Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (POW/MIA AFFAIRS)
Open Hearing on POW/MIA Issues.. as Prepared for Delivery
February 10, 1994
Good Morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I am Ed Ross, Acting DASD for POW/MIA Affairs, and Director of the Defense POW/MIA Office. I am here today to review the progress achieved by the United States Government in the past year on POW/MIA accounting in Vietnam, and to discuss Department of Defense plans for continued progress in achieving the fullest possible accounting.
On 3 February 1994 President Clinton has said that the best way to ensure cooperation from Vietnam and to continue getting information on Americans (want?) on our missing is to end the trade embargo. The key, the President said, to continued progress lies in expanding our contacts with Vietnam.
We believe the lifting of the trade embargo will provide us with greater access to Vietnam and the Vietnamese people, and will increase the prospects of attaining the fullest possible accounting. We expect this decision will elicit a renewed Vietnamese commitment to cooperation, and a consistent level of assistance to joint field investigations, archival research, and special efforts to account for, locate and repatriate remains.
Lifting the trade embargo does not mean that we will lessen our efforts to obtain an accounting for our military service personnel. On the contrary, we are devoting more resources than ever to field work, and we are conducting close and continuing discussions with Vietnam's political, and military leaders to insure that we leave no stone unturned, and no question unasked in our pursuit of an accounting for our missing. The Department of Defense has cooperated closely with Congress, families and the veterans organizations in pursuit of this end, but most especially we have sought to provide our full support to the family members who, more than any other group, have endured years of anguish. We are sensitive to their concerns. We have not lessened out commitment to this goal. Together with the members of Congress, families and veterans groups we are prepared to follow all leads, expend our resources, and dedicate our most talented personnel to this effort.
As you are aware, last July the President set out four areas in which seek make tangible progress in accounting for our missing servicemen. Those areas are:
1. The recovery and repatriation of remains
2. Continued joint field investigations of the discrepancy cases, and continued live sighting investigations.
3. Trilateral cooperation on Lao Border Cases, and
4. Access to wartime information in archival holdings, such as those of Group 875 and Group 559.
Regarding the area of recovering and repatriating remains, Vietnam has worked with the Joint Task Force detachment in Hanoi to recover and repatriate remains of American service personnel. Vietnam has increased publicity for its remains amnesty program which encourages citizens to turn over remains they may have in their possession in return for a promise that they will not be prosecuted, and a modest financial incentive. They have also opened an office in Ho Chi Minh City dedicated to recovering remains of Americans who died in captivity in the South.
Since the President's July statement, the U.S. has repatriated 39 remains, brining the total number of repatriated remains for all of 1993 to 67.
That number represents the number of remains that our forensic specialists have looked at in Vietnam, following joint field activities, and decided on the basis of initial examinations that these might be the remains of American servicemen.
It does not mean that these remains will be identified as those of U.S. servicemen. Such identifications will come as the result of exhaustive, time consuming, rigorous scientific tests and study.
To date, none of those 39 remains repatriated since July have been identified as those of a missing U.S. serviceman. Indeed, of the total number or remains repatriated in 1993, only three have been positively identified so far. A slightly larger number of positive identifications were made in 1993, but these involved those instances where remains were repatriated in years prior to 1993.
To repeat, repatraition does not necessarily mean that the remains in question will ultimately be identified. What it does indicate is that Vietnamese efforts to facilitate field excavations, and to obtain remains in the hands of private citizens, have put us in the position of being able to examine a higher number of remains, and to potentially identify (a) those remains through forensic examination as the remains of missing Americans.
Regarding investigations of last known alive cases, and live sighting investigations, Vietnam has provided excellent cooperation regarding efforts to resolve the priority discrepancy cases and has cooperated fully with U.S. efforts to continue investigations of live sighting reports. The Vietnamese cooperated with the JTF-FA to form Priority Case investigation Teams which are exclusively focused on joint investigations of the remaining last known alive discrepancy cases. Since July we have confirmed the deaths of 19 individuals. Between 1989 and 1992, death was confirmed for 61 individuals. In 1993, we confirmed the deaths of 62 additional individuals, meaning that we shed light on the fate of a total of 123 individuals out of the original priority discrepancy case list of 196 missing U.S. service personnel.
