the AmericanÙÉ Embassy in Saigon, Dr.Tan said that more than 800 American POWs were being held in 1967 -- a figure that the U.S. mission considered a bit exaggerated, though it thought Tan himself was BONA FIDE.
On 17 October 1979, the Paris newspaper Le Matin printed an interview with a Vietnamese refugee -- Le Dinh -- who claimed to have knowledge of live American prisoners still in Vietnam. Le Dinh was located by the U.S. Embassy and from 22-26 November 1979 he was interviewed by Defense Intelligence Agency analysts. Le Dinh claimed that he had been heavily involved in planning and coordinating interrogation efforts against U.S. POWs. In support of his claims, Le Dinh volunteered an accurate description of the Dan Hoi POW Camp and Hoa Lo Prison (the "Hanoi Hilton") where U.S. POWs had been confined. He also accurately asserted that American prisoners who died in captivity had been buried in Van Dien Cemetary, south of Hanoi. During the course of his detailed debriefing, Le Dinh made a number of allegations very similar to ones made in the Morris document -- including the allegation that in 1978-79, Vietnam retained over 700 American prisoners who could be used as an "strategic asset" to force the U.S. to pay war reparations.
For all these reasons, it is patently important -- indeed, essential -- to establish as definitively as possible whether the Morris document is genuine or is a planted forgery, a piece of "disinformation." Actually, there are two things to authenticate: First, whether the document Mr.Morris found in a Moscow file last January --- in a folder of files of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee -- is an authentic Soviet document. Then if it is, whether that official Soviet document is in fact an accurate translation of an authentic Vietnamese original which, in turn, is indeed the text of a briefing on the POW situation given the Lao Dong Politburo on 12 September 1972 by General Tran Van Quang.
The "Russian" question should be fairly easy to answer and, in fact, seems to have been already answered -- in the affirmative -- since General Dimitri Volkogonov, a co-chairman of the joint U.S.-Russian commission looking into POW/MIA matters, has said "it is an authentic Russian document." (The other co-chairman is U.S. Ambassador Malcolm Toon.) The "Vietnamese" question, however, will be much more difficult to resolve -- and no Talmudic exegesis of an English translation of a Russian translation of that alleged Vietnamese original will ever, alone, be able to resolve it.
A vigorous effort to determine whether the Morris document is based on an authentic Vietnamese original, or on a forgery, should be promptly commissioned by President Clinton, personally, than launched immediately and conducted with all possible dispatch -- though it should also be thorough, and not simply "cosmetic." This effort should be conducted by a small team of people, at ÙÉ least two of whom are linguists adept in reading Vietnamese and all of whom know a good deal about Vietnam, are familiar with Vietnamese Communist terminology and organizational structure, have solid experience in conducting detailed scholarly research, and are willing to approach this task with cold-eyed objectivity -- calling the shots only as the evidence dictates, no matter what their personal expectations, preferences, or political inclinations may be.
This task will require some Russian, some Vietnamese, and a little bit of German assistance -- though the fruits of all this assistance should be regarded, and used, with a measure of skeptical circumspection. On the highly- charged subject of American POWs in Indochina, the Russians have their won axes to grind, and the Vietnamese have even more. The Vietnamese Communists, furthermore, regard dissembling in the Lao Dong Party's interests as not even a venial sin.
The first thing the "authentication commission" shoud do, of course, is try to get hold of the Vietnamese original on which the Morris document is purportedly based -- a task on which, if such a document indeed exists, the Russians are more likely to be helpful than the Vietnamese. Also -- particularly if no such Vietnamese original can be located, as will probably prove to be the case -- Mr.Morris should be asked to give as detailed an explanation as he possibly can of precisely where he found the alleged Russian translation, i.e., in what room and file of what archive? Was it in a folder by itself, or was it filed with a number of other documents? In either case, how was the folder in question labelled? If there were other documents in the folder, what were they -- and what subjects did they deal with? Under what topical heading or classification (in the archive in question) was the purported translation filed? etc., etc.
In an 18 April Washington Post op-ed piece ("The Vietnamese Know How to Count") that I found both cogent and persuasive, Mr.Morris says: "The former head of Soviet military intelligence, Pytor Ivashutin, signed an `Executive Summary' of the document for the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee in November 1972. A special report for the Soviet Politburo, based on this document, was also ordered by the then head of the relevant Central Committee department, Konstatin Katushev."
