Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you for your excellent testimony. We will have some other followup questions for you at a later date. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. COOKSEY. Mr. Rohrabacher.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Colonel Bomar, is it "Fidel" who had his own car? Is that who we are talking about, the man who is responsible for torturing youAmerican prisoners, and he had his own car that he was driven around in?
Colonel BOMAR. Yes.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Do you believe that if he was simply an English teacher he would have had his own car?
Colonel BOMAR. That is really hard to believe. No, I never did believe that.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. So anyone who is suggesting that this program with the Cubans was simply a program to teach English is ignoring facts, like the fact that "Fidel" was being driven around in his own staff car, correct?
Colonel BOMAR. Yes.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. It would have to be either an intentional ignoring of facts like that, or we are talking about a total idiot.
Colonel BOMAR. Yes, I agree.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. I want to make this very clear. Because this information that he had his own staff car isn't just something, you know; it has to be known by other people as well, right, especially people who might have been looking into this issue?
Colonel BOMAR. Yes.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Do you think that as you just testified, the Vietnamese, of course, would have to know the name of the fellow that they issued the car to, right?
Colonel BOMAR. Absolutely.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. So the relationship between the Vietnamese and these Cubans that you are describing was not a relationship where someone was simply there teaching them English, but it seemed like they were actually in a position of authority; was that not true?
Colonel BOMAR. Yes.
Captain VOHDEN. He was a high-ranking official from somewhere, and the Vietnamese gave him a lot of power to do what he did. He ran that whole show by himself. Because the Vietnamese knew what he did to Cobeil, and they just let him go ahead and do it. So this guy really had to have a lot of power to be able to do that, because I donąt think the Vietnamese liked what happened to Cobeil.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Let's just say, for the record, having been in Vietnam several times since the war and once during the war, let me note that the Vietnamese are claiming that all the reports from every one of the prison camps have just vanished, disappeared. They were destroyed at the end of the war, B - 52 raids, and everything like that. That is an incredulous answer to those of us asking for those records.
Colonel BOMAR. They kept very minute notes when you were being interrogated. I am sure they have records of every possible thing that happened up there.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. They would certainly keep the records of the person that they issued the car to, right? I mean, this is not like the camp commander riding on a bicycle, right? So let us note that the people supposedly representing our government are telling us that they are letting the Vietnamese off the hook on those records. I am going to ask today-we will ask and find out whether or not they have insisted on the name of this English teacher, "Fidel", from the Vietnamese. If they are not pushing the Vietnamese on this, why are they not pushing to get ,these things from the Vietnamese? Why are they offering these excuses for the Vietnamese? Would any of you like to add to that?
Captain VOHDEN. For one thing, there was this guy called "The Rabbit." He was probably the most well-known interrogation officer up in Vietnam. I have seen "Rabbit" talking to "Fidel" so there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that they know. They would have to go to "Rabbit" and ask "Rabbit" what his name was. I am sure "Rabbit" wouldn't say.
Mr. BENGE. I might also end up suggesting that they ask "The Lump," and there are DIA reports of "The Lump's" presence that should have his name in Cuba. There are also congressional reports.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. So we should be pushing -
Mr. BENGE. That would seem be the first person to ask.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Ask about that particular person "The Lump" - they should find him in order to ask about the names of these torturers. We will try to find out whether or not those people, supposedly representing our interest and supposedly representing the U.S. Government, have actually fulfilled that responsibility in a competent manner. You can count on that.
Mr. Garcia, you mentioned something previously - I read something by you where you said that during the war, you were in Central Highlands and that someone had said something about your not using your name, because there were other Cubans around but were on the other side; is that correct?
Mr. GARCIA. No, that is the testimony of one of the members of .our organization. His name is Leonardo Viota-Sesin, and he was in a fire base close to the Cambodia border. There was an American officer in charge of the base, and they had Montagnards working on that base. When he came to the base, the officer asked him .where was he from; he said that he was Cuban, and he took him aside. He said, donąt ever mention on this base that you are a Cuban, or they will kill you. When he asked why, the officer pointed .out toward Cambodia and said, there is a brigade of North Vietnamese on the other side of the border. They have a group of Cubans who take care of all the interrogation, and many of the Montagnards have died over there.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. So there was evidence that the Cubans are not only in North Vietnam interrogating prisoners, but outside of Vietnam. Perhaps in South Vietnam there are some intelligence reports that have been privy to that, that indicate that as well. During the war I was not in the military, but I spent a little time in the Central Highlands with the Montagnards and found them to be very brave people. The word would have gotten around‹these people had their whispering networks - if there was a Cuban person torturing them on the other side of the border. I don't think I have any more time, but did you have something you wanted to add?
Mr. BENGE. Yes. There was Raul Valdes Vivo, who was assigned to COSVN headquarters in South Vietnam. There was a Cuban contingent at the COSVN headquarters, which was the North Vietnamese headquarters for South Vietnamese operations in Cambodia. Ironically, he was placed there by "Fidel's" brother, at the insistence of "Fidel's" brother, and the Cuban also was on the front tank.
When the North Vietnamese overran the palace in Saigon, the Cuban contingent had prestige enough with the North Vietnamese, that they were on the first tanks going into the palace. They had an engineering brigade that had maintained a good portion of the Ho Chi Minh Trail there.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much.
Let us just note, finally, you expected the fanatic Communists under Fidel Castro to have done what you are talking about because they considered that as being their job. You have to consider the Vietnamese did that, because they were doing their job. What we have to find out is why our government isn't doing its job in protecting the interest of our people and getting the word out to the people of the United States. It is either incompetence or worse. I appreciate you putting these words on the record. This is information we need to talk about and call our government to task for not following up on information they knew about, but the rest of us didn't. Thank you.
Mr. COOKSEY. Mr. Chabot.
Mr. CHABOT. Thank you. I can't tell you how much respect I have, and I think every Member of the Committee has, for you gentlemen for putting your lives on the line and having to go through this terrible torture. It is almost incomprehensible that one human being can carry out this type of barbarity on another human being. I think it is embarrassing that our government hasn't done more to bring to justice these criminals, these people that visited this horror on you. This is something that should not be swept under the rug. This is something that we ought to use the full powers of this government to get to the bottom of and to bring these people to justice.
I know we have another panel here, so I will not take up all my time. The only question I would have is, if we could actually deter-mine who these people are - I hate to even use the term people for those who did this to the U.S. Air Force pilot and the rest of you - what do you think would be appropriate if we could bring these people to justice at this time for what they have done?
Captain VOHDEN. You say, what would be "appropriate?"
Mr. CHABOT. Yes. What do you think? If our government could bring these people to justice, what do you think would be the appropriate punishment at this point, these many years later? What do you think we should do?
Captain VOHDEN. What are they doing with Pinochet right now, I would say. What they are doing with Pinochet at a minimum and try him. If he is found guilty, hang him.
Mr. CHABOT. Colonel Bomar, I heard your testimony before, so I was wondering if you had any feelings with respect to that. Colonel BOMAR. Yes, I think he should be tried and brought to task for what he did there. He is a murderer, and we have laws that govern this.
Mr. CHABOT. Thank you very much, and we appreciate your testimony here today. Hopefully, as I say, this will not be swept under the rug.
Mr. COOKSEY. Mrs. Ros-Lehtinen, did you have another question?
