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Senate Select Committee - XV

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.