With Mr.Morris' assistance, the authentication commission should endeavor to get a copy of that Executive Summary from the Russians. It should also endeavor to see General Ivashutin, if he is still alive, and ask him what he recalls about this 1972 document -- e.g., who did the translation, how did the document come into Russian hands, what was its "source", etc.? The Genera may well not care to answer all, or any, of these questions; but if possible, they should at least be posed to him.
A similar effort should be made to get in touch with and interview Konstatin Katushev (if he is still alive), ask him what he remembers about the special report on the Morris document that he prepared for the Central Committee and, if possible, get a copy of that report.
The Vietnamese (as mentioned above) have mounted an all-out frontal assault on the Morris document, denouncing it as an obviou forgery because at the time it was supposedly written, September 1972, its alleged author General Tran Van Quang -- according to the Vietnamese -- was not the Deputy Chief of the PAVN General Staff, nor did he have anything to do with POWs. The devil here, as usual, is in the details. If the Vietnamese claims about General Quang are accurate, then the original (Vietnamese) document in question must indeed by some kind of forgery; but if the Vietnamese are lying about Quang in any material respect, or even being "economical with the truth," a host of questions come bubbling inexorably to the surface -- and there is incontrovertible evidence that with respect to Quang's career the Vietnamese, at a minimum, are fudging.
Much of the front page of the 21 November 1992 edition of Nham Dan, the Lao Dong Party's official newspaper, was devoted to General Quang; for that page contained an article about him, a picture, and a presumably official "capsule biography." The latter says that from 1959-1960, Tran Van Quang was Deputy Chief of the Joint General Staff of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN). From 1961-64, according to the Nhan Dan biography, Quang was assigned to the Military Committee of the Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN) -- the Lao Dong command entity that directed the struggle in the south during the Second Indochina War. From 1965-1974, he is listed as being the Commander of Military Region 4 and "Tri Thien Hue." (MR 4 is the southernmost region of former North Vietnam. Quang Tri and Thua Thien, in which the city of Hue is located, are the former South Vietnam's two northernmost provinces. In essence, this dual command encompasses what the Vietnamese Communists termed "Interzone IV" during the first Indochina War.) From 1974-78, Quang is listed as being (again) Deputy Chief of the PAVN General Staff and, concurrently, "Commander of the Vietnamese Volunteer Corps in Laos" -- this being, incidentally, the Vietnamese Communists' first public acknowledgment of the fact that there was a Vienamese volunteer corps in Laos.
In addition to this Nhan Dan material, Quang is authoritatively documented (in, among other places, the Indochina Archives at the University of Californai in Berkely, where a copy of the 21 November 1992 issue of Nhan Dan can also be found ) as having been a member of the Military Committee of the Lao Dong Party's Central Committee from 1961 onwards. There is also something elseÙÉ about General Quang's career that merits flagging: In Vietnamese Communist military organizations, particularly upper echelon commands, the "deputy" is/was usually the chief political officer -- and in any command, the handling of prisoners, of any stripe, usually came under the political officer's jurisdiction. Hence Quang's official biography strongly suggests that he was involved in POW matters -- including, by inference, U.S. POW matters -- throughout the Second Indochina War.
Though the November 1992 Nhan Dan biography scuttles the claim made by a Vietnamese Foreign Ministry official in the aftermath of the Morris document's surfacing that General Quang was NEVER Deputy Chief of the PAVN General Staff, if the details ofthe biography are accurate, Quang was on his "Interzone IV" posting in September 1972 -- and if that is true, he is not likely to have been the author, or presenter, of any briefing on U.S. POWs given the Lao Dong Politburo during that month. There is something eyebrow-lifting about that Interzone posting, however; since in one possibly significant respect, it is noticeably "out of pattern." All the other postings listed in Quang's Nhan Dan biography are of one to, at most, four years duration; but the Interzone IV posting allegedly lasted for nine years, from 1965-74.
Particularly where the Vietnamese Communists are concerned, realistic prudence is not paranoi. To conceal the fact that General Quang had been the Deputy Chief (and senior Political Officer) of the PAVN General Staff-- working on POW matters -- in 1972 and 1973, the Lao Dong would have been perfectly capable of doctoring his official biography that was openly published in November 1992 by padding his Interzone IV posting to make it appear that he had not resumed his PAVN General Staff billet until 1974.
This Nhan Dan biography was published while former JCS Chairman General John W. Vessey, Jr.-- President Reagan's, Bush's and, now Clinton's emissary to the Vietnames on POW/MIA matters -- was shuttling back and forth to Hanoi in a continuing effort to resolve outstanding POW/MIA issues and questions. The Lao Dong may not have wanted General Vessey to realize that General Quang had held this General Staff position, and worked on POW matters, during the final phase of the Paris peace negotiations and during Operation Homecoming. Also-- pursuing this line of reasoning -- the Lao Dong may have known, or feared, that the September 1972 "Morris Document" was ticking like a time bomb in some Soviet archive, and wanted to build a cover story against the contingency of that document's coming to light.