Nearly one hundred live sightings have been investigated in Vietnam since 1991. More than 200 investigations of last known alive discrepancy cases have been conducted. None of those investigations have produced evidence that any American serviceman is being held captive in Vietnam today, and none of those investigations produced evidence that missing Americans survived beyond Operation Homecoming in 1973. Our commitment to the families, and to the goal of the fullest possible accounting, is to continue to vigorously pursue any report of a live prisoner. Because of that, we will never have thoroughly investigated the report to our satisfaction. That involves going to the area of the alleged live sighting, talking to witnesses, eliciting information from the Vietnamese government, all in a process that we regard as sound, credible, and transparent.
Regarding Lao Border Cases, last August the Vietnamese and the Lao agreed to conduct trilateral investigations with U.S. teams along the common border in the vicinity of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The first such operation, conducted in Quang Tri Province in December 1993, resulted in the location of remains and crashsites. Those sites will be excavated in coming months. Vietnamese cooperation during those operations was exceptional. They cooperated in the planning phase, worked to identify witnesses and helped establish a model for future efforts to conduct border operations that will hopefully lead to uncovering information and remains on this group of cases.
Regarding the search for wartime archival information, in September 1993 the Vietnamese provided us with 6 wartime documents from key Defense Ministry subordinates including a 46-page summary of aircraft shootdowns and a list of pilots captured. In December, they provided information on cases involving U.S. personnel who died in Vietnamese custody, but whose remains have not yet been returned. In January 1994, the Vietnamese provided access to a personal diary of a former commander of an important air defense battalion.
The Vietnamese have allowed the JTF-FA archivist to conduct independent research in the Ministry of Defense library. They have granted that archivist access to personal unpublished memoirs of Vietnamese military officials and archival copies of the provincial newspapers, a potentially useful source of information about American personnel. Additionally, since mid-September theÙÉ Vietnamese have provided the JTF-FA with reports prepared by the Vietnam Office for Seeking Missing Personnel (VNOSMP), the JTF-FA's primary point of contact on the POW/MIA issue, on unilteral Vietnamese attempts to locate American remains. In one recent instance, such a report led to an agreement to reinterview a potentially important witness in the context of the trilateral operations.
To date, our archival research teams have processed more than 25,000 documents, artifacts and photographs related to U.S. POW/MIAs. Over 600 of those items have been correlated to missing service personnel. They are filed in the Joint Documents Center in Hanoi, organized at the urging of Senator John F. Kerry with the aim of providing a repository and working research center at which American and Vietnamese specialists, could continue their painstaking efforts to search archives, assess witness interviews, catalogue personal effects recovered from crash sites, and devise courses of action to exploit the information revealed by those efforts.
Thus, the Vietnamese have undertaken significant steps that have led to tangible progress in the four areas specified by President Clinton in his July 1993 statement: recovery and repatriation of remains; continued joint field investigations of the discrepancy cases, and continued live sighting investigations; trilateral cooperation on Lao Border Cases; and access to wartime information in Ministry of Defense archival holdings, such as those of Group 875 and Group 559.
In terms of DoD efforts to organize to do a better job, we have increased the staff of our office in Hanoi, Detachment Two of the JTF-FA, from 4 to 19 personnel. On 16 July 1993 DoD established DPMO, which consolidated the DIA Special Office on POW/MIAs, the Central Documentation Office, the US Army's TFR and the OSD POW/MIA Affairs office. Consolidation of those key functions centralized the Washington-based POW/MIA efforts, and yielded a more efficient, responsive entity capable of rapic responses to interagency taskings and congressional inquiries, and more effective liaison with the families and veterans.
The Department of Defense has put in place the mechanisms necessary to achieve the fullest possible accounting, and the results achieved during the last year demonstrate the success of thsoe structures. For example, last year, as a result of all out efforts, and Vietnamese cooperation, we were able to
provide the families with 5,600 meaningful reports on the circumstances of the loss of their loved ones.
organize, in cooperation with the JTF-FA, seven technical meetings with the Vietnamese to specify priorities, plan future investigations, and request special access to witnesses and archival collections.
dispatch rapid responses to field queries from the JTF-FA detachments in dozens of instances to assist in efforts to define research strategies and courses of investigative action on individual cases.
provide rapid briefings to members of congress and written answers to queries regarding POW/MIA policy issues and operational matters.
In dealing with this difficult issue, we must look to the future while keeping in mind the lessons we have learned from the past. The fullest possible accounting is a process that will be achieved only after many years of hard work. Last year we dispatched a team to New Guinea and recovered the remains of servicemen lost during WWII. We recently traveled to Tibet where we recovered the remains of airmen lost flying the hump between Burma and China. Long after hostilities end, our obligation to the families of our POW/MIAs continues. We cannot and will not forget the solemn promise we made to those who served, and their families.