June 1997
Summary of news for the entire month.
For recent and daily news, please go to: InterNetwork
01 JUN 97: With the DOD announcement of remains returned 29 MAY, 2,123 American remain 'officially' accounted for.
The Veterans Initiative delegation of Vietnam Veterans Of American met with Ambassador Pete Peterson. The ambassador spent considerable time addressing the issues of POW/MIA and Agent Orange. Peterson fully endorses the Veterans Initiative program as a positive step in helping to resolve important issues which affect both countries. Peterson stated that the POW/MIA issue is of the highest priority.
03 JUN 97: DASD James Wold led a delegation for a two-week visit to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to assess the progress made in the U.S. government's efforts to achieve the fullest possible accounting. Wold met with senior officials describing the Comprehensive Review and the further need for unilateral and archival research efforts. BG Jim Campbell, JTF-FA Cmdr., accompanying Wold announced the fifth U.S./Lao recovery operation to begin June 25.
04 JUN 97: The 46th Joint Field Investigation is scheduled to begin. It will cover 45 cases in 21 Vietnamese provinces covering 16 possible site excavations.
05 JUN 97: DPMO issued an update on its Korean/Cold War Archival Research. It has sent approximately 10,000 pages of documents to the National Archives for inclusion in the Special Collection on the Korean and Cold Wars. The documents should be available to researches within the next six weeks.
06 JUN 97: Speaking at his first visit to an excavation site, Peterson told reporters: "the search for America's war dead ought to continue for 100 years. This isn't something we're going to walk away from. This is a commitment and it won't be done at perhaps the same level, but we're going to continue to do this because it's part of history and we want to continue to make the discoveries out there."
07 JUN 97: VVA's Veteran's Initiative delegation met with their counterparts in Hanoi several days before and turned over to the Vietnamese veterans 10 documents and battlefield descriptions which may assist in locating grave sites. In return, 2 documents were turned over to the VVA-VI delegation. One of the documents may indicate the burial site of 3 American servicemen.
12 JUN 97: Twenty-four years after the Paris Peace Accords, 31 Nung commandos have finally received permission to enter the country they so faithful served during the Vietnam War. With the help of the U.S. Army Special Forces veterans who worked with the Nung, their plight of living in horrific conditions in a Hong Kong refugee camp will end. The Nung were abandoned in the chaos of North Vietnam's assault on Saigon.
14 JUN 97: H.R. 409, The Missing Persons Authorities Improvement Act of 1997, now has 73 co- sponsors in the House and S. 755, the companion bill in the Senate has 5 co-sponsors. Vietnam Veterans of America and the American Legion have fully endorsed this legislation, as well as, the National League of Families, the National Alliance of Families and the Korea/Cold War Family Association.
16 JUN 97: DPMO announces that a Korean-Cold War Archives section is now available to the public. The material is being held in College Park, MD and is an extensive compilation of the inner workings of the Eisenhower Administration. To arrange access call (301) 713-7250. The U.S. and Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIA Affairs have set 30 June - 02 July as the meeting date for the next Plenary session. In addition to Russia, visits to Poland and Czechoslovakia are planned.
17 JUN 97: Laos announced the opening, as a tourist attraction, of the caves of Vieng Xai or City of V. These caves were located at the closest point to Hanoi. Intelligence reports generated during the war indicated that American POWs were held there. This area contains terrain which is impregnable and unapproachable. Of the nearly 600 American servicemen lost in the Black Hole of Laos during the war, NOT ONE came home during Operation Homecoming.
18 JUN 97: DASD James Wold ended his two-week visit to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Mr. Wold met with senior officials in the three countries and described U.S. efforts updating the Comprehensive Review and further defined needs for unilateral and archival research. He met with U.S. contractors in Cambodia and received an update on their archival research efforts. He will give a review of his trip to the families during the government briefings at the Nat'l League of Families annual meeting beginning tomorrow, highlighting each country's level of cooperation.
