February 1999

Summary of news for the entire month.
For recent and daily news, please go to: InterNetwork

01 FEB 99: 2,072 Americans remain unaccounted-for from the Vietnam War: Vietnam - 1,545 (North, 560; South, 985); Laos - 444; Cambodia - 75; and the Peoples Republic of China territorial waters - 8. 143 Americans have been accounted-for during the present administration: Vietnam - 76; Laos - 63 and Cambodia - 4. 511 U.S. servicemembers have been accounted-for through unilateral and joint efforts. Persian Gulf War - unsatisfactory accounting. Korean War - 8,139 remain unaccounted-for, 42 possible remains returned, 4 identifications. World War II - Over 78,000 remain unaccounted-for.

A former South Korean soldier held prisoner of war in North Korea for more than 45 years and a defector have arrived in Seoul after fleeing the communist state, intelligence officials said Friday. The 69-year-old prisoner of war is the sixth POW to escape from the starving North since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. Former POW Lee Jong-Ho was captured during the Korean War. South Korean authorities in November claimed that about 136 prisoners of war were still alive and being held in North Korea, following reports by returning former soldiers.

"Among the Missing," written by Nashville songwriter Peter McCann and recently recorded by Michael McDonald and Kathy Mattea, was inspired by our nation's missing prisoners of war. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is using this song to draw attention to the plight of these families and sensitize the public to the need for their involvement in the search for America's missing youth.

02 FEB 99: Iraq has told the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) it will not take part in talks Wednesday to clarify the fate of some 610 Kuwaitis and Saudis missing since the Gulf War, the ICRC said. The ICRC statement gave no reason for Baghdad's decision and said the Geneva talks of the so-called tripartite commission would not be held as planned -- but that the ICRC would spare no effort to keep trying to trace the missing. "The Iraqis want to make the point that they don't want to cooperate with the U.N. and the ICRC," said one diplomat. Last week, Iraq suspended technical talks with Kuwait on the missing persons being conducted monthly under ICRC auspices on the Kuwaiti border, a U.N. official said at the time. Accounting for the missing is cited in U.N. Security Council resolutions as one of several conditions Iraq must meet before sanctions can be lifted. Diplomats close to the issue say the Iraqis maintain that they have no Kuwaiti or Saudi prisoners. Members are to organize three panels to assess disarmament, living conditions in Iraq and the fate of missing Kuwaitis. The ICRC has organized talks on the missing persons four times a year since Iraq's 1990-91 occupation of the emirate. British, French, U.S. and Saudi diplomats -- representing the countries who took part in the "Desert Storm" coalition which drove Iraqi troops from Kuwait in 1991 -- also take part. The Geneva-based ICRC acts as a neutral intermediary between parties at war, tracing missing persons and transmitting letters between separated members of families.

04 FEB 99: Russia's secret service has given the German Red Cross files on 30,000 Germans who disappeared at the end of World War II, a newspaper said Sunday. Up to 300,000 German civilians disappeared in central and eastern Europe as Soviet troops advanced on Berlin in the spring of 1945. The German Red Cross is working to match the names with 1.2 million missing persons in its records.

China pledged cooperation in looking for information on U.S. servicemen missing in action from the Korean War, but has not agreed to open its archives to Pentagon investigators, defense officials said Thursday. Robert L. Jones, deputy assistant secretary of defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs, just returned from leading a U.S. delegation to China for a week long visit with Chinese and U.S. officials to discuss ways to resolve cases among 8,100 servicemen still listing as missing. The Pentagon said Jones used the trip "to explore opportunities for access to Chinese archives," according to a press release, but Beijing hasn't opened the doors yet. Defense Secretary William Cohen personally asked Chinese President Jiang Zemin for archive access in January 1998 in Beijing.

