Presidential Emissary to Hanoi for POW/MIA Affairs
to the House Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs
17 July 1991
Introduction
Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, thank you for the invitation to appear before the Committee during your annual review of the Nation's efforts to account for Prisoners of War and Missing in Action from the war in Southeast Asia.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to take a few minutes to review with you my understanding of my mission, review the work of the past year, and then take your questions. When President Reagan appointed me in 1987, he told me that my mission was to work with the Vietnamese government to achieve agreements which would permit us to achieve the fullest possible accounting for the Prisoners of War and Missing in Action from the war in Southeast Asia. Within that mission, the highest priority task was to resolve, or shed as much light as possible, on the live POW issue.
Shortly after President Bush was inaugurated, he asked me to continue in the job and confirmed that the mission and the priority on Live Americans had not changed. Our efforts over the past four years have been directed at that mission and the particular priority on the Live Prisoner issue.
As you know, Mr. Chairman, through the years, the Vietnamese government, has maintained that it holds no live Americans. Their representative repeated that assertion during my first session with them in 1987. At that time, I used some glaring "Discrepancy Cases" to illustrate why many Americans did not believe the Vietnamese government's assertion. In 1988, Vice Prime Minister Nguyen Co Thach agreed to joint investigations of a set of discrepancy cases to shed light on the issue of Live Americans. The discrepancy cases officially were cases where the United States government believed it had good evidence that the American had survived the incident in which he or she was involved, and the U.S. government believed the evidence showed that the person had become a prisoner and when last seen was about to be captured. A few of the discrepancy cases involved Americans whom we believed were probably dead, but about whom the Vietnamese government could surely provide information.
That 1988 agreement to conduct joint investigations has produced thirteen joint investigations involving thousands of man-days of American investigators on the ground in Vietnam. Our people have worked with Vietnamese investigators trying to determine the fates of those people involved in 119 discrepancy cases. The investigations have involved very difficult field work, traveling by plane, helicopter, motor vehicle, dugout canoe, and foot, sometimes to battlefields not visited since the war. The work has been done by the remarkably talented and dedictaed soldiers, sailors, airmen,a nd civilian employees of the Joint Casualty Resolution Center and the Army's Central Identification Laboratory. They have been supported by some hard-working, dedicate dpeople in the Defense Intelligence Agency. Abotu 150 people in the Department of Defense are working full-time on the issue.
Major events during the last year I met with senior Vietnamese officials on three occasions to include meetings with Minister Thach, in Washington, D.C. in October and in Hanoi in April. I have also exchanged several letters with the Foreign Minsiter. In addition, and our specilaists met regularly to conduct investigations and to discuss technical issues. Today, as we meet here, personnel from the JCRC and CILHI are in Vietnam conducting the 14th joint investigation.
Our negotiating efforts of the last focused on improving joint investigations, establishing methods to conduct archival research in Vietnam, establishing a mechanism for on the ground investigations of Live Sighting reports and seeking accelarated repatriations of remains. During our October meeting, Minsiter Thach agreed to all of our proposals to increase cooperation and to improve the effectiveness of our efforts. I believe the most important point was his agreement to establish an information seeking team to conduct archival research of Vietnamese accords which may shed light on the fates of our missing servicemen. This information seeking team first met in January and again in March with some progress. In February, we completed our 13th joint investigation which included at least the initial investigation of each of the 119 discrepancy cases. All of the cases have been investigated at least once, most twice, and some three or four times.
At the conclusion of the 13th joint investigation, we and the Vietnamese agreed to assess the first 13 investigations and our progress to date. In preparation for our meetings with the Vietnamese, the Defense Intelligence Agency had an independent review conducted of the joint assessment prepared by JCRC and DIA's Special Office for Prisoners of War and Missing in Action. The review confirmed that we were on the right track in resolving the cases. We met with the Vietnamese at the technical level first to work out our differences. Our JCRC specialists reviewed each investigation and each individual case with the Vietnamese to explain the status of each case. There were substantial differences between our assessment and the Vietnamese Assessment. In April Minister Thach and I discussed the assessment as part of our talks. In the April meeting, FM Thach accepted our assessment of the 13 joint investigations, including those cases still needing more work. Our assessment for the 119 discrepancy cases was:
22: Remains repatriated and identified (5 during joint investigations)
4: Fate resolved; No further active effort; No likelihood of remains recovery.