To those not familiar with the Lao Dong, these speculation may sound very farfetched; but I am sure that there was/is some U.S. documentation, from the early 1970s, placing General Quang in his PAVN General Staff position in the 1972-1973 time frame. Also, General Quang himself seems a bit tender-nervedÙÉ on this point. During General Vessey's most recent trip to Hanoi to look into Morris document-engendered questions, according to a 20 April New York Times article, Quang acknowledged having twice served as Deputy Chief of the PAV General Staff -- but not, he insisted, in 1972. "I was not in Hanoi at that time," Quang is quoted as saying [and] "I was never in charge of American prisoners of war." This latter claim may be technically accurate; but given the positions listed in Quang's official biography and that he acknowledges having held, he was certainly heavily involved in POW matters and issues -- including ones affecting American POWs -- during the bulk of his career. Furthermore, Quang is a little vague on precisely when his Interzone IV posting ended. Per the just-mentioned New Yokr Times article, "He said that in 1973, between serving as a regional military commander in central Vietnam and moving to Hanoi to serve as Deputy Chief of Staff, he was in East Germany for medical treatment for an undisclosed illness." In short, the Vietnamese and Quang's insistence that he was not in Hanoi in 1972-73 reminds one of Shakespear's lady who "doth protest too much, methinks."
In its effort to ascertain whether the Morris document is authentic or a forgery, the "authentication commission" -- in addition to the actions out- lined above -- should immediately initiate a thorough search of the Indochina Archives at Berkely -- plus all the files and archives of teh Library of Congress, State Department, Defense Department, and the intelligence community -- for all information available on General Quang, and, particulary, for every scrap of information bearing on what he was or might have been doing in 1972 and 1973. While this search is in train, our German allies should be asked to search East German archives for any indication of Quang's ever having been in East Germany for medical treatment, or any other reason, plus -- if he was ever in East Germany -- all available details on the precise dates of his visit(s), the medical treatment he received, etc., etc.
It is unrealistic for the United States to expect any significant help from Vietnam in this endeavor; but the U.S. can and should insist that the Vietnamese make available for detailed, independent inspection -- by American linguists, not beholden in any way to the Vietnamese -- all the records of the "Enemy Proselytizing Department," the principle Vietnamese agency responsible for foreign prisoners. The Vietnamese claim that these records (very conveniently) were recently "destroyed in a fire." The Vietnamese and particularly the Vietnamese Communists, however, are among the world's greatest bureaucrats and most meticulous keepers of records -- a fact that the United States was able to exploit to considerable advantage during the Second Indochina War. It is hence most unlikely that there is not at least one duplicate set of these "destroyed" records stashed somewhere in the northern part of Vietnam.
The United States, of course, may never be able to get a completely satisfactory, let alone definitive, answer to the question of whether or not the Morris document is or was based on an authentic Vietnamese "original;" but in its quest for this answer, the U.S. can and should bend every effort to ascertain whether the Vietnamese government and General Quang, personally, are telling the truth --- or lying -- about what Quang was doing in 1972 and 1973.
If Hanoi's and Quang's current contentions on this matter prove to be accurate, it will be hard to escape the conclusion that even if Morris found an authentic Russian document in the Soviet archives, the Vietnamese original of which that Russian document is a translation is or was some kind of forgery or "disinformation" --- which the Russians may well have initially accepted, in the early 1970s, in trusting good faith. If Hanoi can be shown to be lying, in any way, about Quang's 1972-1973 activities, especially as they related to his involvement in POW matters, that -- of itself -- will not prove the authenticity of the Vietnamese original on which the Morris document is based. Any proof of Vietnamese duplicity about General Quang, however, will raise a host of profound POW/MIA-related questions that Hanoi should be compelled to answer -- to the entire satisfaction of the United States government -- before there is ANY FURTHER TALK or consideration of U.S. trade, aid, or improved diplomatic relations.