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you. I just had one more question, if I might. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Captain, you had testified today that you believe that the purpose of the "Cuba Program" was to prepare POW's for release. I have a question about the reasons that you all thought this heinous program was under way.
It has also been said that this was part of a propaganda campaign. Others said that it was a psychological experiment linked to the university at Hanoi, and still others say that it was used as a method to test interrogation techniques. Could it have been a combination of all of these? Please elaborate, if you might, on what you believe to have been the role of these torturers; why bring these three in, rather than Vietnamese interrogators; and why did the Vietnamese allow them such access to our U.S. pilots.
Captain VOHDEN. I think they wanted to release some prisoners about the time this program started. I think this "surrender" program was like, you have a child; you want the child to do something, and you spank that kid to make him do what you want him to do.
There may have been some guys in the program who surrendered without being tortured, but they wanted you to surrender. So, after we all had surrendered, we started to get a few extra cigarettes a day. He brought us tea in the morning. We got a chess set. He gave me a cigar to smoke. He gave us these extra-special things to make us feel good. Then he started moving more and more guys into the room. So that, if we were released, we could say, yeah, we were with a bunch of guys?
Another thing he did, he forced us to carve things, little wooden toys and things like this. This would be used to show our remorse, and we could give these to the Vietnamese people. Everything to make us look good if we were released. Another thing we did, we built a fish pond; we dug a big hole, and they put fish in it to help the Vietnamese people. Then that last day when the announcement came that the POW's were going to be released, they came down and cut our wires so we couldn't hear it. So I think all these reasons indicate to me that it was a release program.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Colonel?
Colonel BOMAR. I agree that we were there for more than Vietnamese propaganda. It was a bigger thing to me, as I stated, whether it was the Tet Offensive or whether it was this meeting in Havana. There was more to this "Fidel" program. But I think it was also, as you said, it could have been techniques that they could use to break Americans or prisoners. You listed several reasons, and every one seemed to fit. They could all have been, but I think release may have been a possibility, although I donąt think they would have released me.
Captain VOHDEN. Could I add something?
I think they were just looking for someone in the group who potentially might be released. Another thing, when we had quizzes, "Fidel" talked about the war and about going home all the time. He showed us pictures of fashion models in Magazines. He talked about our wives and families. We saw articles in Time and Newsweek magazine. He tried every argument in the book to convince us that the U.S. war was wrong. He did a lot of these things. Again, this helped me to form my opinion.
Mr. BENGE. In my research report, there is a copy of an FBI report that gives the name of a Cuban gentleman who went to Hanoi and coincides with the exact time that the "Cuba Program" stopped. It coincides with the exact time that the outside Cuban showed up at the camp and the program was shut down, and in that FBI report it says that this man was going to gather this information for this second symposium on war crimes trials. It is a very interesting, interesting piece, and it fits exactly right with the timing that the program was shut down.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I would ask that Chairman Gilman's letter, dated November 1st, to Louis Freeh, the Director of the FBI, be made a part of our record, indicating that he would like the FBI's cooperation, especially as it relates to the new partners that we have in Eastern Europe and the new Soviet Republics and elsewhere, former Communist regimes that are now moving further toward democracy, who have opened up many of their records. We would like for the FBI to work with our new allies to look at those files and ask the individuals there for help in discovering who these three torturers were and identifying them. I ask that it be made a part of the record.
[The information referred to appears in the appendix.]
Mr. COOKSEY. Without objection.
Again, you have been excellent witnesses, and again, this is a story that needs to be told. Today we find time to investigate the war criminals that have committed similar crimes in the Balkans just in very recent history and very recent memory. But this world also has time to investigate the people that committed war crimes in World War II. Stalin, he probably killed more people than anyone else, also Hitler and his henchmen. Vietnam is recent memory for those of us that were in the military at the time. This is something that should be pursued, too, no matter what the politics of it is. I think that it is interesting to observe who is here today and who is not here today at this hearing. I know that two of you were on active duty in the military at the time. You were Cold War warriors in what was probably the Third World War, and you did win ultimately that war by standing up to this Communist threat. Those records that my colleague just referred to are out there; they are out there in some recent publications.
But, going back to the time that we were all in the military- Air Force, Navy, Army, whatever-we had incompetent leadership in the executive branch of government at that time. According to David Halberstam's book, "The Best and the Brightest," the people that were in Johnson's Cabinet were incompetent as well and were responsible for some real dumb things that were done in fighting the air war in Vietnam. If you want to get a good look at that period, I would encourage you to read a book, "The Tragedy of the Soviet Period," written by Martin Malia. It was written by a UC-Berkeley professor. I know you made a comment about a UC-Berkeley professor, but this is a book I would encourage you to read.
There is another book, "The Black Book of Communism." Where you can go back and find out what really went on. These records are available.
Again, I want to thank you for coming, for being here today. I feel very strongly that this should be pursued. Again, you have been excellent witnesses. We will move on to the next panel. Thank you very much.
Mr. COOKSEY. Our second panel is made up of two individuals who are former military officers, former United States Army officers, and they are now at the Department of Defense. The first is Mr. Robert Jones, who has served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Prisoner of War-Missing Personnel Affairs since May 1998. Mr. Jones is a decorated two-tour Vietnam combat veteran; he is also a disabled veteran. Previously, Mr. Jones was a Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for Public and Inter-governmental Affairs in the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Mr. Robert Destatte is a Technical Adviser to the Deputy Assistant Secretary. Mr. Destatte is the Chief Analyst of the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office. So we are delighted to have you here. I feel that you both can speak with some authority because you are both veterans, Vietnam veterans, and have a major responsibility for looking into this matter.
Mr. COOKSEY. We will open with you, Mr. Jones.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT L. JONES, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY
OF DEFENSE, PRISONER OF WAR-MISSING PERSONNEL AFFAIRS
Mr. JONES. Thank you. I welcome today's opportunity to address the Committee on the roles my office and the former Defense Intelligence Agency's Special Office on POW/MIA Affairs have had in the "Cuba Program," a program whose brutal purpose still remains unresolved. I ask that my statement in its entirety be entered into the record after this hearing.
Mr. COOKSEY. Without objection.
Mr. JONES. Mr. Chairman, DOD became aware of the "Cuba Program" immediately following Operation Homecoming, and we have shared our knowledge with the appropriate agencies and the Congress beginning as early as July, 1973. We have appeared before in congressional hearings on this subject in 1987 and again in 1996.
Mr. Chairman, I truly am humbled to follow this group of former POW's who have addressed the Committee here this morning. None of us can fully understand the trying experiences and inhumane treatment that they endured while they were in captivity. These men sacrificed greatly for this Nation. They are truly American heroes whose sacrifices stretch the limits of one's imagination. Those who endured the abuses of the "Cuba Program" suffered dearly and are examples of those whose sense of duty and commit ment to our Nation was tested to the limits of their human endurance. Thankfully, all of those who were involved in this brutal activity have been accounted for and returned to the United States. The mission of my agency is to account for those American heroes who were lost while serving in foreign lands and have not returned to American soil. Currently, there are 2,047 Americans who remain unaccounted for in Southeast Asia. My office pursues the resolution of those cases by using a number of investigative tools. We have received more than 21,000 reports possibly pertaining to Americans in Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, none of those have led us to the return of a single live American.