31: Fate resolved; Further joint and/or unilateral efforts necessary to recover remains.
62: Fate still unknown; Joint and/or unilateral efforts necessary.
Of the 62 remaining cases, some require a great deal of work and others look as though they could be resolved easily. In some of these cases we know nothing more now than we did at the time of loss. However, it is important to note that the investigators to date have produced no new information indicating that the individual is alive. Although we have much work ahead of us, with each case we resolve, we shed that much more light on the Live Prisoner issue.
While our priority has been to resolve the discrepancy cases, we continue to make progress on the other cases as well. Our investigations and research does, in fact, shed light on other loss incidents and provides more information about wartime procedures and practices. Beginning with the 14th joint investigation, we will investigate the crash and/or loss sites of other cases in the same geographic area as the discrepancy case under investigation.
The Vietnamese continue to conduct unilateral repatriations. Nearly half of the remains identified since the end of the war have been repatriated since 1987; 122 of 310 identified remains. I believe our efforts have been the foundation for a mechanism to achieve the fullest possible accounting.
In April, Minister Thach and I agreed to open a U.S. POW/MIA Office in Hanoi. The ofice is open and functioning. The mission of the office is to facilitate archival research, investigate Live Sighting reports, coordinate joint field investigations and provide forensic support to facilitate remains repatriations. For now, we are establishing the office on a temporary basis. If Vietnam assists and cooperates to produce results, we are prepared to man it continuously.
Vietnam completed its Seventh Party Congress in June. One of the results of that meeting was that FM Thach lost his position on the Politiburo. Subsequently, he announced his impending retirement, but he stated that he would remain in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in an advisory capacity.
Although, most of my work has been with Minister Thach, I have also met with the principal deputies, Mr. Nguyen Duy Nien, Mr. Tran Quang Co and Mr. Le Mai. I believe the Vietnamese will stay the course that Thach charted with us in the POW/MIA issue. The degree of cooperation and forthrightness they demonstrate in the coming months will indicate their intentions.
There is oneother significant world event which I think is important to discuss for a moment,a nd that is America's involvement in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Our military forces, coupled with the Coalition Forces, performed an outstanding job. We deployed over a half of million men and women, defeated a despot's army and liberated a people and their country. What is important for us to note here, today, is that we accounted for every Prisoner of War and Missing in Action service person involved in the war. Since I first went to war as a young enlisted soldier in North Africa in 1942, our military has continued to improve its ability to take care of the nation's service men and women. Today we still have approximately 78,500 unaccounted for from WWII, about 8,200 from the Korean War, 2,273 from the Vietnam War and zero from the Persian Gulf War. That dramatic improvement shows America's continuing concern for her citizens. Even though we still have some tough questions to answer about the fates of our servicemen in Southeast Asia, it is important to remember that we did a generally good job of taking care of our people in Vietnam. Also, we learned from our experiences there, further improved training and equipment, and took even better care of our troops in the Middle East.
Conclusion
While the pace of progress has been slow over the years, we are finding answers and accounting for our Missing in Southeast Asia. During the last year we have reached important agreements with the Vietnamese and completed a great deal of valuable work. We established mechanisms for the fullest possible accounting which includes access to Vietnam's relevant archival records, investigating Live Sighting reports at the alleged site with U.S. personnel, and improved cooperation and procedures for joint investigations. The Vietnamese continue to demonstrate a desire to resolve thsi issue and have added some additional people to their investigative effort.
The U.S. POW/MIA Office provides us better access to Vietnam and the opportunity to take full advantage of the agreements reached with Vietnamese over the years. Continued hard work by us and continued cooperation from the Vietnamese should lead us to the fullest possible accounting.