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INTRODUCTION

Creation of the Senate Select Committee

The Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs was created because in 1991, almost nineteen years after the formal termination of U.S. participation in the Vietnam War, a part of the war remained very much with us as a nation. For almost two decades, the questions of whether American prisoners were left behind and, if so, whether they remained alive somewhere in captivity had haunted America. The failure to resolve these questions had raised doubts about the good faith of our government, about whether a real commitment had been made to the issue, about the wisdom of past actions taken or not taken and about realistic options for the future.

The durability of the debate surrounding the POW/MIA issue caused-- it did not result from--creation of the Select Committee. The committee began its work at a time of swirling controversy and doubt about whether official U.S. handling of the issue matched the high priority the government claimed it received.

The Committee was established on August 2, 1991 when the Senate approved a Resolution introduced by Sen. Bob Smith providing for the creation of a Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs to serve during the remainder of the 102nd Congress. By October, 1991, a Chairman, Vice-chairman and ten additional Members had been appointed to the Committee and a Resolution providing funding had been approved.

Despite the passage of time, the work of previous Committees and commissions, the efforts of countless officials to clarify and explain and the public status throughout the past decade of this issue as one of highest national priority, a Wall Street Journal poll, taken shortly before the Committee was created, found that 69 percent of Americans believed that U.S. servicemen were still being held against their will in Southeast Asia and that of those, three- fourths felt the U.S. Government was not doing enough to bring the prisoners home.

As these numbers indicate, the POW/MIA issue has had a life of its own. The simple explanation for this is that although no American prisoners are known for certain to be alive, 2,264 continue to be officially "unaccounted for" and therefore not proven dead. In addition, the U.S. Government has continued to receive reports alleging that some Americans remain alive in captivity. It is only human nature to hope, in the absence of contrary proof, that a loved one has survived. And it is only to be expected, in such circumstances, that the American people, would demand the fullest possible effort to establish the truth.

The evidence of the past 20 years is that on a subject as personal and emotional as the survival of a husband, brother or son, it is simply not enough to talk of probabilities and the need for perspective. It means little to the family and friends of a missing serviceman to be told by some that the percentage of U.S. forces missing after Vietnam is lower than in previous wars or that it is inevitable that there will be a certain number unaccounted for in any major armed conflict and that the opposing side has far more MIAs than the U.S. The search for answers to POW/MIA questions is not about mathematics; it is about the fate of individual human beings who went to Indochina to fight for their country and who did not come back. Something very real happened to each of those brave men, and our country will not be at peace with itself until we are morally certain we have done all we could to find out what.

In addition to the emotional concerns of families, a second impetus for establishing the Committee was provided by legitimate unresolved questions of fact. Why, Americans asked, did so few of the U.S. airmen downed in Laos return home? How do we explain the dozens of unresolved, first-hand reports of Americans being sighted in captivity in Southeast Asia after the end of the war? Were the hundreds of resolved reports adequately investigated? How can we trust the assurances of Vietnam that it holds no prisoners when we have strong evidence that it has stockpiled American remains? What about the Tighe Commission's 1986 conclusion that "there is a strong possibility of U.S. prisoners being held?" And what about the steady drumbeat of rumors about conspiracy, cover-ups, photographs, failed rescue missions and mysterious videotapes?

All of this controversy was fueled in the period just prior to the Committee's creation by the February 12, 1991 resignation of Colonel Millard Peck as Director of DIA's Special Office for POW/MIA Affairs. In his letter of resignation, Col. Peck criticized what he called a "mindset to debunk" information that U.S. POWs might be alive and suggested that a "'cover-up' may be in progress."

Even more dramatic was the identification by family members in mid- 1991 of individuals in three photographs that appeared to depict American POWs in Southeast Asia. The photographs generated enormous publicity and sparked demands for an immediate government response.

Interest in the issue was stimulated, as well, by discussions of conditions for establishing normal diplomatic and economic relations between the United States and Vietnam. The U.S. State Department's "Road Map" to normalization required, among other things, full cooperation by Vietnam in resolving last known alive discrepancy cases, implementing a plan to resolve expeditiously live-sighting reports on which the U.S. requests assistance and the rapid repatriation of all recovered and recoverable American remains.

The Committee's Mission

Obviously, even the fullest possible accounting for U.S. POW/MIAs will leave some questions unanswered. Investigations can uncover information, but not create it. If, for example, neither friend nor foe had certain knowledge at the time about the fate of a pilot lost over water, there is little likelihood that the Committee or any other investigative unit could, at this distance in time, establish that certainty.