We have a robust archival research and oral history program, as well as unilateral and trilateral investigations in each of the three Southeast Asian countries. These methods have, in fact, produced significant investigative leads that have led to a number of resolved cases. To date, we have accounted for 536 missing Americans. We continue to pursue all avenues with live Americans as our No. 1 priority.
As my staff explained in their separate briefing to Representative Ros-Lehtinen, our ability to accomplish this humanitarian mission is wholly dependent on the willingness of foreign governments around the globe to allow American POW/MIA specialists access to their territory, their citizens and their historical records. I firmly believe that any attempt on the part of the Department of Defense to merge investigations of war crimes into our accounting activities may jeopardize our ability to accomplish our humanitarian mission. DPMO is not a criminal investigative arm of the Federal Government. Our mission is separate. We are charged with the fullest possible accounting for U.S. military and certain American civilian personnel who become missing as a result of hostile action. Our mission is humanitarian in nature, not linked to other bilateral foreign policy concerns.
DPMO's role with regard to the "Cuba Program" has been to act as a repository of historical information to ensure it is available to the appropriate Federal agencies. The sensitivities associated with our humanitarian accounting mission clearly prohibit us from any involvement in the pursuit of the perpetrators of these misdeeds. Based upon recent congressional inquiries, I directed a complete historical file review and requested other Federal agencies to provide us with information they may have related to this issue. This is being done to ensure that my office has a comprehensive record of the "Cuba Program" as a historical file.
I was informed on October 29th that Ambassador Peterson has met with Mr. Hung, Director of the Americas Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to request the assistance of the Government of Vietnam in supplying information about the Cuban interrogators of American POW's from 1967 to 1968. Mr. Hung listened with interest and responded that he would research the questions presented in the talking points that the Ambassador left with him. I believe we all look forward to the responses to those questions.
I personally will be in Southeast Asia during the period of November 29th through the 11th of December, traveling throughout Southeast Asia, to include Vietnam. Rest assured I will discuss this program with Ambassador Peterson upon my arrival in Hanoi. Mr. Chairman, I share the same sense of outrage that you and the Members of the Committee do regarding the torturous abuse endured by our prisoners of war at the hands of these presumed Cuban interrogators. I believe that the pursuit of these criminals by my agency has a real potential to disrupt our mission to return our men, or their remains, to their families, many of whom have waited for more than 50 years. I do not recommend my office ta ing such action when it has the potential to jeopardize the hopes of the families of our missing.
I do believe with all my heart that these men should be tracked down, brought to justice by the appropriate agency. I recommend that requests for further investigation of the "Cuba Program" be directed to the appropriate agencies that are chartered to pursue violations of the law of armed conflict. DPMO stands equally ready to continue to provide information to an interagency group as re-quired. We will continue our policy of transparency, making available our historical files and knowledge on this issue. I clearly support the goals for this hearing as stated by Representative Ros-Lehtinen. I will also say that I will be in Moscow next week. Rest assured that I will raise this "Cuba Program" with my Moscow counterpart.
Mr. Chairman, in closing, I would like to introduce a Member of my staff, Mr. Bob Destatte, a senior Southeast Asia analyst, a man who I respect very highly for his knowledge of Southeast Asia. I believe Mr. Destatte can address any technical questions you or the Committee may have.
Thank you. This concludes my remarks.
Chairman GILMAN. [Presiding.] Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Jones appears in the appendix.]
Chairman GILMAN. Mr. Destatte, if you wish you may put your full statement in the record or you may summarize, whichever you may deem appropriate.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT DESTATTE, CHIEF ANALYST, PRISONER
OF WAR-MISSING PERSONNEL OFFICE, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Mr. DESTATTE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, Chairman Gilman, and distinguished Committee Members. I have a short statement. I would like to read it and I would like to ask that the statement be entered into the record in its entirety.
Chairman GILMAN. Without objection, the full statement will be made part of the record.
Mr. DESTATTE. First, let me join Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Jones in saluting the American heroes who shared with this Committee this morning their experiences as victims of what has become known as the "Cuba Program." One of those gentleman, Captain Ray Vohden, and I worked together for a while in the Pentagon, when I first joined this issue. Let me begin.
Chairman GILMAN. Put the mike a little closer, Mr. Destatte. Thank you.
Mr. DESTATTE. I would like to begin with a brief description of the "Cuba Program" on the basis of what is in the written record, which I believe will complement the personal accounts that we received earlier this morning.
The American POW's coined the term "Cuba Program" to describe a program in which a small team of Caucasian interrogators brutally beat and tortured 19 American aviators in a camp that our POW's nicknamed "The Zoo" in Hanoi, between July 1967 and August 1968. One of those POW's, as we heard earlier today, U.S. Air Force Major Earl Cobeil, eventually died from those beatings. The Caucasian interrogators spoke English fluently, but with a Spanish accent. They spoke knowledgeably about Central America and the United States. In an exchange with one of our POWąs, a Vietnamese guard referred to the Caucasian interrogators as Cubans. These and other factors led many of the POW's and analysts, including myself, to believe that the interrogators were Cubans, possibly Cubans who had lived in the United States. The POW's nicknamed the chief Caucasian interrogator "Fidel." They nicknamed his principal assistant "Chico." several days before the program ended, a third man the POW's nicknamed variously "Pancho" and "Garcia" appeared to replace "Fidel." The POW's, as we heard earlier, observed another man who might have been Cuban working as an electrical technician in the POW camp during the closing months of the program. They also heard the voice of a woman they believed was Cuban on the camp radio for about two weeks near the end of the program.
The DOD first learned about the "Cuba Program" in March, 1973 when the reports of the first post-homecoming debriefings began arriving in the Defense Intelligence Agency's Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Office. By March 1973, nearly two weeks before the last POW was released, the DIA's POW/MIA Office had brought this issue to the attention of senior Department of Defense officials; and by the 23rd of March, the U.S. Government had established a coordinated effort to learn the identity of the Cubans. That effort involved the Defense Intelligence Agency, each of the armed services, the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee's chief investigator, among others. In April, 1974, a little over a year later, the CIA informed the DIA that CIA analysts had tentatively identified the interrogator, nicknamed "Fidel", as one Luis Perez, also known as Luis Perez Jaen, a captain in the Cuban Ministry of Interior. This captain was in Hanoi during the "Cuba Program", had a history of interrogating foreigners in Cuba, and was in the U.S. during 1956 and 1957, buying and shipping arms to Cuba; and he possessed most of the physical and personality traits of "Fidel" that our POW's had described. The CIA provided DIA a copy of a photograph of Luis Perez Jaen that was published in the Cuban newspaper, Oriente, on 25 February 1959. The photograph, which we have shared with the Committee depicts Perez Jaen wearing a military cap and a full beard.
Between November, 1975 and mid-1976, U.S. Air Force investigators ,asked seven victims of the "Cuba Program" to examine this, photograph of Luis Perez Jaen. Six of these men could not state positively that he was the interrogator they nicknamed "Fidel" primarily because the photograph depicts him wearing a full beard. One of the seven, Colonel Donald Waltman, wrote in a 1976 note, to a U.S. Air Force investigator, quote, "I say, yes, that is 'Fidel', or at least a guy who looks too much like him. I have to try to imagine him clean shaven, and when I do, it is him. Maybe because I would like to ID him so damn bad. It is the most look-alike 'Fidel' picture I have seen," end quote.