Even if the Morris document is not based on an authentic Vietnamese original, the Vietnamese and the Lao Dong still have a lot to anser for. If, however, that document can be shown to be based on an accurate translationi of an authentic Vietnamese original -- whether or not the latter tallies, in every respect, with U.S. records -- the depth of the Vietnamese Communists' duplicity and mendacity with respect to POWs and MIAs will have been proved beyong any reasonable person's doubt. In this eventuality, the United States should go back to Square One on the POW/MIA issue and hold Vietnam's feet to the fire until the whole truth is out. All thoughts of improved diplomatic relations -- let alone IMF grants and/or U.S. aid--- should be indefinitely deferred until Vietnam has answered all of America's POW/MIA questions to the United States Government's complete satisfaction.
Ascertainly the total truth of the Morris document and then relentlessly following up on its implications if it proves to be authentic, in the dual sense discussed above, is something that the President -- as a former anti-war protestor who is now Commander-in-Chief- owes his fellow citizens who answered their country's call to arms during the Second Indochina War. In particular, this is something he owes to his fellow citizens and the families of those fellow citizens who fell into Vietnamese Communist hands during the course of that struggle and whose fortunes and fates are still unknown and unaccountedÙÉ for. Above all, it is something he owes to those who -- while wearing their country's uniform and imprisoned for fighting in its name -- may have died in a Katyn-like massacre at the hands of the Vietnamese Communists, whose cause many in the anti-war movement enthusiastically and uncritically championed, even though the leasers of that cause were then engagedin armed hostilities agsint the United States.
Mr.Chairman, as you and your colleagues on this Committee are well aware, a number of voices are being raised in this country uring us to "Stop Punishing Vietnam" --- the title of an editorial in last Sunday's New York Times. It is alleged that Hanoi has indeed taken, and is currently taking, the steps that the Bush Administration traced two years ago in its "road map" of what Hanoi needed to do before Vietnam's relations with the United States could be normalized.
In this context, the Times cites "Hanoi's Full Cooperation with last month's elections sponsored by the United Nations in Cambodia," plus a fact that on the POW/MIA issue "a bipartisan group of Senators recently visited Hanoi and reported continuing progress." With all due respect to the New York Times, however, I respectfully suggest -- Mr.Chairman -- that we wait a bit before clasping Vietnam to our bosom in a warm, "all is forgiven" embrace.
With respect to Cambodia, Hanoi is clearly not happy at the recent election's outcome, and precisely how it plans to play its Cambodian hand is not entirely clear. There are, in fact, grounds for thinking that Hanoi is giving consideration to detaching Cambodia's easternmost provinces and annexing them as part of Vietnam. In any event, champagne toasts to Hanoi's Cambodian behavior, at this moment, are decidely premature.
In my opinion, similar considerations apply -- with even greater force - to the vexed POW/MIA issue. On this issue, Mr.Chairman, I urge you and your Committee to do everything you can to keep the Clinton administration, in the spring and summer of 1993, from making the same kind of errors that the Nixon administration madea almost exactlyu two decades ago. We should not finesse forcing Hanoi to answer legimate questions about what it has done, or may have done, to our POWs because "higher interests are at stake" -- or, even less, because some of our fellow citizens are itching to normalize America's relations with Vietnam.
At a minimum, Mr.Chairman, I hope you and your Committee will do all you can to defer IMF grants or any other form of economic assistance to Vietnam unless and until a serious effort has been made, along the lines indicated above, to ascertain whether the document that Mr.Morris found in a Russian archive is, or is not, presumptively authentic -- that is, an essentially accurate Russian translation of an authentic Vietnamese original.
If Mr.Morris' document proves to be a forgery -- or even a document of which General Quang demonstrably was not the author -- then there may be merit in the course of action that the New York Times' editorial writers, among others, are advocating. If, however, Mr.Morris' document can be shown to be genuine -- or even if the Vietnamese can be shown to have been lying about what General Quang was and was not doing in 1972 and 1973 -- then all thoughts of any form of normalization of our relations with Vietnam should go on in- definite "hold" until we can get answers with which we are satisfied to POW/ MIA-related questions about which the Vietnamese Communists have been deliberately dissembling for more than twenty years.
This, Mr.Chairman, is the least we owe to those who may have fallen into enemy hands while serving our country in battle as uniformed members of our nation's armed forces--- and that we owe to the families of these now-missing American warriors.
Suggested Reading by AII POW-MIA:
On the '1205 Document'::
Original Translated Text of the The Quang or '1205' Document
USG Documentation Proving The Authentication of the '1205' Document
Discovery of the Document by The Testimony of Dr. Stephen Morris
Submission on Vietnam POW/MIA Matters
by George A. Carver. Jr.
John M. Olin Fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies
POWS and POLITICS:
How Much Does Hanoi Really Know?
The '1205 Document': Another View