But the Committee was not created with the expectation of final, definitive, case-by-case answers. That is a task that may well be beyond mortal power to achieve, and that only the Executive branch has the resources to attempt. Rather, the Committee's job was to investigate the events, policies and knowledge that have guided U.S. Government POW/MIA related actions over the past 20 years and to do so in order to advance the following goals:

. to determine whether there is evidence that American POWs survived Operation Homecoming and, if so, whether there is evidence that some may remain alive in captivity;

. to ensure the adequacy of government procedures for following up on live-sighting reports and other POW/MIA related information;

. to de-mystify the POW/MIA accounting process so that the families and the public can better understand the meaning behind the numbers and statistics used in discussions of the issue;

. to establish an open, comprehensive record, and to provide for the broad declassification of POW/MIA materials in order to enable both the Committee and the public to make informed judgments about questions of policy, process and fact;

. to lend added weight to Executive branch efforts to obtain cooperation from foreign governments in Southeast Asia and elsewhere in accounting for missing Americans;

. to review the activities of private organizations who participate in fundraising and educational efforts related to the POW/MIA issue; and

. to examine, to the extent time and resources permit, unresolved issues pertaining to missing Americans from World War II, Korea and the Cold War.

De-Mystifying the Process

Nothing has done more to fuel suspicion about the government's handling of the POW/MIA issue than the fact that so many documents related to those efforts have remained classified for so long. Rightly or wrongly, the secrecy--especially about live-sighting reports and critical internal reviews of Defense Intelligence Agency procedures--have fed the perception that government officials have something to hide. This perception increased in the months prior to the Committee's creation because of evidence that some Congressional inquiries may have been responded to with inaccurate or incomplete information and because then Congressman Bob Smith and Senator Charles Grassley had enormous difficulty in prior years in gaining DOD permission to review classified POW/MIA related materials.

As a result, the Committee sought from the beginning to work with the Executive Branch to make public all information relevant to the POW/MIA issue, except that related directly to the sources and methods of gathering intelligence. The Committee agreed that "source and methods" must be kept confidential in order to maintain America's ability to gather new information and track leads in the future. The Committee's goal was to "de-mystify" the POW/MIA issue and to lay before the public a complete picture of what the U.S. Government knows. The Committee generally succeeded in this objective. A full description of the efforts made to obtain the de- classification and public release of documents is included in chapter entitled "Declassification."

Accountability and Response

A major investigative priority of the Committee was to examine the U.S. Government's ability and willingness to respond rapidly to possible evidence that live Americans may still be held against their will in Southeast Asia. The Committee also sought to gain greater cooperation from the governments of Southeast Asia in efforts to obtain answers to questions about specific missing Americans. These "process-oriented" issues go to the heart of U.S. priorities. For example, a bureaucracy that assumes that all American POWs are dead may not respond as energetically to an unconfirmed, but possibly credible, report that a POW has been sighted as a bureaucracy that assumes Americans may still be alive. Similarly, an Administration that attaches a genuinely high priority to POW/MIA issues is likely to devote greater resources of intelligence and response than an Administration that does not. The evolution of U.S. government policies and procedures from Operation Homecoming to the present are discussed in the "Accountability" chapter of this report.

Building a Public Record

Beyond the questions of process, there exist the fundamental questions of fact. The Committee understood from the outset that it could not expect to answer every question, but that it had a responsibility to pursue as comprehensive an investigation as possible. To this end, the Committee conducted more than 1000 interviews; took more than 200 sworn depositions; held more 200 hours of public hearings; reviewed tens of thousands of pages of documents, files, and reports; studied large quantities of intelligence information, including raw intelligence; posted a full-time investigator to Moscow; and sent Member delegations to Russia, North Korea and four times to Southeast Asia.

The Committee's goal was to identify and explore every promising avenue of investigation. To this end, the Chairman and Vice- chairman sent personal letters to the primary next of kin of all Vietnam-era POW/MIAs, and to all returned POWs, seeking information and advice. During televised public hearings, Members of the Committee have repeatedly invited all those with information concerning a POW/MIA related matter to come forward and share that information with the Committee. The Committee has also solicited suggestions from veterans organizations, activist and family groups, current and former U.S. officials and from the public at large with respect to possible witnesses and areas of investigation.

The final judge and jury of U.S. Government actions on the POW/MIA issue is not this Committee; it is the American people. As previous POW/MIA related inquiries have shown, it does not matter much what the official view is if the public does not generally understand and share that view. As a result, the Committee made a conscious effort to combine its behind-the-scenes investigative work with public hearings so that the public would learn--almost contemporaneously with the Committee--about various aspects of the POW/MIA issue. For the same reason, the Committee made every effort to avoid holding hearings in executive session and to provide for the declassification of Committee-generated documents, such as depositions. The goal from the outset has been to create a comprehensive and unbiased public record that would be available for families, journalists, historians and citizens to review and make their own best judgments about the facts. This report is an important part of that record.

