MIA Facts Site

Report of the
Senate Select Committee
on
POW-MIA Affairs:
Appendix 6

Selected Testimony

(Note: I did not have a .txt version of this part of Appendix 6 -- this page is in a different format from other pages but the material is unchanged.)

Accounting - Left Behind	Admiral Stockdale 12/03/92	Chairman Kerry: Based on that concept of morality that you have been driven by and the entire process that you felt drove all of you that you would come back together speaking to us today, to a matter of moral certainty in your heart and under oath, do you believe that you left anybody behind or that anybody was alive? Stockdale: No. No. I would not have come back...
Accounting - Left Behind	Admiral Stockdale 12/03/92	It was the Son Tay Raid of November 1970 that prompted the North Vietnamese to bring them all -- all of these chickens out in the satellite camps back, all back to Hoala Prison, where in January 1971 every American prisoner -- with two exceptions which I'll cover in a minute -- where every American prisoner who had ever been sighted, whispered to, tapped to by any other American over the last 6-1/2 years were all locked up in a ring of contiguous large cell blocks around the largest west courtyard of Hoala Prison, and it's half the prison.
Accounting - Left Behind	Admiral Stockdale 12/03/92	Found in those dungeons -- all of this activity found in those dungeons, a meaning of life centered on being your brother's keeper emerged, keeping a memorialized chronology of contacts and acquaintances that could some day, God willing, when papers and pencils were available, allow you to present to the world a history, in the worst case, of who was last known to be where.
Accounting	Admiral Stockdale 12/03/92	And then there's a kind of an unreal -- as we've come along in this 20th century, we've become litigious... where we believe that somebody owes us an explanation and an apology and a payback if something is not quite right. And when you start talking about warriors last seen alive, never being -- that the Government owes you a blow-by-blow description of what happened to them to bring about either their demise or their missingness, there's never been a war in history that any government could do that. To say that the Government owes us an explanation for what happened to a guy who was last seen alive out on the battlefield. Can anybody see that as a possible reality? At night or in storms, people get buried under avalanches. There's any number of things that have happened over history. That's just an unrealistic goal somebody has cooked up, and now it's a demand.
Accounting	Andry 11/06/91	Mr. Chairman, let me say we don't expect this committee to take on mission impossible by trying to account for every single POW or MIA. But we do believe that every effort should be made to determine why the Government has been unable to do a better job of accounting for these soldiers. Furthermore, every effort should be made to determine what plans our Government has made to prevent this intolerable situation from happening again.
Accounting	Bell 12/04/92	...we're not talking about one man being the only one privy to this information, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of analysts at the time of intercept having access to the same information that Mr. Mooney saw and that Mr. Minarsin saw. And they have all reached the same conclusion, that just never happened, that there is no indication that people were singled out based on their air crew status, based on their technical capability or their technical knowledge, as Moscow-bound, and our review -- and this is, as I said, the third time that it's been reviewed to look for that information -- supports that.
Accounting - Left Behind	Bell 11/06/91	We had information of Americans being held at that time [after Operation Homecoming], sir, but it was not correlated to any specific individual.
Accounting - KIA/BNR	Brooks 12/01/92	I, too, have wondered why some cases were left MIA when all good, in my estimation, evidence suggested that the person never survived the plane crash, bailing out of the aircraft, whatever the situation happened to be.
Accounting	Chambers 08/04/92	As I have explained, our analysis sets an upper limit on the number of MIAs who could possibly be POWs. It does not suggest that there are POWs, or that any POWs were in fact held past the time of Operation Homecoming. What we are talking about here are those MIAs who potentially could have survived. We do not know if they survived. I cannot overemphasize this distinction.
Accounting - KIA-BNR	Chambers 08/04/92	The Defense Intelligence Agency, as we were just discussing, reviewed all 2,266 cases to identify those people who had the best chance for survival...However, our investigation of the loss incidents revealed that not all of the 1,171 were likely candidates for survival... We also have cases where information on an individual's fate is mixed, or evidence of their fate is lacking... These are the most difficult cases, because it is almost impossible to know where to begin an investigation unless more information becomes available. In some of the 1,171 cases, we know the individual didn't survive, even though he wasn't declared killed in action by his commander, and I think Mr. Sheetz mentioned that there are cases where all identifiable traces of an individual were eliminated by the sheer force of an explosion... Finally, there are those who are known to have died in captivity...
