MIA Facts Site

24 July 1991
View of
Thach Ba Shoreline

You should have come to this page from an article titled Line Drawings of the Smith-Garwood 1993 Thach Ba Caper.  If you have not read that article, stop, go back, and read it.  In that article you will find a link to another article describing the 1993 Smith-Garwood episode in greater detail -- may want to read that one, also.  Then, come back here; there are links aplenty to bring you back.

The image shown below is a line drawing of a photograph taken by "national technical assets" on 24 July 1991 of the area of Thach Ba Lake that was visited by Senator Smith and Robert Garwood in July 1993.  Here is a guide to the drawing.

• There are two red circles on the drawing.  
  • The circle in the upper left is the ferry landing from which the Smith-Garwood party departed.
  • The circle in the lower right is the buildings that they "discovered" and that Garwood proclaimed to be the location where he saw US POWs in September 1977
• The blue line is the route they took from the ferry landing to the buildings and back.
• The irregular shaped blobs are islands.  The mainland is the large land mass on the left and upper right of this drawing.

In August 1993, after Smith and Garwood returned from their jaunt, I went to Smith's office to discuss the trip with him.  They had been accompanied on this trip by former US Army MSG Garnett (Bill) Bell.  They had a global positioning system receiver with them and Smith had noted the geographic coordinates of the buildings and of the ferry landing.  He gave us that data and we had the imagery analysts locate those two spots on the photographs.  We then went back to Smith's office, he studied the photos and agreed that, yes, those were the two spots -- the ferry landing and the building site.  He then traced on the photo the route they took.  It is from my recollection of that meeting that I put the blue line on this drawing.

Note the route that they took to go from the ferry landing to the building site.   The route was never more than 100 yards away from the mainland shoreline.   Garwood stated that, in September 1977 when he claims to have seen US POWs, he traveled away from shore, out of sight of shore, to an island.  Clearly that statement does not describe the place where Smith and Garwood went in July 1993.

Follow this link for a close-up line drawing of the building site, 24 Jul 91.

This article prepared on November 14, 1999.