The Investigation

The Committee investigation began by tracing the history of the issue back to its war-time beginnings. Clearly, the chance that American POWs are alive in Southeast Asia today depends on whether some were left behind after Operation Homecoming. The chapters in this report entitled "The Paris Peace Accords" and "Accountability" focus in detail on this possibility.

The largest share of Committee efforts was devoted to examining information concerning the possible survival of Americans during the post-war period and up to the present day. This required the review of vast quantities of first, second and third-hand "live- sighting" reports; the analysis of a wide range of intelligence; examination of the methods that DIA uses to evaluate information; and the consideration of indications that POWs may have been transferred to the former Soviet Union or to China during or after the Korean or Vietnamese conflicts. Chapters 4 and 9 describe this aspect of the Committee's investigation.

Cooperation of Southeast Asia Governments

It will be extremely difficult for our government to obtain additional solid information concerning the fate of our POW/MIAs without the cooperation of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Accordingly, the Committee has sought to use its review of POW/MIA issues to encourage recent trends towards greater cooperation between and among these governments and the United States. Members of the Committee traveled to Southeast Asia in April, October, November and December, 1992 for talks with foreign officials and U.S. personnel deployed there. In addition, Committee Members have met from time to time in the United States with representatives of the foreign governments to exchange information and clarify outstanding questions.

Below is a very brief summary of the situation that existed in each of these three countries at the time the Committee's work began. A full description of the issue is contained in the "Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia" chapter of this report.

Vietnam

When the Committee was formed, 1656 Americans were listed as unaccounted for in Vietnam. Since the end of U.S. involvement in hostilities on January 27, 1973, the remains of 266 Americans have been returned and identified.

Most of the Americans lost or captured in North Vietnam during the war were Air Force or Navy airmen who crashed in populated areas accessible to Vietnamese authorities. The North Vietnamese made a systematic effort to investigate crash sites, capture and process American POWs, bury and preserve remains and maintain centralized records.

About two-thirds of the Americans lost in South Vietnam were enlisted Army and Marine Corps personnel. U.S. officials have found that records and information concerning American prisoners held in the south are less complete than for those held in the north.

Since the war, Vietnamese officials have steadfastly denied that any Americans are held captive or that the remains of American servicemen are being knowingly withheld.

Cooperation from Vietnam is essential to the resolution not only of cases involving Americans lost or captured in Vietnam, but in Cambodia and Laos, as well. This is because the vast majority of Americans missing in those countries were believed to have become missing in areas under the control of North Vietnamese military forces at the time. Thus, Vietnam's military archives and other records are an important potential source of information concerning the fates of these men.

Since 1973, the degree of cooperation received from Vietnam has varied widely depending on the international political situation. A good working relationship was impossible during the years immediately after Operation Homecoming because of disputes over violations of the Paris Peace Accords. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, some efforts were made on both sides to pave the way for more normal political and diplomatic relations. That progress came to an abrupt halt in late 1978, however, following Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia, which the United States strongly opposed. Significant bilateral discussions did not resume until the early 1980's, but have since grown steadily in their frequency and depth.

One of the most positive outgrowths of recent talks was the appointment in 1987 of Gen. John W. Vessey, Jr. (USA Ret.), as the President's special envoy to Vietnam. As a result of Gen. Vessey's discussions with then-Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach, the U.S. established a POW/MIA liaison office in Hanoi in July, 1991. The purposes of the office are to investigate live-sighting reports, to conduct joint searches for the remains of American servicemen and to seek access to the relevant Vietnamese records.

The Vessey team has placed a major emphasis on the investigation and resolution of the "discrepancy" cases. Discrepancy cases are those where U.S. officials believe there is the highest probability that additional information concerning a missing American can, with the proper degree of cooperation and investigation, be found. Currently, 135 discrepancy cases involving Americans lost in Vietnam are under investigation and a preliminary investigation in Vietnam of each case is to be completed by January 1993.

Laos

At the time of the Committee's creation, 528 Americans were listed as unaccounted for in Laos, of whom 335 were considered POW/MIA. Only 12 U.S. POWs captured in Laos returned during Operation Homecoming and one, Emmet Kay, who was captured after the cease- fire returned in September 1974. Since the end of the Vietnam conflict, the remains of 42 servicemen have been repatriated.

