Page 19 If operations in Laos had followed the model found in southern Vietnam, we would expect few, if any, efforts to collect American remains until after hostilities ceased in 1975. Soon after the war ended, however, PAVN units began demobilizing and returning to Vietnam, leaving very few military forces in Laos who could help locate graves and collect remains. Further, we have no evidence indicating that Vietnamese units prepared detailed reports on American grave sites. In northern Vietnam, where officials could rely on written reports and sketch maps to provide a general location for a grave, success in finding a specific grave site frequently depended on aid from local villagers. This was not possible in Laos. Not only had most PAVN forces withdrawn, but most of the Lao villagers who had traditionally occupied these areas had fled during wartime to escape U.S. and allied bombing. Recent reporting disproved our former belief that Vietnam had repatriated the remains of one American who had been lost in Laos. According to U.S. records, this man was lost very close to the border with Vietnam. On the basis of subsequent evidence, we no longer hold that view. Information turned over with these remains in 1988 indicated they had come from Quan Hoa District, Thanh Hoa Province, which is the Vietnamese administrative division adjacent to the recorded loss location in Laos. In 1993, Vietnam turned over a summary list of aircraft downed by Thanh Hoa Province forces, which also placed this loss in Quan Hoa District. A review of U.S. reporting determined that the loss coordinates reported in wartime gave degrees and minutes only. These coordinates lacked an entry for seconds, which made the location imprecise. The location indicated was so close to the border that a small error or adjustment places it in Vietnam. To clear up this discrepancy, in May 1997 the Vietnamese at our behest conducted a unilateral investigation into this loss. According to the report of that investigation, the pilot had ejected and been killed on the Vietnamese side of the border, about 2 kilometers from the location given in U.S. records. The report indicated that the aircraft had crashed just on the Lao side of the border. Local people said they buried the body on the spot in Vietnam and later disinterred the remains at the direction of Vietnamese district authorities. After wartime, Vietnamese military units, veterans, and civilians returned to Laos on many occasions to recover the remains of Vietnamese soldiers who died there. With the cooperation of the Lao authorities, these remains were repatriated to Vietnam, where they were typically buried in one of many cemeteries for veterans, commonly known as Heroes' Cemeteries. Vietnamese officials consistently report that none of these efforts resulted in the recovery of American remains. Several accounts in the Vietnamese press document the recovery of remains of PAVN war dead from Laos and their return to Vietnamese provinces all along the border. According to a representative from the office charged with receiving these remains in Quang Tri Province, officials used several means to identify the remains. Frequently, Vietnamese soldiers buried their comrades with a penicillin vial or pillbox containing a piece of paper with their names and addresses. In the absence of such data, remains were identified based on unit patches, insignia, or personal effects. This official indicated that Page 20 some remains determined to be Lao were returned to Laos. Unidentifiable remains were buried as unknown. He insisted, however, that his office never recovered or received any remains from Laos believed to be American. If U.S. remains had been found, he said his office would have reported the fact to province officials, who would have notified the central government immediately. The “Warehouse” We do not know with certainty where Vietnam stored the remains it collected. Our best information comes from a Sino-Vietnamese mortuary technician commonly known as “the mortician.” Expelled from Vietnam in 1979 along with thousands of other ethnic Chinese, he first reported while in a refugee camp in Hong Kong and later testified before the U.S. Congress. His information on Vietnam’s collection of American remains focused attention on the location of a remains “warehouse.” According to the mortician, during the 1969-73 period, American remains were brought to his workplace in Van Dien Cemetery near Hanoi for cleaning and treatment, after which they were taken away. He said that in 1969-70, he saw military personnel who managed the remains take caskets and other items he used in his work from a room in a compound at another site in Hanoi, 17 Ly Nam De Street. The mortician said that during the 1973-77 period, he went to this address on several occasions to work on American remains. In January 1980, a congressional delegation led by Congressman Lester Wolff traveled to Hanoi and asked to be taken to 17 Ly Nam De Street. The Vietnamese indignantly denied that they were holding remains and refused the request. In August 1980, however, the Vietnamese took a press delegation accompanying United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim to the compound. Members of the delegation reported they found no sign it had ever been used to store remains. We believe that American remains initially held at 17 Ly Nam De Street were moved sometime between the last time the mortician was called to work there in May 1977 and the visit by the press delegation in August 1980. Reporting from several sources indicates that they were probably taken to a room in a military prison in Bat Bat District, west of Hanoi. One source indicates that American remains may also have been treated at this facility in earlier years before they were sent on to Hanoi. Since at least the early 1960s, this prison belonged to the same military organization that had responsibility for the management of American remains. Our most recent report on remains at the military prison at Bat Bat was in December 1981. We have no sources who were present there after that time. An American investigator visited this site in April 1992 and found that the room in question was being used as a storage site for construction materials. We do not know whether American remains were moved from the Bat Bat military prison, and if so, when. Page 21 We have asked the Vietnamese where they stored remains but have not received a persuasive answer. The question appears to be sensitive. It was addressed most recently during discussions associated with this study. At that time, members of the VNOSMP reiterated their government’s consistently stated position that remains were never stored at 17 Ly Nam De Street. They also stated that while a few remains collected in the general area of the military prison at Bat Bat might have been kept there temporarily before being transferred to central authorities, large numbers of American remains were never stored there. When pressed to identify where remains were stored, members of the VNOSMP stated in 1998 that remains were held at offices