"We believe Chinese records of the war may hold the key to resolving the fates of many of our missing servicemen from the Korean War," Jones said in a statement. "The Chinese have been very cooperative in our investigations of Southeast Asia and World War II losses." Jones said the Chinese located sites where World War II servicemen crashed on the Korean Peninsula and led U.S. investigators to remote areas from which recovery teams brought back remains. Since 1993, China has helped three U.S. teams with logistical support for remains recovery operations in North Korea and has helped the Pentagon recover remains within Chinese territory in several cases of missing servicemen from the Vietnam War and World War II. "The Chinese have pledged continued cooperation," Jones said. "We are grateful for their continued assistance in this humanitarian mission." Chinese forces entered the 1950-53 Korean War in the fall of 1950 to support North Korea against the U.S.-led U.N. forces fighting for South Korea. China took control of the prisoner-of-war camps in North Korea and the Chinese also took some American POWs across the border into China for interrogations. Pentagon researchers were granted access to North Korea's archives for the first time in 1997. The Defense Department has taken a go-slow approach with China on what remains a delicate issue.

05 FEB 99: Presidential Determination: No. 99-12: MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE: SUBJECT: Vietnamese Cooperation in Accounting for United States Prisoners of War and Missing in Action (POW/MIA) - As provided under section 609 of the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 1999, as contained in the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 1999, Public Law 105-277, I hereby determine, based on all information available to the United States Government, that the Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is fully cooperating in good faith with the United States in the following four areas related to achieving the fullest possible accounting for Americans unaccounted for as a result of the Vietnam War: 1) resolving discrepancy cases, live sightings, and field activities; 2) recovering and repatriating American remains; 3) accelerating efforts to provide documents that will help lead to the fullest possible accounting of POW/MIAs; and, 4) providing further assistance in implementing trilateral investigations with Laos.

I further determine that the appropriate laboratories associated with POW/MIA accounting are thoroughly analyzing remains, material, and other information and fulfilling their responsibilities as set forth in subsection (B) of section 609, and information pertaining to this accounting is being made available to immediate family members in compliance with 50 U.S.C. 435 note.

I have been advised by the Department of Justice that section 609 is unconstitutional because it purports to use a condition on appropriations as a means to direct my execution of responsibilities that the Constitution commits exclusively to the President. I am providing this determination as a matter of comity with the Congress, while reserving the position that the condition enacted in section 609 is unconstitutional.

In making this determination, I have taken into account all information available to the United States Government as reported to me, including the full range of ongoing accounting activities in Vietnam, joint and unilateral Vietnamese efforts, and the concrete results we have attained as a result of these efforts.

Finally, in making this determination, I wish to reaffirm my continuing personal commitment to the entire POW/MIA community, especially to the immediate families, relatives, friends, and supporters of these brave individuals, and to reconfirm that the central, guiding principle of my Vietnam policy is to achieve the fullest possible accounting of our prisoners of war and missing in action.

You are authorized and directed to report this determination to the appropriate committees of the Congress and to publish it in the Federal Register. - WILLIAM J. CLINTON