Also in April, 1974, the CIA informed the DIA that "Chico" might ,be a Cuban named Veiga, whose first name they did not know, an employee of the Cuban Department of State Security. Reportedly, Veiga had studied at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1958 and 1959. An extensive followup investigation by U.S. Air Force investigators failed to confirm the identity of this person. Other names have been suggested over the years; however, subsequent investigations either ruled them out or proved inconclusive.
For example, the DIA POW/MIA Office provided historical information about the "Cuba Program" to the FBI when it investigated a 1987 report that a Cuban employee of the United Nations might be one of the Cuban interrogators. The FBI worked closely with returned POW's in that investigation. Captain Vohden described the three days he spent going over photos associated with that investigation. However, the POW's could not positively identify the Cuban at the United Nations as one of the men who tortured them in Hanoi.
Recent news stories suggest that the Cuban Minister of Education, Fernando Vecino Alegret, is the interrogator our POW's nicknamed "Fidel." Fernando Vecino Alegret first came to our attention shortly before he visited the United States in November, 1978. At that time, Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies examined the possibility that he was the interrogator named "Fidel." We have been searching our historical files for any record we might have received from those agencies concerning this man. Two days ago, we discovered a still-classified September, 1973 report that described Fernando Vecino Alegret as an engineering graduate, who studied at the University of Havana during 1962-65. The report also stated that he founded the Cuban Military Technical Institute in September 1966 and that he was its Director from September, 1966 until January, 1973.
We have not yet had time to confirm the origin and reliability of that report. However, if the information in the report is accurate, there is little chance that Fernando Vecino Alegret could be the in-terrogator "Fidel." Among the names we have received, the two names the CIA suggested in 1974 remain the most likely candidates for the interrogators named "Fidel" and "Chico," but I should emphasize we do not know who he is.
The only information we have concerning the purpose of the "Cuba Program" comes from the American POW's who were victims and two Vietnamese military officers. The preponderance of infor-mation in our files, most of it coming from the returnees themselves suggests that the "Cuba Program" was a Cuban assistance, program that went awry, and that the Vietnamese terminated the program shortly after the interrogator named "Fidel" beat Major Cobeil into a near-catatonic state from which he never recovered. The Department of Defense has kept the Congress informed about the "Cuba Program" from the very beginning. For example, the DPMO's predecessor office, the Defense Intelligence Agency's Special Office for Prisoners of War/Missing in Action Affairs, presented testimony about the "Cuba Program" to the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee during hearings on 2 July 1973, about three months after the last American POW was released. A former POW who was a victim of the program, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Larry Spencer, also testified before the Subcommittee. Later, the DIA POW/MIA Office provided historical information to the Subcommitteeąs chief investigator, Mr. Alfonso L. Tarabochia, who conducted an independent effort to identify the interrogators. I believe Captain Vohden also made reference to that investigation. By September, 1974, Mr. Tarabochia had tentatively concluded that "Fidel" was a Cuban named Pedro Fumero. Unfortunately, the returned POW's who were victims of "Fidel" could not identify Fumero as one of their interrogators.
The DPMO's DIA predecessor office also provided an appraisal to the House Armed Services Committee on 6 October, 1977. More recently, the DPMO provided updates on the "Cuba Program" to Congressman Dornan in March, 1987, August, 1996, and 11 and 17 September, 1996.
The story about the "Cuba Program" is not new. For example, I have with me eight news articles about the "Cuba Program" published in 1973, 1977, and 1981 in Washington, D.C., New York, Baltimore, Denver, and Des Moines. These articles are based on information released by DPMO's predecessor, the DIA's POW/MIA Office, and personal accounts by POW's who were victims of the program.
I would like to comment briefly for the public record about recent press reports about the "Cuba Program." News reports published in the Miami Herald on 22 August, 1999, and the Seattle Times on 28 October 1999, suggested that this issue was, "concealed for decades by official U.S. secrecy" and, "the full story of Fidel and the so-called 'Cuba Program' is finally becoming public,". The same article speculated that the reason the story has drawn little attention is, "perhaps because most POW's obeyed Pentagon orders to keep quiet to protect POWąs who might remain in Vietnam and perhaps because 'Fidel's' identification as a Cuban was then only an unconfirmed allegation by the POW's."
The facts are that the Department of Defense officials asked the POW's who were returning during Operation Homecoming in 1973 not to speak out publicly about the torture until after the last POW was released. The last POW was released on 1 April 1973; the first stories by returning POWąs about the "Cuba Program" appeared in American newspapers the next day, on 2 April, 1973. Some of the sources cited in these articles portrayed DPMO's role incorrectly. As Mr. Jones stated, we are not a counterintelligence office or a law enforcement office. Our mission is humanitarian. It is to account for American servicemen who were lost while serving abroad. All American victims of the "Cuba Program" are accounted for.
Successive administrations, the Congress, the Department of State, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, the Pacific Command's Joint Task Force, the U.S. Army Central Identifications Laboratory, the National League of Families-literally thousands of Americans have worked hard for many years to build and sustain programs that today are allowing us to account for Americans lost in the old Soviet Union, in North Korea, in Southeast Asia, and many other areas in the world.
As Secretary Jones stated earlier, our mission is humanitarian, and it is worldwide. Our ability to accomplish our mission is wholly dependent on the willingness of foreign governments to allow our POW/MIA specialists to have access to their citizens, their records, and their territory. Suggestions that DPMO should investigate war crimes risks undoing the results of years of hard work and would jeopardize our ability to accomplish our humanitarian mission. Now, having said that, DPMO is a central repository for historical information concerning the American POW/MIA issue. As Secretary Jones stated earlier, DPMO stands ready to share historical information and knowledge about the program with appropriate U.S. agencies. In conclusion, the history of the issue is that the POW/MIA Office informed senior Department of Defense officials immediately upon learning about the actions of the presumably Cuban interrogators. Those officials immediately directed appropriate intelligence and investigative agencies to try to identify those interrogators. In 1974, CIA analysts tentatively identified two Cuban officials as the interrogators "Fidel" and "Chico." Their victims, however, were not able to confirm their identities. We have also kept the Congress and the public informed. We will remain a repository of historical information about all aspects of the POW/MIA issue and remain ready to share that historical information with appropriate Federal intelligence and investigative offices. However, as Secretary Jones stated earlier, we believe that DPMO should not become involved in efforts to investigate the pro-gram and jeopardize our accounting mission. I am ready to respond to questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Destatte appears in the appendix.]
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much. There were several Vietnamese interrogators at "The Zoo," as we had heard from the POW's, "Spot," "Rabbit," "Elf," in addition to the camp commander who we discussed in the previous panel known as "The Lump." Have any attempts been made by DOD or any other U.S. agency to question these individuals in order to try to obtain further information about these Cuban torturers?
Mr. DESTATTE. I personally asked the interrogator whom Captain Vohden and Colonel Bomar call "The Rabbit" about this program. While he acknowledged that these men were Cubans, he did not provide the names, and I donąt know of any other efforts.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. So he said they were Cubans.
Mr. DESTATTE. I don't recall the exact words of the conversation, but it was during a formal interview. My memory is that I mentioned to him that several of our returned POWąs described having been interrogated by Cubans at the POW camp the Americans called "The Zoo," and that the Vietnamese called Nga Tu So.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. When did this conversation take place?