U.S. efforts to obtain information from Lao authorities have been complicated by the facts that Laos was not a party to the Paris Peace Accords and the United States was not a party to the 1973 Laos cease-fire agreement that pledged all sides to return captive personnel. In addition, the Defense Department estimates that at least 75 percent of the Americans missing in Laos were lost in areas controlled at the time by North Vietnamese armed forces. These losses were generally in eastern Laos along the border with Vietnam and near the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Although the POW/MIA records kept by the Lao have been judged to be less extensive than those kept by Vietnam, there is credible evidence that at least a few unaccounted for Americans were actually held by Pathet Lao forces during the war. Therefore, the Lao can be expected to have knowledge concerning the fate of these individuals. Additionally, there is strong reason to believe that North Vietnamese military were instructed to recover and record all they could about downed U.S. aircraft and killed or captured pilots. Thus, efforts to account for many Americans will ultimately require tri-lateral cooperation involving not only the U.S. and Laos, but Vietnam as well.

In recent years, Lao authorities have been more cooperative with the U.S. in planning and carrying out investigations at known U.S. aircraft crash sites, often in remote and virtually inaccessible locations. The government has also cooperated in efforts to evaluate photographs alleged to depict American POWs.

Cambodia

At the time of the Committee's creation, 83 Americans were listed as unaccounted for in Cambodia and no prisoners or identified remains had been repatriated during the post-war period until recently. Cambodia was not a party to the Paris Peace Accords and no separate cease-fire agreement on repatriation was reached in the aftermath of the war. The recovery of American POWs or remains in Cambodia was made virtually impossible after 1975 when the Khmer Rouge seized power and embarked on a bloody reign of terror directed at Cambodians and foreigners alike. Throughout much of the past 20 years, the U.S. has had either difficult or non-existent diplomatic contacts with the Cambodian Government. The years of struggle and chaos leave little hope that documents or records have survived that would reveal additional information about U.S. personnel.

As in Laos, however, most of the Americans unaccounted for in Cambodia were lost near the border with Vietnam in areas where North Vietnamese forces were dominant. Thus, the best potential sources of documentary information concerning those lost in Cambodia may be in Hanoi, not in Phnom Penh.

Fortunately, the current government in Cambodia has demonstrated a willingness to cooperate with the U.S. in joint field investigations and other efforts to obtain accurate information concerning American POW/MIAs. Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen has been particularly helpful in this effort.

Previous Wars The seeds of the Cold War were sown by the Red Army as it pursued the Wehrmacht across Eastern Europe. The Kremlin imposed Communist regimes on the war-ravaged nations of the region and war-time alliances were replaced by a deadly rivalry: NATO versus the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet Union and its client states, from Europe to the Bering Sea, from the Arctic to the tropics, became the theater of operations for the far-flung activities of U.S. intelligence agencies and units of each service.

To no one's surprise, the Soviet Union reacted. It kidnapped intelligence agents and "attaches." It shot down U.S. intelligence aircraft and the air crews disappeared. These were America's "Cold War losses."

Another tragic outcome of the rapid advance of the Red Army was the "liberation" of American and Allied POWs from German POW camps by the Red Army. Rather than moving these hapless soldiers westward toward their own advancing armies, the Soviets took thousands of them eastward to Odessa. Some boarded ships and eventually reached their homes safely. Others, and we may never know how many, became prisoners -- not of war, but of the Soviet gulag.

During the Korean War, thousands of American fighting men were captured by North Korean and Chinese forces. Estimates vary, but clearly hundreds were not returned after the armistice and prisoner exchange. Intelligence information, collected during and after the war, indicated that many POWs were held in China, and some were sent to the Soviet Union. Therefore, accounting for the Korean War missing involves not only North Korea, but China and Russia as well.

The problems the United States faces in recovering soldiers who have fallen into Communist hands predates even World War II. We note that the Bolsheviks captured American soldiers on the Archangel and Siberian fronts during the Intervention of 1918-19. Additionally, the U.S. is not alone in trying to account fully for missing and captured soldiers in the period immediately following past wars. Many of our allies from the Korean conflict still have unaccounted for servicemen.

Because the Committee's focus concerned the possibility that American POWs could still be alive, our resources were devoted primarily to investigating the relatively recent conflict in Vietnam. Nevertheless, the Committee did focus considerable attention on investigating previous wars and conflicts. A discussion of this phase of the Committee's investigation is contained in Chapter 9 of this report. Previous Investigations

The Select Committee began its work in October, 1991 fully aware that the POW/MIA issue had been examined and investigated by Congress and the Department of Defense many times in the past. One of the challenges facing the Committee was whether it could uncover significant information that previous investigations into the subject had not.