09 FEB 99: The following are the 43 Discrepancy (Last Known Alive) Cases: 1. 0054--McLean, James Henry; 2. 0094--Dale, Charles Alva; 3. 0094 - Demmon, David Stanley; 4. 0258--Newton, Donald S.; 5. 0344--Buckley, Louis Jr.; 6. 0372--Ellis, William Jr.; 7. 0453--Tatum, Lawrence B.; 8. 0529--Niehouse, Daniel Lee; 9. 0607--Small, Burt Chauncey Jr.; 10. 0647--Hamilton, Roger D.; 11. 0656--Estocin, Michael John; 12. 0678--Ashlock, Carlos; 13. 0703--Wrobleski, Walter F.; 14. 0706--Backus, Kenneth Frank; 15. 0706--Perrine, Elton L.; 16. 0723--Ibanez, Di Reyes; 17. 0728--Platt, Robert L Jr.; 18. 0805--Lane, Charles Jr.; 19. 0867--Fitzgerald, Paul L Jr.; 20. 0867--Hargrove, Olin Jr.; 21. 0928--Brennan, Herbert Owen; 22. 0930--Millner, Michael; 23. 0997--Johnson, William D.; 24. 1065--Hunt, Robert W.; 25. 1112--Cichon, Walter Alan; 26. 1205--Schmidt, Walter R Jr.; 27. 1244--Fowler, Donald R.; 28. 1244--Hastings, Steven M.; 29. 1244--Russell, Peter J.; 30. 1258--Acosta-Rosario, Humberto; 31. 1274--Pridemore, Dallas Reese; 32. 1308--Finley, Dickie W.; 33. 1388--Brucher, John Martin; 34. 1456--Sparks, Donald L.; 35. 1572--Scull, Gary Bernard; 36. 1598--Wheeler, Eugene Lacy; 37. 1668--Strait, Douglas F.; 38. 1723--Jeffs, Clive G.; 39. 1747--Soyland, David Pecor; 40. 1748--Entrican, Danny D.; 41. 1816--Dunlop, Thomas Earl; 42. 1820--Potts, Larry Fletcher; and 43. 1868--Morrow, Larry K.

11 FEB 99: In a letter to his Senate colleagues, Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell said: "I am writing to invite you to be an original cosponsor of the "Bring Them Home Alive Act of 1999." This Act would create the vital incentive needed to persuade key foreign nationals to take the risks needed to return any possibly surviving American POW/MIA's to the U.S. alive.

This bill would grant asylum in the United States to foreign nationals from key countries who personally deliver a living American POW/MIA from either the Vietnam War or the Korean War to the United States. Specifically, citizens of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos or any of the states of the former Soviet Union who deliver living American POW/MIA's from the Vietnam War -- and citizens of North Korea, China or any of the states of the former Soviet Union who deliver living American POW/MIA's from the Korean War -- would be granted asylum under this Act.

The "Bring Them Home Alive Act of 1999" includes citizens of the states of the former Soviet Union since recent news reports confirm that Soviet officials had planned a program to bring captured "knowledgeable" Americans to the Soviet Union for intelligence gathering purposes. While Russian officials have claimed that this plan was never carried out, this is far from certain.

Naturally, that foreign national's immediate family, including their spouse and children, would also be granted asylum in the U.S. since their safety -- and even their lives -- would most likely be imperiled by such a daring rescue of surviving American POW/MIA's.

If this bill leads to even one long-held POW/MIA's being returned home to America alive this effort will be well worth it -- 10,000 times over. Even though it has been many years since these two wars ended, they have not ended for any Americans who may have been left behind and are still alive. As long as there remains even the remotest possibility that there may be surviving POW's in these regions, we owe it to our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines to do everything possible to bring them home alive. This is the least we can after all they have sacrificed.

I plan on introduce the "Bring Them Home Alive Act of 1999" soon. If you would like additional information -- or wish to be an original cosponsor of the Bring Them Home Alive Act of 1999 -- please have your staff contact Larry Vigil of my staff at 224-5852. Sincerely, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, U.S. Senator.

13 FEB 99: Following is the National League of Families official position on President Clinton's recent certification to Congress: The League rejects as invalid the President's February 3rd certification to Congress that Vietnam is "fully cooperating in good faith" with the US to resolve the POW/MIA issue. The Clinton Administration has repeatedly issued such false certifications, despite the knowledge of US specialists that Vietnam's cooperation to date does not meet reasonable expectations based on long-held US Government intelligence and numerous official assessments.

Further, the language of the four criteria for certification, initially outlined by President Clinton, has been repeatedly altered and downgraded to accommodate the administration's real highest priority objective -- normalization of bilateral economic and political relations. The congressionally required certification has become little more than staged rhetoric to pave the way for even more US economic steps. One can only conclude that the President is misinformed or that he is being advised to certify these distortions to mislead the media and the American people. It is apparent that those with direct policy responsibility for implementing the President's stated priority on resolving the POW/MIA issue are not dealing with facts or are ignoring valid information. Whatever the reasons, it is unfortunate that these Presidential certifications mislead the Vietnamese into thinking that they need not account for Americans last known to be alive in captivity or in close proximity to capture who have not been returned, alive or dead.

