Vietnam War Working Group

The Vietnam War Working Group (VWWG) was established in 1993. The U.S. Chairman is Senator Bob Smith (R-NH), former Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs (1991-1993) and currently a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Russian Chairman is General-Major Nikolay Maksimovich Bezborodov, an active duty Russian Air Force officer and three-term member of the Duma. Senator Smith has been a member of the Commission since its inception in 1992 and has co-chaired the working group since January 1997; General Bezborodov assumed his position as a member of the Commission and VWWG co-chairman in February 2000.

The American side of the Vietnam War Working Group seeks further information from Russian archives and Russian veterans of the Vietnam War about America's missing service members from that conflict. It is pursuing leads and information in a variety of areas.


Access to the Podolsk Archives

The Central Archives of the Russian Ministry of Defense in Podolsk may contain information of value to the American accounting effort, including reports of the shoot down of American aircraft; POW interrogation reports; and the activities of the Soviet "special group" that acquired several thousand pieces of captured American combat equipment for eventual technical exploitation in the former USSR. Senator Smith has asked General-Major Bezborodov to facilitate U.S. access to Vietnam War era documents in the archive. Should this request be denied, the U.S. side has urged the Russian side to broaden its own search for such information.

The Russian side recently provided a list of 142 incident reports extracted from the Podolsk archives. The VWWG has completed a preliminary analysis and will ask the Russian side for more detailed information about the shoot-down reports. The U.S. side will request access to original reports correlating to cases of missing Americans.


Volkogonov Memoirs

In early February 1998, researchers on the staff of the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs (USRJC) working in the personal papers of the late General-Colonel Dmitri A. Volkogonov found a six-page, Russian language, autobiographical sketch entitled, "A Little More About Myself." This brief memoir, written by Volkogonov in August 1994, reveals his discovery in Russian archives of a document from the late 1960s that assigned to the KGB the task of "delivering knowledgeable Americans to the USSR for intelligence purposes."

Nowhere in Volkogonov's memoir is the purported KGB plan linked explicitly to American prisoners of war. Joint Commission analysts have concluded, however, that Volkogonov's discussion of the KGB plan in the context of his work with the Joint Commission on POW/MIAs strongly suggests that Volkogonov thought the plan targeted American POWs. Moreover, the date of the plan (late 1960s) suggests that American POWs from Southeast Asia may have been the targets of the KGB plan.

With the active support of Senator Smith, the VWWG immediately launched an inquiry into Volkogonov's memoir. The purpose of the inquiry was to gather as much information as possible about Volkogonov's revelation before requesting an official explanation from the Russian Government.

The response from the Russians to date has not been encouraging. In the government and on the Joint Commission, Russian officials have said that their archives contain no evidence that a KGB plan as described by Volkogonov ever existed. They claim that Volkogonov "later rechecked his information and arrived at the conclusion that such a plan did not exist as a separate entity," but they offer no evidence to support this claim.

Meanwhile, the issue of Volkogonov's memoir became public knowledge with the first revelation in the U.S. press on November 9, 1998. U.S. and Russian media outlets have covered this issue, and members of Congress, American POW/MIA family groups, POW activists, and veteran organizations have expressed an interest.

The American side of the VWWG is determined to pursue a complete explanation from the Russian Government on the Volkogonov issue.


Soviet advisors in Vietnam

During the Vietnam War, the Soviet Union provided technical and material assistance to North Vietnam. Air defense systems and personnel were sent, both to equip and train the North Vietnamese.

About two years ago, the U.S. side began to gather evidence that Soviet officials interrogated American POWs in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. This project examined information from three primary sources: the testimony of former American POWs; the testimony of Russian veterans of the Vietnam War who had knowledge of direct Soviet participation in POW interrogation; and U.S. Intelligence Community reports that suggest the Soviets sought or obtained direct access to American POWs for interrogation. If, in fact, Soviet officials participated in interrogation of American POWs, or received interrogation reports from Vietnam, it would be reasonable to assume that these reports were generated in Vietnam and forwarded to Moscow for processing. Such interrogation reports should be available today in Russian archives (probably GRU and KGB archives), and these reports might contribute to clarifying the fates of unaccounted-for Americans.

During the war, a Soviet trophy group, or "spetsgruppa," composed of GRU officers, was deployed to Vietnam to acquire captured American combat equipment and arrange for shipment to the Soviet Union for exploitation. Although the U.S. has no interest in the classified aspects of the program, members and technicians who were assigned to these groups may be able to provide new details about shoot down incidents in Vietnam. For instance, in 1992, representatives of Task Force Russia (the predecessor of JCSD) discovered an F-111 crew capsule at the Moscow Aviation Institute. With assistance from FBI experts, Task Force Russia analysts correlated the capsule to a specific shoot down incident. The U.S. side has raised this issue several times continues to press for more information on the "spetsgruppa" and its members. In addition, the Russian side has agreed to try to locate museums and technical institutes where U.S. equipment might be displayed or stored, and, where possible, arrange meetings with technicians who might know how the equipment was acquired and how it was transported to the USSR.


Interview Program

The Vietnam War Working Group maintains a vigorous program to locate and interview former Soviet military personnel who served in Vietnam or who have knowledge of events during that period. Since 1992, the VWWG has conducted over a thousand interviews in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and other former Soviet republics. The majority of interviews have been with PVO (Air Defense Forces) veterans who served as military advisors in North Vietnam during the war. VWWG personnel have also interviewed aviators, journalists, KGB and GRU officers, and former Soviet (now Russian) Government and Communist Party officials.

GO TO -

JCSD Intro

WW II Working Group

KOREAN WAR Working Group

COLD WAR Working Group

VIETNAM WAR Working Group

GULAG STUDY