The Committee's approach has been to learn from, and build on, those previous investigations, without necessarily accepting as valid either the methods or the findings of those inquiries. The Committee's review of earlier studies has helped to focus resources and attention on areas that had not been thoroughly examined before or where still unanswered questions had been raised.

It should be noted that earlier investigations have varied widely in content, method, purpose and work product. Most previous efforts have consisted simply of Congressional hearings or single-purpose studies into the workings of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The only previous study that was comparable in its original mandate to that of the Senate Select Committee was that of the Montgomery Committee in 1975-1976. A summary of prior investigations and hearings is included as an appendix to this report.

The Montgomery Committee

The most extensive and influential of prior Congressional investigations into the POW/MIA issue was conducted by the House Select Committee on Missing Persons in Southeast Asia, known as the "Montgomery Commission report" after Committee chairman, U.S. Rep. G.V. "Sonny" Montgomery. The investigation included public hearings, private meetings with U.S. officials, including President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and direct talks with key government officials in Vietnam and Laos. The Montgomery Committee reviewed many of the same issues that would be considered by the Senate Select Committee 16 years later. These included the implementation of the Paris Peace Accords, the possibility that U.S. POWs may have survived in Laos and DIA procedures for obtaining the fullest possible accounting of POW/MIAs.

The most significant and widely-quoted finding in the Montgomery Committee's December 13, 1976 final report was its conclusion that "no Americans are being held alive as prisoners in Indochina, or elsewhere, as a result of the war in Indochina." The Committee did not, however, exclude the possibility that some American servicemen might have remained behind voluntarily, citing specifically one deserter and one defector (then listed officially as a POW) who "were alive in Indochina in the early 1970's and may still be alive."

During its investigation, the Committee reviewed the files of the 33 U.S. servicemen still listed as POW in 1976. The Committee concluded that six of the 33 had been classified improperly as POWs, and that there was no evidence that 16 others had ever been taken prisoner. The Committee identified only 11 POWs who had not been accounted for by the Vietnamese.

Although the Committee found no "dereliction or malfeasance of duty on the part of U.S. Government officials," it did cite the military security classification system for contributing to "unnecessary confusion, bitterness and rancor" among POW/MIA families. It also found that the DOD's decision to conceal actual loss sites during the secret wars in Laos and Cambodia "contributed to the mistrust expressed by some next of kin."

The Montgomery Committee's report strengthened the view of those who felt that no American POWs had been left behind, but failed to persuade others. Representatives Joe Moakley, Benjamin Gilman and Tennyson Guyer, all Members of the Committee, questioned the Committee's basis for concluding that no American prisoners were alive in Indochina and the National League of Families released a 25 page report criticizing the Committee's methodology and its overwhelming reliance on data provided by the U.S. Government.

During its own investigation, the Select Committee interviewed Angus MacDonald, who served as staff director for the Montgomery Committee. Mr. MacDonald said that the Montgomery Committee's inquiry was focused almost solely on the question of whether American POWs remained alive at that time (1975-1976) and not on whether some may have been left behind after Operation Homecoming in 1973. Mr. MacDonald also confirmed that the Montgomery Committee did not receive access to many of the Executive branch documents made available to the Select Committee, particularly intelligence information and those dealing with the negotiation and aftermath of the Paris Peace Accords.

The Woodcock Commission

In February, 1977, shortly after taking office, President Carter appointed a Presidential Commission on Americans Missing and Unaccounted for in Southeast Asia. The five member Commission was chaired by Leonard Woodcock, President of the United Auto Workers, and was designed to help the President gain greater cooperation on the POW/MIA issue from the governments of Southeast Asia.

Although the Commission was not empowered to negotiate, it was instructed to seek all available information from the Governments of Vietnam and Laos and to listen carefully to the concerns of those governments on other matters of interest, including possible U.S. economic aid. The hope was that the Lao and Vietnamese would be more forthcoming on POW/MIA matters if they sensed a willingness on the part of the U.S. to consider such issues as normalization of relations and reconstruction aid.

The centerpiece of Woodcock Commission activities was a visit of several days in mid-March, 1977 to Vietnam and Laos. The delegation was told by leaders in both countries that they were willing to cooperate on POW/MIA matters, but that the United States should also take steps concerning economic aid and reconstruction. In Vietnam, the Commission received the remains of 12 U.S. airmen and was informed that a specialized office would be established by the government to receive information on POW/MIA related matters. In Vientiane, government officials emphasized the difficulty of looking for the remains of MIAs in a nation as rugged, remote and impoverished as Laos, and said that all U.S. POWs captured in Laos had already been returned.

