Co-Chairman, United States-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs
June 17, 1998
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to report to the House International Relations Committee on the work of the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs.
The Commission was established in March 1992 by the Presidents of the United States and Russia. Since that time, we have undertaken an extensive effort throughout the former Soviet Union to identify and acquire information on missing American servicemen. This effort has taken my fellow commissioners and me across much of Russia and to each of the other newly-independent states. We have held 14 plenary sessions with our Russian counterparts, each time covering a wide range of policy, research and investigative issues. A determined persistence on our part has led to the establishment of a comprehensive interview and archival research program which is permanently staffed by Commission personnel in Moscow. Due, in large part, to their efforts, we have assembled, to date, more than 12,000 pages of Russian documents, many of which were previously highly classified. In addition, we have conducted more than 2,000 interviews with government officials, veterans and other knowledgeable citizens of the former Soviet Union -- largely in response to my television appearances in every republic capital asking the listening audience to come forward with any information on American POW/MIAs.
I am proud of the work conducted to date by the Commission and its staff. In this regard I would like to praise the work of each of the Commission's four working groups: the Vietnam War Working Group, chaired by Senator Bob Smith; the Korean War Working Group, chaired by Congressman Sam Johnson; the Cold War Working Group, chaired by Mr. Denis Clift of the Joint Military Intelligence College; and the World War II Working Group, chaired by Mr. Michael McReynolds of the National Archives.
While justifiably proud of the efforts undertaken by the Commission, I must be frank in voicing disappointment with the level of commitment exhibited by our Russian counterparts in the course of the last two years. Two years ago, on July 20, 1996, I appeared here in the House of Representatives before the Military Personnel Subcommittee of the Committee on National Security. At that time, I presented, for the record, the executive summary of a comprehensive report written by the U.S.. side of the commission. Later, in August, I presented the full report to President Clinton. The report contained the findings of each working group as well as details on the many initiatives that our Commission had undertaken, the obstacles encountered, and the avenues for further inquiry that looked most promising at that time.
No less determination but, at the same time, a sense of increasing frustration characterizes the two years of the Commission's work since we presented that report. In many cases the obstacles we have faced during this period overshadow the results we have achieved. The steady progress we made in the Commission's earlier years has slowed from more than 12,000 pages of Russian documents received before our 1996 report to no more than 100 additional pages. At the same time, our staff researchers have been allowed to read documents in the Russian Ministry of Defense archives and have identified approximately 4,000 pages which are relevant to our work on the Korean War. To date, despite our best efforts to negotiate an agreement, the Russian Government has been unwilling or unable to agree to terms for providing copies of the documents. Further, they are unwilling to grant us access to documents related to the war in Vietnam. Clearly, as Russia struggles to define its national interests, cooperation on the POW/MIA issue seems to have ebbed. In response to this, a continued commitment by the U.S. Government is required. Backed by this commitment, the U.S. side of the Commission and the staff will be resourceful and imaginative in framing new initiatives to further advance the national priority of accounting for our missing.
In part, our energetic interview program has offset the recent difficulties we've faced on archival research. Commission staff representing the Vietnam, Korean and Cold War Working Groups have conducted in Russia an aggressive interview program which has yielded important information.
In one significant Cold War case, a continuing series of interviews has led us increasingly closer to the location in Russia of the remains of a U.S. Air Force officer/crewman on a reconnaissance plane shot down near Soviet airspace in 1960. In two weeks' time, Commission representatives, accompanied by forensic anthropologists from the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, will travel to the Russian Far North in an attempt to identify and repatriate the remains of this lost officer. We earnestly hope for the success of this mission.
In 1996, U.S. Commissioners recognized in the changing political dynamics of Eastern Europe an important opportunity for advancing the Commission's work. After preliminary meetings with local embassy officials here in Washington, the U.S. side of the Commission visited Warsaw and Prague in July 1997. In both capitals U.S. Commissioners and I met with high-level government officials to discuss the importance of U.S. Government efforts to account for missing servicemen and to explore ways in which these potential allies might assist in this goal. I am pleased to report that the Commission's initiative in Eastern Europe has expanded to include not only the newest NATO candidates --Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary--but also other Eastern European countries such as the Slovak Republic, Romania, and Bulgaria. Developing bilateral relations with these countries on the POW/MIA issue have allowed us to begin pursuing promising new sources of information which may be useful in the work of the Commission. Much work remains to be done in these countries with regard to interviews and archival research. We are encouraged in this regard by the recent Senate vote which underscored the importance of these NATO candidate-members as potential sources of POW/MIA information. We look forward, in the year ahead, to a continued expansion of our work in Eastern Europe.