Mr. DESTATTE. This conversation took place-I would have to check my notes-in the early 1990's, sometime in 1992.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. We will followup on that. Thank you. Without actually revealing the details since the report is still classified, do you know the origin, the author, the source of the information in the CIA report on the "Cuba Program" and the two men mentioned in the CIA report, "Fidel" and "Chico," as possibly being Cuban agents, part of Castroąs Ministry of Interior. Was any followup done to this CIA report?
Mr. DESTATTE. There was followup. The CIA report included, as an enclosure, a 1959 photograph of the Cuban their analysts believe was "Fidel." The Air Force, Air Force investigator showed that photograph to seven of the victims of the program. Six of those men stated that they were unable to confirm that this was "Fidel." The seventh, as I mentioned in my statement, Colonel Waltman, believed that it was "Fidel," or at least the most look-alike photograph he had seen of "Fidel."
Other persons have looked at that photograph. As a matter of fact, at the close of the last panel, I asked Colonel Carpenter, who was sitting behind the table here, and Captain Vohden again about that, and they were quite insistent this is not "Fidel." So I suppose, parenthetically, our experience has been that making identifications of persons from photographs is a very uncertain endeavor. It is unlikely to yield conclusive results.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Jones, you had said in your testimony that you will soon be in Vietnam, in just a few days. In our dealings with the Vietnamese, particularly in recent years as trade negotiations have intensified, has the U.S. raised the issue of the "Cuba Program" specifically with those officials? Have there been any official requests for information? Why or why not?
Mr. JONES. I cannot answer in regard to the trade negotiations because my office does not participate in those negotiations, ma'am. We are fully engaged in negotiating with the Vietnamese concerning accounting for missing Americans. So I am afraid I am not the person to answer that question.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Eliminate the part about trade negotiations. I just said that to parenthetically state that we are in such a positive working relationship with Vietnam that now we are discussing trade deals.
But having nothing to do with trade, what about the many U.S. agencies that have specifically asked? Do you know if yours or any others asked the Vietnamese officials about the "Cuba Program," specific requests made for information?
Mr. JONES. As I mentioned and as Mr. Destatte mentioned earlier, he personally took part in an oral history interview of one of the guards that was mentioned by the former POWąs. So there has been some followup in that regard. However, as we testified earlier, all of the participants in this particular program have been accounted for. Thus, the role of my office has been completed in terms of investigating specifically what happened to those 19 individuals. We continue to act as a repository for the historical records related to that program.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Do you believe that the acts committed against the POW's violate the Geneva Convention? If those are found to be true, do you believe that, once identified, the three torturers should be tried as war criminals and that we should gear efforts toward that goal?
Mr. JONES. As I testified in my statement, ma'am, I firmly support the goals that you stated earlier for the purposes of this hearing, and I most certainly believe that those individuals should be tracked down and brought to justice for their conduct.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Now, you had said that your specific agency has a specified mission. What agency then do you believe should lead the investigation on the "Cuba Program" and what agencies, in addition, should be included? Should CIA, DIA, FBI, State Department be? What agencies should be involved?
Mr. JONES. Looking at the nature of the circumstances, I believe that the State Department should be lead agency. I believe that they have an office that is charged to investigate violations of the Geneva Convention and the laws of armed conflict. So I believe that the State Department would be the best agency to lead a review of this program and to conduct a followup investigation. I believe that they should be supported by the appropriate Intelligence Community-DIA, CIA, as well as the FBI.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Destatte, we understand that DPMO has joint commissions with Russia and is working together with former Eastern Bloc countries in an attempt to obtain information about American POW's which may have been sent to those countries during various Cold War conflicts. Further, we understand that television and other mediums are used to reach out to the general population of those countries so that they can help us have information to contribute. Have similar attempts been made regarding information on the "Cuba Program" and the torturers?
Mr. DESTATTE. We have taken a different approach in Vietnam. Let me preface my remarks by stating that I helped open the first U.S. office in Vietnam after the war in 1991, and worked over there for the American POW/MIA Office which we opened in mid-1991. One of the first things we did was put together a program where we visited each of the military region headquarters and each of the province headquarters and delivered to each of those headquarters information about Americans who were lost in their respective areas, requesting their support in finding witnesses, finding documents and otherwise accounting for the men who were lost in those regions.
We have also since 1988, approximately 5 times a year, sent for a month at a time approximately 100 Americans, mostly active duty military personnel, into Vietnam. They break down into small teams of varying sizes, they fan out through the country looking for information or excavating crash sites or grave sites that were discovered during earlier investigations. I believe that it would be difficult to find a single village in Vietnam that has not been visited at least once by one of our teams. I think it would be almost impossible to find an adult citizen of Vietnam who is not aware of our keen interest in accounting for our people.
So we have taken a different approach in Vietnam than the Joint Commission is taking in Russia. I believe we have covered the country very effectively, and I believe the results that we have seen in recent years of this approach demonstrates the effectiveness of that approach.
Mr. JONES. If I might add to that, I will be traveling to Moscow on Sunday. I will be in Moscow through the 10th of November. Rest assured that I will raise this at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and with the Russian with whom I will be meeting.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you, Mr. Jones. Have you had a chance to look at Ambassador Peterson's letter that we just received this morning? You will be following up with him and other officials in Vietnam on this issue?
Mr. JONES. I am hopeful, ma'am, that we will have a response from the Vietnamese before I get to Vietnam. But if we do not, rest assured that I will speak to the Ambassador in regard to this program.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. One last question: Are you aware of reports which state that the suspect that the CIA believes to be "Fidel" was in the U.S. and involved in smuggling arms to Castro in the 1950's; and did you know that both Alegret and Jaen were in the United States at the same time, and this comes from Alegret by his own admission as quoted in a book that was published by the Castro regime?
We want to note, if there is any followup that you know of on this data, was it used to trying to discern which of the two was in fact "Fidel," if any; and given that Alegret and the one whom the CIA believes to be "Chico" were in Louisiana and other U.S. locations at the same time, were there any efforts to determine whether Alegret was actually "Chico," and that the name that the CIA had for "Chico" was an alias? What attempts have been made to followup on any of these bits of information?
Mr. DESTATTE. I don't know that we have. I know that we do not have a comprehensive record of all the actions that were taken because, as I mentioned earlier, we were not the investigators. The investigations were conducted by the Air Force, by the other service agencies-the FBI, CIA, et cetera.
The document that I mentioned to you earlier this morning recognizes that there are unconfirmed reports that Alegret attended high school in the United States. Given his age, I believe his date of birth is 1939, I graduated from high school in 1957, and I was born in 1939. So he was in the United States at conceivably the same time as Jaen, but under different circumstances. But that is just speculation on my part. I don't know what efforts were made by other agencies.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. I think it is clear that since this first was looked at at this point in time a lot of new information has come out, a lot of new testimony, declassified papers, new information that could help us to identify these individuals; and certainly an interagency task force would be one of the ways to get at this information. We hope that that comes about. I would like to recognize Mr. Rohrabacher for questions.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. Now, Mr. Destatte, you asked one of the guards--
Mr. DESTATTE. Not a guard, he was a--
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Interrogator.
Mr. DESTATTE. He was a commissioned officer. He described him-self as an interpreter. POW's described him as an interrogator.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. You asked him about whether or not the other interrogators were Cuban, and the answer was?