Like the Montgomery Committee, the Woodcock Commission concluded that "there is no evidence to indicate that any American POWs from the Indochina conflict remain alive." The Commission found that the Vietnamese "have not given us all the information they probably have," but cited "a clear, formal assurance" from the Vietnamese that they would look for MIA information and remains. The Commission also concluded, pessimistically, that "for reasons of terrain, climate, circumstances of loss, and passage of time, it is probable that no accounting will ever be possible for most of the Americans lost in Indochina. Even where information may once have been available, it may no longer be recoverable due to the ravages of time and physical changes."

It is worth noting that the Woodcock Commission's task was more diplomatic than investigatory. It did not seek to replicate the work of the Montgomery Committee, to review files, hold hearings or develop new sources of information. Instead, it relied almost entirely on briefings from U.S. agencies, POW/MIA activists and others. The Commission clearly operated on the assumption that further POW/MIA information could not be gathered without cooperation especially from the Vietnamese, and that cooperation would most likely be forthcoming if overall U.S.-Vietnamese relations were improved.

Live-Sighting Reports

Neither the Montgomery Committee nor the Woodcock Commission had the benefit of the flood of reports from refugees fleeing Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam and Cambodia, following the Communist takeover of those two countries. First-hand and hearsay accounts about live Americans being sighted did much to revive hopes among families and others that some U.S. POWs might have survived, but few reports were received before 1979.

Live-sighting reports, and the U.S. response to them, dominated much of the POW/MIA discussion during the late 1970's and 1980's. In the early 1980's, George Brooks of the National League of Families conducted a study in which he found considerable fault with the way live-sighting reports were analyzed by the DIA. In Congress, however, the House Task Force on American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia reviewed 80 "live-sighting" case files and concluded that "all options available to DIA were exercised" in responding to them. The following year, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that the "DIA performs unbiased, professional and thorough analyses of POW-MIA live- sighting cases," and rejected suggestions that credible information about live Americans had been covered up. It should be noted that this was a limited inquiry into DIA procedures and that no public hearings were held.

During this same period, Commodore Thomas A. Brooks (USN) of the DIA wrote an extremely critical internal memorandum on DIA's performance in evaluating live-sighting cases. According to the memo, Admiral Brooks further sought to "damage limit" Members of Congress who wanted to review POW/MIA files which were acknowledged to be "sloppy" and "unprofessional".

During the first six months of 1986, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, chaired by Senator Frank Murkowski, conducted seven days of hearings on the POW/MIA issue, focusing primarily on "live- sighting" reports and other information that U.S. POWs were being held. The Committee received a bewildering array of allegations, claims and counter-claims from agency officials, family members, former POWs, retired military officers and Members of Congress. The Committee issued no report, but the range of testimony indicated that divisions over whether the U.S. Government was doing enough in behalf of POW/MIAs and their families were widening, rather than narrowing.

Also in 1986, two other critical reviews were written at the Defense Department concerning DIA's POW/MIA efforts. One internal review concluded that it was a "mystery" that prior Congressional reports had generally praised these efforts. A summary of all three reviews is discussed below, and the entire reports are included as an appendix.

Internal DIA Inquiries

Meanwhile, several internal Defense Intelligence Agency reviews were conducted during this period.

. On September 25, 1985, Commodore Thomas A. Brooks (USN), DIA's Assistant Deputy Director for Collection Management, reported on his review of the operations and analysis of the DIA's POW/MIA Office. Commodore Brooks was critical of some DIA procedures and concluded that there was an element of truth to the allegation that the DIA had a "mindset to debunk" reports of live Americans in Southeast Asia. . On March 18, 1986, Col. Kimball Gaines (USAF), reported to the Director of the DIA on a review of the POW/MIA Office that he had conducted as head of a five member task force. The Gaines Task Force concluded that it had "no confidence that the current analytical process has adequately addressed all relevant factors and has drawn totally reliable conclusions."

. On May 27, 1986, a survey of DIA's PW/MIA Analysis Center was discussed in a report by a Task Force headed by Lt. Gen. Eugene F. Tighe, Jr. (USAF-Ret.)

Although the body of the Tighe report was classified until mid- 1992, some of the conclusions and recommendations were not. The report recommended a "complete overhaul" of the activities of the DIA PW/MIA Center in order improve the quality and thoroughness of intelligence evaluation related to the POW/MIA issue. The principal conclusions were that:

We have found no evidence of a cover-up by DIA.