While the League appreciates the President affirmation of his commitment that achieving the fullest possible accounting is "the central, guiding principle" of his policy toward Vietnam, there is no solid basis for the steady stream of praise heaped on the Vietnamese leadership by the Clinton Administration. When Vietnam resumes unilateral actions to provide accountability for well known discrepancy cases, the US should be prepared to respond with economic steps to meet Hanoi's objectives. Until then, the timing is up to Hanoi.

15 FEB 99: Forty prisoners of Afghanistan's bitter conflict, many of them seriously ill, were exchanged over the weekend, the International Committee of the Red Cross said today. In a prepared statement issued in the beleaguered Afghan capital, the Red Cross said the prisoners were ferried between opposition and Taliban territory on a Red Cross aircraft. It wasn't clear how many prisoners were freed by each side. The Red Cross said there are thousands of prisoners of war being held by both sides in the protracted and bloody conflict.

18 FEB 99: Responding to critics who charge the Pentagon with ignoring evidence American prisoners of war may have been shipped to the Soviet Union, the new head of a joint U.S.-Russian Commission on POW/MIA Affairs vowed yesterday to keep the matter a top priority. "This is certainly the most controversial issue the commission is working on," retired Army Maj. Gen. Roland Lajoie said yesterday in a telephone interview from Moscow, where he has been meeting his Russian counterparts during a week- long visit. Pentagon efforts to resolve the fate of missing servicemen from World War II, Korea and Vietnam erupted anew last year when U.S. researchers discovered a memo written by Dmitri Volkogonov, the Russian co- chairman of the joint commission from 1992 to 1995, disclosing he had seen a KGB memorandum that seemed to confirm the existence of such an intelligence operation.

After public disclosure by The Washington Times that State Department officials aware of the memorandum had failed for months to raise the issue with their Russian counterparts, Vice President Al Gore last November formally asked Russian Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov to look into the issue. And last month, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright pressed the point during a visit to Moscow, a departmental spokesman said. But Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., last month charged that a Russian member of parliament had told him State Department officials have actually been discouraging Moscow from pursuing the fate of American MIAs. In an interview with The Washington Times last month, Weldon quoted the Russian official as saying, "I can tell you, we were told by your government, your State Department, not to pursue these issues." Weldon called the accusation "disturbing."

On the possibility that American prisoners from the Vietnam War may have been smuggled into the Soviet Union by the KGB, Lajoie said the commission has concluded there is "circumstantial evidence to indicate it did occur." "Volkogonov was a credible person and it is not likely he would make this up," Lajoie said. "The Russian side of the commission does not have that viewpoint but they have agreed to leave this (inquiry) open."

Also, the Pentagon was told years ago by defector Jan Sejna, a major general in the Czech army at the time of his crossover in 1968, that hundreds of American prisoners were shipped into the Soviet Union through Prague. Lajoie noted that Sejna served as a consultant to the Defense Intelligence Agency for several decades and was highly regarded in his work, Lajoie said. Lajoie said the Pentagon has also amassed "credible" evidence of Korean War-era U.S. prisoners being shipped into the Soviet Union through North Korea and China. Lajoie deflected criticism by the National Alliance of Families, a major POW/MIA group headquartered in Bellevue, over the handling of a key Pentagon staff member who was involved in the discovery of the Volkogonov memorandum.