Mr. DESTATTE. I described the program in a sentence or two-my memory is that I described it in a sentence or two and asked him to comment on it. In response, he referred to them as Cubans. Now, whether he was following my lead or whether that was confirmation, I leave that up to your judgment.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. This was a formal interview, you said. That is how you described it?
Mr. DESTATTE. Yes.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. You recorded this interview?
Mr. DESTATTE. I don't recall whether we recorded that interview or not. I know typically when I write a report I usually record over the interview tapes in any event.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. You record over the interview tapes after you have conducted a formal interview?
Mr. DESTATTE. The purpose of the recording the interview in most instances is to aid in report writing.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. I am a little fascinated by that. You are saying that of your formal interviews, you actually don't keep records of them then?
Mr. DESTATTE. That is not what I said.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. It sounds like what you are telling me is that you record over the tapes when you do-I am just requesting you to send that tape and that interview to me.
Mr. DESTATTE. If I have the tape.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Seeing that you just said you record over the interviews, perhaps that will be a good excuse for not sending me the tape. But if you have it, I am making a formal request, Madam Chairman, from this Committee; and we will confirm this with the Chairman of the Committee, that this is a formal request from the Committee.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher. We will pass that on to the Chairman, and I am sure that he will work with you on that.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. I would like the notes and the tape that you have from that interview. During that interview you said you asked about the names, but he wouldnąt tell. Is that what you said?
Mr. DESTATTE. Did not tell me.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. What year was this interview?
Mr. DESTATTE. June, 1992.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. June, 1992.
Mr. DESTATTE. I might add that the document that I just consulted for that date is part of the official record of the 17 September 1996 hearing held by Congressman Dornan. You can find that document.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. All right. I am not just asking for the document; I am asking for that tape, and if the tape still exists--
Mr. DESTATTE. As I told you, Congressman, that was several years ago. I do not know whether I have that specific tape or not. I told you that routinely when I use a tape recorder, which is not in all cases, I use the tape recorder only to assist me in writing my report. When I finish writing the report, typically I record over that. I will have to consult our files at the office to know whether or not I retained a copy of that tape.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. That is fine. It just doesn't seem that that is a very professional way to handle--
Mr. DESTATTE. Sir, I resent your implications that I am being less than honest with you.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. You may resent anything you want. I am here to ask questions. If you resent those questions--
Mr. DESTATTE. Sir, I came here to provide accurate information.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. How long have you been in the position that you are in today with this POW/MIA issue?
Mr. DESTATTE. I joined this issue in September 1979.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Is it normal that they have someone who is an employee of the Department of Defense at the same job for as long as that?
Mr. DESTATTE. I don't know what is "normal" in that respect.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. You don't know what is normal policy for the Department of Defense where you have worked for all those years? You havenąt noticed that other jobs seem to be rotating, but you seem to be staying in the same spot?
Mr. DESTATTE. I don't know your point.
Mr. JONES. Mr. Rohrabacher, rest assured, as soon as we return to the office, we will ascertain if the documents and the tape that you are requesting are in fact part of our files. I will do everything to personally ensure that you receive those documents.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you. Was this the first time that you testified that we knew the day after the prisoners got back that there was a Cuban interrogation program? Was this the first time, in your interview in 1992, that a Vietnamese was officially asked about the "Cuba Program"?
Mr. DESTATTE. Let me repeat, our mission is to account for missing personnel.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Yes.
Mr. DESTATTE. The purpose of my interview that day was to gather information that would lead to an accounting for our personnel. Out of personal curiosity on this particular issue, the "Cuba Program," I took advantage of the opportunity to ask that question.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. You don't believe that perhaps-we have a picture of a gentleman who is murdered under interrogation by these Cubans; you donąt think that there might perhaps be another American that was unaccounted for that might have been murdered by the same program that we donąt know about and that maybe that is your job?
Mr. DESTATTE. That assertion rests on the preposterous notion that the 19 survivors of that program either, failed to know about this alleged other prisoner, or knowing about it, failed to tell about it when they came home.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Is it preposterous to say then that there is information about this program that those 19 prisoners may not know about?
Mr. DESTATTE. No, I didn't say that.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. That is what it sounds like you are saying. Is it preposterous, for example, that the Vietnamese kept Ambassador Peterson, when he was a POW, totally isolated from the other POW's for the first three years of his captivity? Is that a preposterous suggestion?
Mr. DESTATTE. Are you familiar with the record?
Mr. ROHRABACHER. No other POW knew that Congressman Peterson was being held captive during those first three years; is that preposterous?
Mr. DESTATTE. How does that relate to our discussion here?
Mr. ROHRABACHER. It relates to it because you have a situation with interrogators from Cuba who may have information about prisoners that is not being followed up on by you, and it is your job to followup on it. It is your job to determine if there are any MIAąs out there.
Mr. DESTATTE. Are you suggesting then that there was a secret POW camp system or something of that nature?
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well--
Mr. DESTATTE. I truly don't understand your question.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. I will tell you. I will tell what you my question is. My question is, is there any evidence that perhaps some MIA's or people who were MIA were being held during that time period and were actually POW's, and the information was not available to the rest of the prisoners or to the United States Government?
Mr. DESTATTE. I believe that we know the identity of every American who was in that prisoner of war camp during that period of time, and that all of those prisoners are accounted for.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. That was a really good answer to a question that I didn't ask. It was really great of you to word it that way.
Mr. DESTATTE. I believe that our focus on the "Cuba Program" and what the-
Mr. ROHRABACHER. The point, Mr. Destatte, is that the "Cuba Program" may be a key to answer some information about other missing prisoners rather than just these 19. Now, they have committed crimes-
Mr. DESTATTE. To the best of our knowledge and the to best of the knowledge of the witnesses that have appeared here today, those Cubans were active in one prisoner of war camp, the prisoner of war camp that our American prisoners called "The Zoo," that the Vietnamese called Nga Tu So. We know the identity of every American who was in that camp, and all of those Americans are accounted for.
Now, if you have information that the Cubans were active in another camp, fine. I don't have that information.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Did you ask in your formal interview in 1992 whether there were Cubans involved in any other camps?
Mr. DESTATTE. As I told you before, the purpose of that interview was to learn information that might help us account for Americans who were still unaccounted for, not to learn about the "Cuba Program." The Americans who were involved in the "Cuba Program" are all accounted for.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Fine. Luckily, I have some time to followup on these questions on the record rather than being stuck at five minutes, so your attempt to use up the time will not get you off the hook.
Is the fact that there might be another Cuban prison camp which might indicate that there are some American POW's that you didn't know about, but you are not bothering to ask whether there were Cubans at another prison in this particular formal interview that you went through?
Mr. DESTATTE. I believe that the information that the intelligence services, that the DPMO and its predecessor office, have collected over the years allows us to state with confidence that we know of every POW camp which held American prisoners in North Vietnam and all of the prisoners that were in those camps; and all of those prisoners were accounted for. There is no separate prison camp or there are no American prisoners who were held in a separate prison. The question about the possibility of Cubans in another prison camp is a moot question. There wasn't another prison camp for them.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Not even worth asking about it. Not even worth asking, right? Here you are, the one we are depending on to get this information.