Accounting - KIA/BNR	Chambers 08/04/92	This leaves us with 100 to 125... Sir, the 269 total are the individuals who were likely candidates for survival and possible captivity, but within that sub- category there are several groups..
Accounting - KIA/BNR	Chambers 08/04/92	The difficult task of identifying who might have survived, and remained a prisoner after the war, began even before prisoners were released during Operation Homecoming in 1973 and continues today...the total 2,266 unaccounted for Americans, 1,095 were killed in action, leaving 1,171 Americans missing in action.
Accounting - KIA/BNR	Chambers 08/04/92	As shown here, the 269 individuals for priority investigation are drawn from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and have been the focus of our field investigations that began in Vietnam in September of 1988... However, not all 269 individuals are likely candidates for survival and possible captivity...Based on our field activities in Vietnam, 61 of these people are known to have died. An additional 78 cannot be considered as possible POW candidates for one of the following reasons: They are known to have died but happen to have been lost in the same incident with a last-known-alive person. They are known to have died in captivity, but are incorporated as priority cases because at one time they were carried by their respective services as a POW or they do not meet the criteria for a last known alive designation but are included as discrepancy cases because we believe the Indochinese Governments are withholding information concerning their fate. And finally, there are remains still under analysis at the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii that we expect will lower this number further once they are identified. There are also several cases where we have information that points strongly but not conclusively to death at the time of loss. loss.
Accounting	Cheney 11/05/91	I feel we are closer than we have ever been to a full accounting on those who are still missing.
Accounting - KIA/BNR	Clapper 08/04/92	...I need to make clear as well that the determination of status as to whether someone is or is not KIA is not totally an intelligence call. There are others that play in this, and obviously not all the families or next-of-kin would necessarily accept that categorization of 1,095 were killed in action, body not recovered. Chairman Kerry: Well, I'm troubled, you know, folks, if there isn't sufficient evidence to put them on a KIA list, they don't belong on it. I mean, this is part of what lends so much controversy to this issue.
Accounting - Left Behind	Clements 09/24/92	Chairman Kerry: Let me ask this question, Governor, in that second paragraph that you were just reading, this is a July document, correct? Governor Clements: July the 17th. Chairman Kerry: And you said in that document of this number, 67 are officially listed as prisoner of war. Governor Clements: They are officially listed as prisoner of war based on information that they reached the ground safely and were captured. Chairman Kerry: Correct. That is exactly the point I want to make. . . . You have 67 people in July that you have recorded as on the ground and captured. Governor Clements: That's right. Chairman Kerry: Last known alive captured, correct? Governor Clements: That is correct. Chairman Kerry: Seems to me that is an indication you have people alive in Southeast Asia.
Accounting - Status Changes	Clements 09/24/92	Chairman Kerry: May I ask you what the rationale was, and there may well be a very good one, but what was the rationale for taking this long-time standing position of the Secretaries of the Service and changing it. Why did you suddenly have to make these reviews? Governor Clements: This was most, most delicate situation. There were some very legitimate reasons and cases for changing of status. . . . Chairman Kerry: So if there was a legitimate reason for somebody to be made POW, why did you have to step in and be the arbiter of that? Governor Clements: What I am trying to explain, and I think it is a very understandable situation, there were all kinds of nuances to this particular question.
Accounting - Status Changes	Clements 09/24/92	Chairman Kerry: ...Approximately how many cases, individual cases, do you remember being brought to your attention after Homecoming, that is for reclassification? Clements: Well, quite a few. And for me to put a number on it would be very difficult. Chairman Kerry: Was it more of the magnitude of five or 100? Can you give us some idea of how many cases would have brought to your attention? Not with any accuracy, was your answer. Question: I'll understand that it's just an approximation. Answer: Over a four-year period there could easily have been 50 or 75 cases that were investigated in-depth that would have been brought to my attention. So, the range was 5 to 100, you picked 50 to 75. Now that is a lot of cases that potentially the service secretary sent to you saying we want to reclassify this person as a POW. If it had been left to them, that person would have been. It was not left to them. You had taken over that authority. The result was none were.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Clements 09/24/92	...There was never any discussion or argument between us that statement in all likelihood probably was true. Chairman Kerry: That they were all dead. Governor Clements: That they probably and in all likelihood were dead. Chairman Kerry: Was that the prevailing attitude at DoD? Governor Clements: Absolutely...