20 FEB 99: A team of 101 mostly Hawaii-based U.S. military specialists leaves for Vietnam Friday night with hopes of recovering human remains that may lead to the identification of American service members listed as missing in action since the war in Southeast Asia. On Tuesday, members from Joint Task Force- Full Accounting at Camp Smith and the U.S. Army's Central Identification Lab at Hickam Air Force Base will join technical representatives from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to begin joint investigations and remains recovery operations in 34 Vietnamese provinces. Forty-nine cases involving potential aircraft and ground losses are scheduled to be investigated during the 30-day operation. As many as eight sites may be excavated. Since 1973, the remains of 511 American service members, formerly listed as unaccounted for, have been identified and returned to their families. There are currently 2,072 Americans still unaccounted-for from the war in Southeast Asia, 1,542 in Vietnam. This will be the 39th Joint Field Activity conducted in Vietnam, and the 96th overall JFA in the tri-country region of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia since Joint Task Force-Full Accounting was formed in January 1992 at Camp Smith. The 101 team members are comprised of 57 U.S. Army, 21 Air Force, 13 Navy, three Marines, and seven Department of Defense civilians.

23 FEB 99: Cho Kyung Wook President Kim Dae Jung expressed hope Wednesday that South and North Korea will resume government-level talks to discuss pending issues, including repatriation of 20 North Koreans freed and about to be freed from South Korean prisons. Kim made the remarks in a news conference at the Blue House presidential office to mark his first full year in office. The president said, however, that the North Korean prisoners can not be sent back unless North Korea repatriates South Korean soldiers captured during the 1950-53 Korean War and still held in the North and other South Koreans abducted to the North. "Our people will never tolerate one-sided repatriation. The government can not make any decision which runs contrary to the popular sentiment. I hope a fair dialogue will take place between us and North Korea on the repatriation issue," Kim said.

24 FEB 99: The Department of Defense provided information that three additional Americans previously missing from the Vietnam War have been identified; however, their names were not yet released. The remains of one Navy serviceman were recovered in 1985 and through US-Lao joint operations in 1996. One of the two accounted for from Vietnam is a Navy officer whose remains were repatriated by the Government of Vietnam in January, 1998, following confiscation from remains traders in 1992 and joint forensic review in December 1997. The last of the three, an Air Force officer, were jointly recovered by US-Vietnamese team and repatriated in October 1995.

26 FEB 99: Because of its importance the following article is reprint in its entirety: From the New York Times - Feb. 25, 1999: Scientific Advances End Era of War 'Unknowns' at Tomb By Steven Lee Myers: WASHINGTON -- With science outpacing military tradition, the Pentagon has concluded that it will not place new remains from the Vietnam War in the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, senior officials said on Wednesday.

Nine months after a set of remains were removed from the tomb and later identified as those of 1st Lt. Michael Blassie, the officials said that scientific advances, including new genetic tests, had now all but eliminated the chance that any recovered remains from the war would remain unidentified.

The Pentagon's conclusion signals the end of a military rite that dates in this country to the Civil War, when 2,011 unknown soldiers were honored by a granite tomb at Arlington, just across the Potomac River from here.

With the Pentagon now taking DNA samples from everyone who joins the military, there is little chance that future wars will produce unidentifiable remains, meaning no other crypts are likely to join those at the tomb honoring unknown soldiers who died in World War I, World War II and the Korean War.

Secretary of Defense William Cohen, who by law oversees the tomb of the Unknowns, has not made a final decision on the tomb's fate. But in the weeks ahead, Cohen is expected to select one of a variety of proposals for what to do with the now-empty crypt that for 14 years held the "unknown" remains of Blassie.

"We'll handle this in a dignified way that provides some closure," the Pentagon's spokesman, Kenneth Bacon, said, adding that Cohen concurred with the conclusion that no new remains will be placed in the tomb. "We need to find some fitting and proper way to honor" those who died in Vietnam, he said.

There are still 2,069 Americans missing from the Vietnam War, and some 200 sets of bones, teeth and other remains await identification in an Army laboratory in Hawaii. But with painstaking detective work continuing and archeological digs under way in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the Pentagon's experts are steadily reducing the list of the unaccounted. The officials said it was impossible now to declare any remains unknowable.