Mr. DESTATTE. No, sir, you are depending on my office to account for Americans who are still unaccounted for. If you want to know about the Cubans, if you want to know what the Cubans did or did not do in Vietnam, then, as we have said before, we suggest that you address that question to agencies that are appropriately chartered to pursue those questions.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Is your office tasked with coordinating all government activity in terms of POW/MIA's in Vietnam?
Mr. DESTATTE. We are tasked with accounting for Americans who failed to return home at the end of the war.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Are you tasked with coordinating the activity of other government agencies?
Mr. JONES. Sir, my office as the Director of DPMO is to be responsible to make sure what we do everything we possibly can to account for missing Americans, and that includes interagency coordination.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. So if these questions were going to be examined, you would have to actually make the request or coordinate the activity?
Mr. DESTATTE. No.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. OK.
Mr. JONES. Sir, in regard to that comment, I would like to say, if you recall, in my written testimony, I did in fact send recently a request to the other Federal agencies to determine if they had any other additional information related to this program.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. All right. Now, in 1992, when you conducted this formal interview for which the tapes may be missing, you asked whether or not there were Cubans involved, and you didn't ask whether the Cubans were involved in any other camps. But after that, you said that they didn't want to give you the names. You asked for the names; they wouldn't give you any names involved. Yet haven't you categorized the North Vietnamese, or I should say, the Vietnamese activities involved with MIA/POW's as being in full cooperation with your efforts?
Mr. JONES. Sir, that is a certification that is required by the Congress of the United States. It is made by the Department of State and the President of the United States. We provide statistical information to support that.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. If we have a question being asked, and you know what the names of these torturers of Americans are, and we aren't getting an answer, isn't that somewhat less than full cooperation?
Mr. JONES. Sir, that question was asked of the Vietnamese on October 9th by Ambassador Peterson.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. It was asked in June 1992.
Mr. DESTATTE. Let me comment on that. The answer to that question does not contribute one iota to our efforts to account for Americans who are missing, and that is not-
Mr. ROHRABACHER. You don't think that the torture of Americans in prisons in Vietnam and finding them and trying to ask them what went on and who it was that they were dealing with would lead to any information that we might not know about who was being held? Have you ever met with the person that the prisoners have called "The Lump"?
Mr. DESTATTE. I have no idea who he is.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. That is not the question, have you ever met with the person. You are saying that you have not; is that correct?
Mr. DESTATTE. That is correct.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Now "The Lump," of course, is a Vietnamese. Is this part of our request to the Vietnamese Government to provide "The Lump" and interviews with "The Lump"; is that part of our request that was made by Ambassador Peterson?
Mr. JONES. Sir, I cannot say what Ambassador Peterson requested of the Vietnamese. I was not present.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. So if we know this fellow known as "The Lump" has been identified, they could say who they think he was. I think that was part of the testimony today-maybe not-that was part of the testimony that they could identify him. We have not made an official request to talk to him; is that right?
Mr. JONES. Sir, I am not aware of the identity of anyone called "The Lump" that was made available to my office.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. All right. So we have a request for the names of the Cubans turned down in 1992 by a low-level person, and that wasnąt followed up again until seven years later, I guess just recently, when Ms. Ros-Lehtinen decided to call some attention here. Again, it seems to me that what we are talking about is less than full cooperation with our efforts.
By the way, this idea, Mr. Destatte, about demanding that people who tortured Americans be sought and be prosecuted for war crimes, risks undoing all the work that we have done.
Mr. DESTATTE. Sir, that is a distortion of my statement.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Go right ahead and clarify it.
Mr. DESTATTE. I said that pursuit of that objective by my office would risk jeopardizing our ability to accomplish our mission. If you wish to pursue that, my recommendation would be that you pursue that through an agency of the U.S. Government that is duly chartered to pursue those kinds of investigations.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. But is not your office duly chartered to task other government agencies with this type of activity?
Mr. DESTATTE. Is it not your suggestion that we do what we have just told you, which is not appropriate for our office, and that is to investigate war crimes?
Mr. ROHRABACHER. If you are an American citizen and American citizens have been tortured and a crime has been committed against American military personnel--
Mr. DESTATTE. There are 2,047 families that are waiting for answers on their missing family member. Our obligation is to account for their missing family member. The mission of investigating war crimes lies elsewhere in the Federal Government, and I would suggest that you would get better answers by pursuing it there.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. War crimes committed against those people, the torture, the brutal torture of American prisoners of war? Is this of concern to you?
Mr. DESTATTE. As I told you before, we believe that we know the identity of every American who was a prisoner of war, and they are accounted for, those who were in the camps in North Vietnam.
Mr. JONES. Sir, if I might interject here--
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Because of the full cooperation the North Vietnamese have been giving to you, what about again making just
one last attempt at this. Ambassador Peterson and several other POW's and MIA's who eventually became POW's, were kept in isolated camps and did not intermingle and were declared missing in action, and no one knew whether they were alive or dead for several years-isn't that the case?
Mr. DESTATTE. I would have to go back and look at the record.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Let me clarify the record for you. Ambassador Peterson told me that personally.
Mr. DESTATTE. I also accompanied Ambassador Peterson back to that very prison camp, and he described for me and the others with him how he communicated‹even though isolated, how he commu-nicated with prisoners in other parts of that prison. So I must tell you, I am not sure that you are accurately portraying what he said. I would have to go back to the record and refresh my memory.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. I would hope that having been active for so long on this issue that your memory would be pretty good, considering .that you knew we were going to have a hearing today.
Mr. DESTATTE. I came here to discuss the "Cuba Program," not to discuss the-
Mr. ROHRABACHER. The possibility that there were other Cubans involved in torturing Americans someplace else. That is what the question is. These people are what I am trying to lead to, of course-
Mr. DESTATTE. Persons were held in approximately-I don't recall the exact figure offhand, but I believe‹eleven different locations in North Vietnam in the Hanoi area.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. That we know of.
Mr. DESTATTE. We believe that that there were no others. That has been looked at not just by myself. Thousands of Americans have looked at that issue very carefully, and there is not a shred of evidence that there was any other prison that held Americans.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. I will just have to say that I am not convinced, and we have other people who are honest American citizens who have looked into this and are not convinced. Some questions don't seem to be asked; they donąt seem to be asked and we seem to be cataloguing or categorizing the Viet-namese as being fully cooperating with us when we are afraid to ask certain questions of them.
Mr. DESTATTE. I don't believe that that is a fair statement. The "we" in this case, I presume, means the U.S. Government; and the U.S. Government has asked the question. This particular office of the U.S. Government should not be asking those kinds of questions.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. I am glad that you are so committed to your humanitarian mission. I think it is extraordinary that one individual has been at the Department of Defense at the same humanitarian mission all of these years, and I think that the reason why there are rotations in jobs like your own in the Department of Defense is to ensure that one person or several people cannot monopolize information and use their own judgment that may be good or bad judgment.
Mr. DESTATTE. There are approximately 120 or 130 men and women in our office. There is quite a turnover. There is always fresh blood, there are always fresh views. There is always a fresh questioning of assumptions and conclusions. But there are also a few old-timers who help ensure that we don't reinvent the wheel every one or two years. One of our greatest mistakes during the Vietnam War was the institutionalization of inexperience, the one-year tour, very oftentimes broken up into six months in a given assignment. I would suggest that the alternative to having experience is chaos.