at 3 Duong Thanh Street in Hanoi before their repatriation. We are not confident, however, that we have an accurate understanding of what the Vietnamese intended to say about this location or that the individuals who asserted this were in a position to know. Several offices belonging to PAVN’s General Political Directorate were, and still are, located at this address, which U.S. personnel have inspected. In the past, two organizations that were responsible for managing American remains, Group 875 and the Department of Military Justice, had offices there. Up until this latest report, however, we had been told that only a few remains were temporarily kept at this address. One of our sources for this information was Pham Teo, who we are confident would have known. HOW MANY REMAINS DID VIETNAM COLLECT? We do not have concrete data, such as lists or photos, which provide direct information on how many American remains Vietnamese central authorities collected. Our only information on the subject comes from Vietnamese sources who purported to have acquired inside information through various means. As noted below, these sources are of varying reliability, and their information must be viewed with caution. Numerous Vietnamese have reported on every aspect of Hanoi’s remains collection program, including policy making, motivations, locations of stored remains, and individual exhumations. Only seven, however, provided information that directly addresses the total number of American remains that Vietnam collected. The table below summarizes information from these seven sources. Those having the best placement and access to reliable data are listed in bold type, and those whose information is more problematic are shown in italics. One source, the mortician, has provided two estimates based on different methods of observation. The date shown in the table is the date at which the source alleged the information to be current, rather than the date he reported it. Page 22 The first and best known of these sources, the mortician, reported that between 1969 and mid-1977, he was detailed on an irregular basis to help clean and treat American remains collected by the military. He provided the following rough estimates of the remains that he had worked on from 1969 to 1973: Mid-1969 to late 1970 20-30 sets 1971 30-40 sets 1972 30-40 sets 1973 “Almost” 200 sets Total 280-310 sets The mortician reported that he had personally processed remains from 1969 to 1972. He supervised Vietnamese military personnel who prepared “almost 200” sets in 1973. From 1974 to mid-1977, he was periodically detailed to 17 Ly Nam De Street in Hanoi to repair damage to remains. He estimated that he reprocessed about 30 to 40 sets that were decaying or developing mildew. The mortician also reported that on several occasions up to mid-1977, he was able to look through a doorway into a room at 17 Ly Nam De Street where he saw a large number of boxes placed on risers. The remains he processed were taken out of this room, and when he finished his work, they were returned to it. Based on the size of the room, the number of risers, and the size of the boxes, he estimated that the room contained about 400 boxes. He speculated that the number of boxes equaled the number of U.S. remains. As noted in the October 1996 National Intelligence Council Assessment, “Vietnamese Storage of Remains of Unaccounted for US Personnel,” the mortician’s “quantitative estimates are not precise and are subject to qualification.” He consistently characterized his figures as estimates, which he described in round numbers. He did not have access to a cumulative list of remains, and he was not able to count the boxes in the room at 17 Ly Nam De Street. Moreover, he did not know whether all the boxes were full or contained American rather than Vietnamese remains. Page 23 The inherent qualifications in the mortician’s estimates aside, he reported reliably in all areas where he claimed firsthand knowledge. We judge his aggregate estimate of 280 to 310 remains he personally processed during 1969-73 to be similarly reliable owing to his firsthand observation. In contrast, we cannot be sure that the 30 to 40 remains he says he reprocessed during 1974 -1977 were in addition to this total, although he believed it so. Finally, we consider his estimate of 400 boxes only a rough ballpark guess. The second source is a former official of the Vietnamese government who later left as a refugee. He claimed to have acquired his information in 1979 from a high-ranking military officer, Vo Van Thoi, who as chief of the Enemy Proselyting Department would have had access to reporting on American remains. According to this officer, Vietnam had collected 300 to 400 remains and was keeping them at an unspecified location in northern Vietnam. He believed that all these remains belonged to aviators lost in the North, because remains collection in the South had only just gotten under way. The third and fourth sources are current or former Vietnamese officials involved in efforts to account for American casualties. They acquired their information from the military officer, Pham Teo, who reportedly maintained an inventory of American remains and was assigned to count totals on a quarterly or semiannual basis. These sources reported independently and several years apart. The first stated that as of 1985, Pham Teo told him that Vietnam had records on nearly 300 American remains. The second reported that in the early 1990s, Pham Teo said that Vietnam had collected a total of 302 remains. Col Teo was uniquely placed to have the most accurate and up-to-date information possible. Unfortunately, he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1997, and he is no longer able to perform his professional duties. Because they had access to reliable information, we judge that the four sources listed in bold provided our most credible reporting on the number of American remains the Vietnamese collected. They provide relatively consistent totals of around 300, and thus appear generally corroborative. We caution, however, that we cannot independently confirm any of their data through other intelligence means. Four additional reports provide considerably larger totals but, for different reasons, each is unreliable. The first is the mortician’s estimate of the number of boxes he saw in a room that he believed contained American remains. As noted above, this estimate is inherently uncertain, due to both his method of estimation and the unverified assumption that the number of boxes correlates to the number of American remains. Three refugees provided similarly flawed information. The first reported that in 1973, his friend told him he had learned from another man that almost 600 American remains were being stored in a warehouse near Haiphong. The hearsay nature of this report makes it difficult to corroborate or investigate, but other data indicate that so large a number of remains had not been collected by this date. Moreover, remains turned over to central authorities were kept in Hanoi during this period, not in Haiphong.