Page 1 Vietnam’s Collection and Repatriation of American Remains SUMMARY This study is an analysis of Vietnam’s remains collection and repatriation process, and as such, has been reviewed by knowledgeable senior analysts in the intelligence community for clarity, logic, and overall consistency with intelligence holdings. The Department of Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO), however, is solely responsible for its contents. When American military personnel first arrived in Southeast Asia in 1961, North Vietnamese policy, already in place, required local civil and military authorities to document the deaths of foreign military personnel. Where possible, bodies were to be buried and graves maintained. Beginning in the early 1970s and continuing until at least 1983, Hanoi government officials endeavored to recover the remains for eventual repatriation. The Vietnamese have turned over internal documents that recorded these efforts, and they have facilitated interviews with personnel involved. Vietnamese technical experts have also met with U.S. specialists to discuss how the program to recover American remains worked in practice. Vietnamese documents and witnesses bear out what other sources have reported in the past: more remains were collected and brought to Hanoi in the 1970s than were repatriated during that period. Most of these remains were stored and returned later, most recently in September 1990. Since then, Vietnam has repatriated only remains that were recovered by joint excavation teams or by Vietnamese citizens acting on their own. In other words, no remains recovered by Vietnamese authorities and then stored have been repatriated since September 1990. The overwhelming majority of remains collected by the central government belonged to American aviators lost in northern Vietnam. The ability of the Vietnamese to recover a given set of remains was almost always contingent on Page 2 finding Vietnamese citizens who could point out grave sites several years after burial. This was most feasible in northern Vietnam, where the civilian population and government infrastructure were relatively stable throughout the war. In southern Vietnam and in the border areas of Cambodia, efforts to locate and recover remains generally commenced later, most occurring after 1975. They focused chiefly on persons who died in captivity, and results were uneven. Although some have speculated that Vietnamese forces in Laos were also tasked to collect American remains from areas under their control, we have not been able to discover any concrete evidence to confirm that such collection took place. Our only information relates to Vietnamese efforts to recover their own war dead from Laos. Past studies by the National Intelligence Council and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) have attempted to assess how many sets of U.S. remains Vietnam might have recovered. Those studies were based chiefly on estimates provided by refugees and other Vietnamese sources. They also relied on scientific analysis of repatriated remains, some of which showed evidence of having been collected and held above ground for an undetermined period before their return. These studies concluded that there was a large discrepancy between the number of remains that sources estimated Vietnam had recovered by the late 1970s (approximately 400+) and the number of repatriated remains that appeared to have been held in storage for long periods (approximately 165+). Past studies assumed this discrepancy (approximately 235+), plus an additional increment to account for potential collection during the 1980s, represented the number of remains still held in storage by Vietnam. The current study takes into account all of the above information as well as new data gleaned from more than 10 years of on-the-ground investigations in Southeast Asia and from many new witnesses and Vietnamese documents. We still cannot be sure precisely how many remains central authorities ultimately collected or how many they held at any specific time. Nor can we confirm whether the central government still holds remains or whether, as the Vietnamese government asserts, it has repatriated all the remains it recovered. Evidence indicates, however, that the possible disparity between the number of remains collected by central Vietnamese authorities and those later repatriated is far smaller than earlier studies estimated. The most dependable determination of whether specific remains were among those stored rests on a combination of physical analysis of the repatriated remains and data from Vietnamese witnesses and documents. Analysis based solely on physical indicators is problematic for two reasons. First, physical indicators of storage (charring or soot damage, odors of musty storage conditions, disinfectant stains) can be caused by factors other than longterm, above ground storage. Second, and perhaps more significant, the absence of these physical indicators does not mean storage did not take place. Data from Vietnamese witnesses and documents show that some remains for which American scientists could find no physical indicators of storage were, in fact, recovered and stored before repatriation. Page 3 A case-by-case analysis of all remains repatriated by Vietnam reveals that between the early 1970s and about 1983, central authorities collected and stored 270 to 280 sets of remains. Between 13 and 15 were non-American Southeast Asian Mongoloids, although Vietnamese authorities probably failed to realize this. Over the years, several sources have estimated how many remains Vietnam had collected at any one time, but none could provide hard and fast totals based on concrete data. The four sources having the best access to reliable information, however, provided similar estimates, suggesting that Vietnam ultimately collected approximately 300 American remains. Other sources, who provided higher estimates, had markedly less reliable bases for their reporting. There is a disparity of 20 to 30 between the number of remains that our most reliable sources estimate were collected (around 300) and the number that have already been repatriated and were stored (270 to 280). Although much smaller than previously believed, this disparity is still a concern because it could represent remains that were stored but not repatriated. Alternatively, the discrepancy could be a function of the limits of our information. Available data are not sufficiently reliable or comprehensive to judge whether this disparity is within the limits of estimative error or represents actual remains yet to be repatriated. Some evidence suggests the latter may be the case. In a small number of cases, involving fewer than 10 individuals, direct evidence suggests that central authorities received remains that have not yet been repatriated. In two of these cases, involving five remains, local and district authorities insist that they recovered remains and forwarded them to central authorities. Our discussion with the Vietnamese government about these cases continues. They have investigated unilaterally without turning up information to answer the questions. The U.S. has conducted a complete re-survey of CILHI accessions. Armed with the CILHI findings, we have asked Vietnam to provide additional information and assistance on the cases. The accounting issues on these two cases are complex. Nevertheless, we believe that more will be learned through this dialogue. Non-case-specific evidence also suggests possible continued storage of a small number of remains. In 1991, for instance, a Vietnamese official with long experience in this issue told an American counterpart that Vietnam still had a number of Caucasoid remains. He estimated that they belonged to between 56 and 83 persons and characterized them as “odds and ends, such as arm bones and leg bones....” He said Vietnam could not identify these remains without access to the medical records of U.S. casualties, implying that this was why they had not been repatriated. When questioned about this assertion, other Vietnamese officials have denied that the assertion was ever made. Similarly, in the late 1990s, another well-placed Vietnamese official indicated that sometime after December 1990, he was told that Vietnam still retained American remains. The last date on which Vietnam repatriated stored remains was September 13, 1990.