Mr. JONES. Mr. Chairman, if I might interject at this point, the success of my office, as I testified earlier, has been based solely upon our capability to access foreign countries, their citizens, their historical archives without retribution, to assist us in accounting for the missing Americans around the globe. We have, in fact, been very successful in that because we have not pursued war crimes, we have left that up to the appropriate agencies. As I testified earlier, I believe that such an investigation into the "Cuba Program" should be led by the appropriate office within the Department of State, supported by those other agencies who have the capabilities to assist them in that investigation. I would say for the record that based upon the current evidence on record, we have no evidence to substantiate that there was another "Cuba Program" outside the one that we are discussing here today.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. OK. Several years ago, when I went to Vietnam with Mr. Peterson while he was a Member of Congress, we participated in negotiations with the Vietnamese. At that time, I asked for the records of the prisons that the Vietnamese had of all the Americans, and we were told that those records were not available. Many of them are like they were erased after doing other interviews, I guess, or their records were blown up by B-52 raids near the end of the war. Now, I didn't really accept that answer, and I made an official request of them and asked our government, the people involved in this, to follow through on insisting on receiving the records of those camps, so that we could prove or disprove whether or not there was a possibility that there were people kept without other people knowing about it. Because that information would only be available in those records.
Has there been a turnover of these records to us? I guess I made that request five years ago.
Mr. DESTATTE. The Vietnamese have turned over quite a large number of records. I donąt recall the exact number, but it is in the thousands. Among those records, the only record that comes to mind that fits the description that you have put forth is a record that the Vietmanese say is a record of all Americans who entered the prison system in the North. That has been turned over to us.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. I am not talking about a record of all Americans; .I am talking about a record of their prison system, and I was very clear about that. These people, like every other military or government operation, they kept records of how much food they bought, how much it cost, who was in charge of procuring food, how many people they were protecting and guarding, how many people they were taking care of.
Mr. DESTATTE. I recall you and I had a conversation about that on a bus in Hanoi. I made a memorandum of that conversation, and I would like to ask permission to provide a copy of that memorandum of record of our conversation to the Committee and make it a part of the official record of this hearing. I believe that will an-swer the question for the Committee.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Maybe instead of holding off to the point that we canąt ask a followup question, maybe you could answer the question now, rather than us waiting for the memorandum? Have the Vietnamese provided the information that I requested about their camps?
Mr. DESTATTE. To the best of my knowledge, they have not provided the document that you requested. But again I ask if I might be permitted to enter into the record, in its entirety, my memorandum of record of that conversation.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, they have not complied with the request. Yet we are talking about the Vietnamese as fully co-operating with us. I think I should leave it at that. I thank the Chairman for his indulgence.
Chairman GILMAN. [Presiding.] Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. I appreciate Ms. Ros-Lehtinen permitting me to have the time. Usually I get five minutes to ask questions. I think this has been very valuable for all concerned. Chairman GILMAN. Ms. Ros-Lehtinen.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Just a followup question on the line of ques-tions that Mr. Rohrabacher said. We had a previous panelist, as you know, Andres Garcia; and he referred to the experiences of an-other Cuban American veteran, several of them, who were told that there were Cubans who served as interrogators across the Cambodian borders, a presence of Cubans possibly, and in other places beyond "The Zoo." We have been talking about that with Mr. Rohr-abacher, that line of questioning; and just to reiterate, we believe that is an important area for us to do further investigation and finding out, even though you believe that other POW's may not have been tortured by these other Cubans.
Mr. DESTATTE. I can give you an answer to that offhand. There were two camps for Americans in Cambodia. The one camp was a camp administered by what the Communists called Head-quarters B-3 Front. This was the military headquarters that con-trolled their main force units in the Western Highlands. The other camp was subordinate to what they called B-2 Front. In both instances, these camps were mobile, and the B-2 Front camp moved around the area along the border between Vietnam and Cambodia. Many Americans have returned from that camp and there is no evidence at all that there was any Cuban involve-ment in either of those camps.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you. We look forward to working with you and especially with the other agencies to followup on some of these leads and reopen this case so that justice can be done in the memory of Earl Cobeil, the U.S. Air Force pilot who was murdered while in captivity, and to honor the brave service of these men who were testifying today and others who could not be here with us.
Mr. DESTATTE. If I could ask your indulgence for just a moment, we got off the track here for awhile. I share the interests of all Americans in ensuring that these people who so brutally treated our POW's and, in particular, beat Major Cobeil to death, are brought to justice properly. But at the same time, I think that it should be done in such a way that does not jeopardize our mission to account for those Americans who are still missing.
Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Destatte. .Thank you Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. I have just two brief questions. Secretary Jones, the fall of the Berlin Wall created an opportunity to seek information from our former Soviet bloc adversaries on the "Cuba Program" and other POW-related matters. Can you please tell us what efforts have been made to date to glean information from Eastern European and other sources?
Mr. JONES. Sir, my office has the responsibility for the oversight of the Joint Commission in support of the U.S.-Russia Commission. I have staff routinely conducting oral history interviews in former Eastern Bloc countries, former Soviet Union countries.
Chairman GILMAN. That is still ongoing?
Mr. JONES. Yes, sir. As I mentioned while you were voting, sir, I will personally be in Moscow this weekend and will be meeting with the U.S.-Russia Commission in Moscow.
Chairman GILMAN. Thank you.
Mr. Destatte, documents provided to our Committee provide uncorroborated reports that American POW's may have been taken from Vietnam to Cuba. Can you comment on those reports and tell the Committee what efforts have been made to look into and verify if such transfers did indeed take place?
Mr. DESTATTE. I am not familiar with those particular reports. But as I said earlier, I believe that we know the identity of all Americans who were held as prisoners in the Vietnamese prison system, and I believe they are all accounted for, either through their return, alive, the return of the remains; or in some cases, their deaths have been confirmed, but we have not yet been able to recover their-
Chairman GILMAN. Have you asked any specific questions with regard to that issue, the Cubans?
Mr. DESTATTE. Transfer of Americans-I think in a general sense that we pursued this question in our pursuit of information about Americans in the camps, we can answer that; but no, we have not investigated specifically or focused specifically on that that I am aware of.
Chairman GILMAN. Let me ask that you do pursue that and get back to our Committee with any response you get.
Chairman GILMAN. Mr. Jones, when you travel to Vietnam in the near future, we would like to ask you to make an effort, either directly or through our embassy, to secure meetings with the former guards at "The Zoo" or others who might be able to identify "Fidel" and the other torturers. Would you make a request of that when you-
Mr. JONES. Sir, I will be more proactive than that. I will request that my the collection unit, Stony Beach pursue this task and immediately begin to try to interview those individuals.
Chairman GILMAN. Thank you very much.
Secretary Jones, how many F-111's were shot down? How many F-111 pilots survived and how many were returned?
Mr. JONES. Sir, I am not qualified to answer that type of technical question. May I defer to Mr. Destatte and see if he has the information at hand.
Chairman GILMAN. F-111's?
Mr. DESTATTE. Can I give you a written answer on that? I don't recall that offhand.
Chairman GILMAN. If you could provide that for a Committee, we would appreciate that.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. I want to thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, for your leadership and your commitment to discovering the truth about this terrible "Cuba Program." We thank you so much. Chairman GILMAN. We thank our witnesses for your patience and for being here with us throughout the questioning, and we ap-preciate your response. Committee will stand adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:05 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
END OF HEARING TRANSCRIPT - APPENDIX