Just last Friday, for example, three more servicemen were identified more than 30 years after they died, two in Vietnam and one in Laos. "We really don't have another candidate for the tomb," Rudy De Leon, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said in an interview. "Potentially, all the remains are identifiable."

De Leon's office has collected suggestions from a variety of veterans' groups and organizations representing the families of the missing. One of the ideas -- submitted by the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia -- would install a plaque near the tomb that declared, "In honor of those still missing, this crypt remains forever empty." Another proposal would inscribe "in memory of" on the white marble tablet that covers the crypt.

Congress authorized the interment of an unknown soldier in 1973, shortly after the United States ended its involvement in Vietnam's civil war. It was not until 1984, though, that remains from Vietnam were laid to rest in the tomb during an emotional state funeral led by President Ronald Reagan.

Last May, Cohen ordered the reopening of the tomb after evidence emerged that the remains inside -- four ribs, the right humerus and part of the pelvis -- belonged to Blassie, a decorated Air Force pilot shot down near An Loc in 1972.

A genetic test not available in 1984 positively matched DNA samples taken from the remains with a blood sample from Blassie's mother. On July 11, Blassie was buried in a full military funeral in the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, near his childhood home outside St. Louis.

At Arlington, little has outwardly changed at the tomb, which was dedicated on Armistice Day in 1921. After Blassie's remains were removed , workers sealed the crypt and replaced the marble tablet, marked now, as it was before, with the duration of American involvement in Southeast Asia, 1958-1975.

To the side, a sign explaining the tomb's history has been updated to include a last paragraph about Blassie's case. "The crypt is presently empty," it concludes, "but it serves as a tribute to all those who made the supreme sacrifice during the Vietnam Conflict."

Johnie E. Webb Jr., the deputy commander at the Army's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, said the law requires any remains that might be a candidate for the tomb be absolutely unidentifiable. But almost all the remains from Vietnam have at least some biographical or forensic evidence that could, eventually, help identify them, he said.

The new genetic tests, in many cases, simply put lingering doubts to rest. Even newly recovered remains that keep arriving from excavation sites in Southeast Asia are likely to be identified, because a separate agency in Hawaii, the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting, has meticulously compiled every known fact about the 2,069 still missing.

"We start with a pretty good idea of who the remains might be," Webb said. Aware of this, De Leon's office has been considering what to do next. The idea of removing the crypt altogether was considered, but then rejected, said Jack C. Metzler, the superintendent of Arlington National Cemetery. Now the focus has shifted to some acknowledgment at the tomb itself of the Vietnam era. "Until we have a full accounting, the tomb will stand for those who are still missing," Metzler said.

The prospect of having no remains from Vietnam has generated mixed emotions.

Ann Mills Griffiths, the executive director of the National League of Families, said the end of the tradition of interring unknown remains should be celebrated. "If we're lucky, there will never again be another unknown," she said. "The nation will never have to deal with that again. And that's a good thing."

On the other hand, veterans' organizations had lobbied intensively for the inclusion of a Vietnam-era serviceman, believing that this bestowed recognition to a bitter, divisive war.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars has publicly called on the Pentagon to "make every effort" to inter another set of unidentified remains. Bruce R. Harder, the VFW's director of national security and foreign affairs, said it was premature to conclude that all those missing would be eventually be identified.

He opposed a plaque or some other inscription to mark an empty tomb, he said, because it would not "provide the same level of status and sanctity as putting a set of remains there."

Phil Budahn, a spokesman for the American Legion, said his organization felt torn. "It was certainly a high priority for the Vietnam generation to have somebody there," he said. "At the same time, for every person in the tomb, there's one more American family that doesn't have a set of remains to lay to rest. That can be a high price to pay for symbolism."

28 FEB 99: REMINDER -DOD/DPMO Family Update - 20 MAR 1999 - Sacramento, CA

POW-MIA Issue Update March 1999