It is self-evident that a large number of MIA's may never be properly accounted for. Therefore, false hope should not be offered to those seeking a total accounting of PW/MIA's.

DIA holds information that establishes the strong possibility of American prisoners of war being held in Laos and Vietnam.

The Socialist Republic of Vietnam holds a large number of remains, some 400 at least, of U.S. military personnel solely for continued bargaining power.

. . . . Major improvements in procedures and resources are required for the DIA PW/MIA Center to evaluate information properly.

The report's finding that live U.S. POWs were possibly being held in Laos and Vietnam was based on live-sighting reports provided primarily by the refugee community which the Task Force found to be "possibly the finest human intelligence database in the U.S. post- World War II experience," and on judgments made about the likelihood, based on intelligence and history, that Vietnam would seek to retain prisoners as bargaining chips.

Reagan Inter-Agency Group

On January 19, 1989, the last day of President Reagan's second term, an "Inter-Agency Report of the Reagan Administration on the POW/MIA Issue in Southeast Asia" was released.

The report credited President Reagan for designating the issue a matter of "highest national priority," re-opening bilateral discussions with Vietnam and Laos, upgrading intelligence priorities, and discouraging "irresponsible" private activities.

The report concluded that "we have yet to find conclusive evidence of the existence of live prisoners, and returnees at Operation Homecoming in 1973 knew of no Americans who were left behind in captivity. Nevertheless, based upon circumstances of loss and other information, we know of a few instances where Americans were captured and the governments involved acknowledge that some Americans died in captivity, but there has been no accounting of them."

Challenge for the Select Committee

Aside from the Montgomery Committee, no full scale Congressional investigation of the issues to be dealt with by the Select Committee had ever been conducted. However, the Select Committee would have the advantage of new information that had become available since the mid-1970's, including potential access to information and cooperation from nations of the former Soviet bloc.

The Committee was determined from the outset to do as thorough a job as possible. Unlike previous inquiries, the Committee would focus not on a single issue or a particular point in time, but on the entire chain of custody of the POW/MIA issue from the war to the Paris Peace Talks to the present day.

The Committee's investigative methods also differ from previous inquiries in several ways. First, the Committee required sworn testimony from government officials and private citizens alike and felt compelled to use its subpoena authority on some occasions. Second, the Committee made a vigorous effort to solicit testimony not only from policy-makers in Washington, but from professionals in the field, many of whom have worked on the issue for more than a decade. Third, the Committee requested, and received, cooperation from the Executive branch, but also attempted whenever possible, to analyze information and evidence independently from the Executive branch. On several occasions, the Committee asked officials from the Defense Intelligence Agency to respond to alternative theories or interpretations of available information. The purpose was to test the "conventional wisdom" and to allow a free-flowing exchange of views for the benefit of Committee Members and the public.

Finally, the Committee sought access to all POW/MIA related materials in the possession of the Executive branch, including Presidential papers, National Security Council documents and the records of the White House-based Washington Special Action Group. Much of this material had never before been made available to Congressional or other investigators of the issue.

Baseline Hearings -- November, 1991

During the initial round of hearings on November 5, 6, 7 and 15, 1991, the Committee sought to establish a baseline of belief and knowledge about the POW/MIA issue, and to obtain guidance from family, veterans and activist groups about the areas on which it should concentrate its work.

The testimony of the first witness, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, marked the first time that a Secretary of Defense had testified before Congress exclusively on the subject of POW/MIA affairs. The Secretary told the Committee that "to date, we have no conclusive evidence proving that Americans are being held against their will in Indochina. Nonetheless, the importance of the issue makes investigating live-sighting reports our first priority."

The Secretary and subsequent Defense Department witnesses set forth in detail the process DOD uses to seek POW/MIA related information throughout Southeast Asia, including efforts to increase cooperation with governments of the region. In that connection, Secretary Cheney testified that:

Vietnamese cooperation on these joint investigations has improved, but despite these improvements, we are still not satisfied with Vietnam's performance. Too often, our office finds that public pronouncements of increased cooperation by Hanoi do not produce satisfactory arrangements on the ground. Promises to cooperate on live-sightings, improved helicopter transportation and complete access to historical records remain only partially fulfilled. Vietnam's foot-dragging on unilateral repatriation of remains is especially frustrating, especially if we ever hope to achieve the fullest possible accounting in a reasonable period of time, Vietnamese unilateral efforts, as well as their participation in joint activities, will have to dramatically improve.

Secretary Cheney also described Defense Department efforts to evaluate the validity of recent photographs purporting to show U.S. POWs, and alluded to the "cruel actions by some fast operators who play on the hopes of families and friends of POWs and MIAs:

We must naturally pursue every lead that comes our way. . . .