19 JUN 97: Traveling to Vietnam for his second trip, Robert McNamara, will be attending a Conference of Missed Opportunities with General Vo Nguyen Giap to attain a "cohesive national memory of the war." [We find it incomprehensible that McNamara, who had the position and authority to speak out against this conflict, but remained silent and facilitated the needless deaths of over 58,000 of America's sons and daughter's, should now be writing the history of this conflict.]
20 JUN 97: AP reports that Sen. Bob Smith has sent a letter to Sen. Jesse Helms, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asking that normal trade relations with China be suspended if China does not provide information on Americans missing from the Korean War. Smith said China has "significant knowledge about unaccounted for American POWS." SecDef Cohen told Smith that the Clinton Administration has made a "considerable effort" to access China's Korean War archives. Larry Greer, a Pentagon official, said "tying the POW-MIA issue to any other issue is a bad idea."
23 JUN 97: Robert McNamara, one of the architect's of American longest war, and now apologist in the process of rewriting its history said this at the Conference of Missed Opportunities: "I think in some respects it could have been avoided, but since it hadn't been avoided, I think it could have been terminated much, much earlier." Too little, too late, Mr. McNamara.
24 JUN 97: Pyongyang, North Korea has once again leveled the charge that S. Korea is holding former soldiers of the North Korean's People's Army as prisoners in S. Korea. In a joint letter sent, N. Korea said: (the U.S.) "should pay due attention to them and exert full influence upon the South Korean authorities with a view to settling this repatriation issue." No mention was made of American POWs and MIAs in this communique.
25 JUN 97: S. 755, The Missing Persons Authorities Improvement Act of 1997, now has 7 co- sponsors. We are confident of passage in the House. The Senate will be a much more difficult arena.
DPMO announces the identification of five American servicemen previously unaccounted for from Southeast Asia. They are Lt. Col. Lewis H. Abrams, USMC, of Monte, NJ; Robert E. Holdeman, USMC, of Winchester, IN, and John N. Flanigan, USMC, of Winter Haven, FL. The names of two Air Force aviators were not released at the request of their families. With the identification of these five servicemen, 2,118 Americans remain unaccounted-for from the Vietnam War.
26 JUN 97: Former British POWs are continuing their court battle to force Japan to apologize and compensate them for the horrific treatment they received as prisoners of the Japanese.
Vietnam's three top leaders, Premier Vo Van Kiet, President Le Duc Anh and Communist Party General-Secretary Do Muoi will step down from the National Assembly to make way for new leadership. The three decided to resign because of advanced age.
27 JUN 97: U.S. Sec. of State Madeleine Albright referring to the issue of accounting for the fate of more than 1,500 Americans listed as missing, Albright said she was pleased with the help rendered to the U.S. side by both the government and people of Vietnam. The U.S. lifted the economic embargo and normalized diplomatic relations with its former foe in recognition of Vietnam's cooperation in efforts to account for the MIAs.
In Hanoi, Albright received a briefing from Col. Chase of the U.S. MIA Office. Chase credited Vietnam with a "full faith effort" to provide an accounting of Americans missing from the Vietnam War and that a priority is being given to cases in which the missing Americans were last seen alive. There were 196 such cases in 1992 and all but 48 have since been accounted for.
28 JUN 97: North Korea and the U.S. agreed on details to conduct three joint recovery operations and an archival search for U.S. soldiers missing in action from the 1950-53 Korean War.
Speaking at the cornerstone laying ceremony of the new U.S. consulate, Albright said, the U.S. yearly spends only $3 million for U.S. aid projects while the annual cost of searching for a diminishing number of missing servicemen is three times that, at $10 million. "It's always difficult to assess how best to spend money" and "I think one can't discount the emotional impact of the POW/MIA issue on the American people."
30 JUN 97: REMINDER: 07/19/97 - Family Update - Rochester, NY
POW-MIA Issue Update July 1997