But each time we rush to answer. . . .false alarms, our resources are diverted from solid leads and productive lines of inquiry. Individuals who repeatedly provide false information, well intentioned or not, should be called to account for their actions.

General John W. Vessey, Jr. (USA Ret.), the Special Presidential Emissary for POW/MIA Matters, reviewed the status of his efforts to gain a fuller accounting of missing Americans. In describing the U.S. and Vietnamese approaches to the issue, General Vessey told the Committee:

The United States has quite consistently urged that the POW/MIA matter be approached as a humanitarian issue. We have regularly told the Vietnamese that resolution of the issue is not a requirement for discussing normalization of diplomatic relations. We have, however, consistently said that the pace and scope of any normalization discussions will be affected by the level of Vietnam's cooperation in resolving the POW/MIA issues.

With respect to the issue of live Americans, General Vessey said:

We know through extensive debriefings and subsequent investigations that all Americans seen by U.S. prisoners of war who did return in the Vietnamese prison system have been accounted for either as returned POWs or through the return of remains or having been reported as died in captivity.

In the years since 1973, other than the 100 or so unresolved first-hand live-sighting reports under investigation, we have gathered no other intelligence that has been reported to me. . . .which indicates that the Vietnamese are holding live prisoners or that there was another POW system other than the one in which our returned prisoners were held.

Of particular interest to the Committee was the advice and guidance that POW/MIA families, veterans and activist groups had concerning various aspects of the issue and the most appropriate focus for the Committee's work.

For example, Robert Wallace, Commander-in-Chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, cited a series of resolutions approved by his organization calling for accelerated government to government contacts with the nations of Southeast Asia, the establishment of a non-diplomatic U.S. Government presence in Vietnam, the appropriate declassification of POW/MIA information and more active efforts to resolve questions about Korean War POW/MIAs.

John F. Sommer, Jr., Executive Director of the American Legion, recommended the review of 1) live-sighting reports and the methods used by DIA to evaluate them; 2) relevant satellite photographs; 3) the 1986 Tighe Commission report; 4) document classification procedures; 5) operation of the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii; and 6) the allegations of former DIA official, Col. Millard Peck. J. Thomas Burch, chairman of the National Vietnam Veterans Coalition, expressed concern about statements that U.S. officials have made discounting the possibility that U.S. POWs are still being held. "It is difficult to understand," Mr. Burch told the Committee, "how the Government can effectively negotiate for the return of live prisoners when it lacks the confidence of its own negotiating position. Basically, they're telling the Vietnamese they want information about live Americans at the same time they're publicly saying that they're all dead."

Bill Duker, Chairman of the Vietnam Veterans of America's standing committee on POW/MIA, also testified that the highest priority should be given to the repatriation of live Americans and expressed support for the declassification of POW/MIA information, "as long as that declassification protects the privacy of the families and safeguards U.S. intelligence methods and sources."

Joseph E. Andry, past National Commander of the Disabled American Veterans, urged the Select Committee to carry out a dual mission: "The first part of the mission should focus on an aggressive pursuit of live sightings in Southeast Asia. The second part. . . . should be an encompassing investigation into why our government still has not accounted for 90,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines since the end of World War II."

The Committee also received testimony from the National League of POW/MIA Families and from individual family members.

Ann Mills Griffith, Executive Director of the National League of Families, credited the Reagan Administration with efforts to raise public consciousness of the POW/MIA issue, to upgrade functioning of the POW/MIA Inter-Agency Group, and for developing a strategy aimed at gaining increased cooperation from the governments in Southeast Asia. Griffiths said that, unlike the past, the current process has "integrity and priority."

Other family members who testified during the November hearings included Dr. Jeffrey C. Donahue, brother of Maj. Morgan Jefferson Donahue, lost in Laos in 1968; Mrs. Gladys Stevens Fleckenstein, mother of Lt. Cmdr. Larry Stevens, lost in Laos, 1969; Ms. Shelby Robertson Quast and Ms. Deborah Robertson Bardsley, daughters of Col. John Robertson, lost or captured in Vietnam in 1966; and Mr. Albro Lundy III, son of Major Albro Lundy, Jr., lost in Vietnam in 1970; Captian Robert Apodaca, son of Major Victor Apodaca, lost in North Vietnam in 1967; and Dr. Patricia Ann O'Grady, daughter of Col. John O'Grady, lost in North Vietnam in 1967. Each raised serious questions about the U.S. Government's handling of the POW/MIA issue as it affected the investigation into the status of their missing family member.