Accounting - Status Changes	Clements 09/24/92	Governor Clements: I want to correct one thing there. I did not take over that authority, and my actions in this regard were strictly on a review basis... Chairman Kerry: You used the word review, but when the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Acting Secretary at some periods of time, says, I want a memo sent to all departments that any reclassification from MIA to POW must first be cleared by me, that is a clearance. MIA to KIA is OK within each service. So it was OK to take MIA and put them into KIA, kill them off. But do not make them prisoners. I have got to see it. And nothing happened. Nobody was made a prisoner.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Clements 09/24/92	"I don't think there's any question at all that I said -- not in those exact words, but I said that in all likelihood those people over there are probably dead..."
Accounting - Status Changes	Clements 09/24/92	Vice Chairman Smith: ...Why did you, Governor Clements, make a decision to not allow your service secretaries, which as far as I know has never happened before and has not happened since -- to not allow your service secretaries to upgrade an individual from an MIA category to a POW category? Why did you make that decision? Governor Clements: I don't think that I made such a decision.
Accounting - Status Changes	Clements 09/24/92	Vice Chairman Smith: Governor, I have got it in your own handwriting... 'I want a memo sent to all departments, services, ASD, DIA, JCS, that any reclassification from MIA to POW must first be cleared by me -- me.' That is what you said.
Accounting - Status Changes	Clements 09/24/92	Governor Clements: I have no recollection of making a decision of that kind. Let me tell you something, Senator, it is very, very clear that only classification can be changed within the services. And let's don't get that confused. Vice Chairman Smith: 'I request that all actions which recommend reclassification of military personnel from missing in action to captured status be submitted to me for approval. Proposed reclassification action should be first routed through the Assistant Secretary of Defense for a preliminary review before referral to me.' That was June 8th, 1973.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Daschle 09/21/92	From my perspective, and listening to the data and reading the documents, there was a sea change attitude immediately following the President's assertion that everybody has now come home. Even somebody with your credibility and dedication and determination, for whatever reason, even though you were in the White House and obviously assigned to a different responsibility, chose not to raise the issue, in spite of the fact that you did feel strongly about it and took the actions that you have so capably described this morning. But you did not raise the issue. No one raised the issue, apparently, inside the Government after the President made his assertion in March of 1973. And I guess I would just like you, if you could, to describe what it was, with all of those who felt as strongly as you did, that this was no longer a time within which to raise the issue, and we are going to put it behind us. All I am asking -- and I do not mean it to be in any way an accusatory question. I just would like you to describe the atmosphere that apparently permeated the White House and the administration in June when you arrived, re-arrived, about this issue? Why was it such that no one chose to challenge the President's statement and recharacterize it in a way that would be less positive, as you described it? Laird: I cannot explain that, Senator. I believe that that's something you should pursue.
Accounting	Daschle 06/24/92	...you might as well have been in two different countries trying to look into this thing, for as little cooperation and coordination that there was.
Accounting - Left Behind	Dole 09/24/92	Though without suggesting that it is the intent of the committee, there is certainly a fact of life that the media is reporting your work as a kind of who shot John exercise. The headlines are all full of finger- pointing about, quote, who abandoned, unquote, our POW/MIAs; about who is to blame for the situation where too little was done for too long; and trying to find out the truth about the fate of our POWs and MIAs.
Accounting	Duker 12/02/92	...I don't know that I'll ever be totally satisfied that the resolution is there personally. I do believe a beginning would be, though, to -- at least for every American that was last known alive or last known alive in captivity, if we could resolve every one of those cases that would at least be a beginning towards coming to some kind of an accounting.
Accounting - Left Behind	Ford 11/15/91	I have not seen anything that would convince me that there are not some Americans still alive... how many, I'm not sure, but I think that the reports suggest that there was one for sure, that the Vietnamese didn't tell us about until much later. That was one, but there are also some reports suggesting that people might have been alive we didn't know about. We didn't know where they were -- and they probably died afterwards. ...As we accumulate evidence and as we go through that process, we are able to begin to piece together a little bit better what happened back in 1972, or 1973, or 1975, and the evidence, as we accumulate it, more and more suggests that there are probably some left alive in 1973.
Accounting	Godley 09/24/92	This is an important distinction. The MIAs were men in aircraft, principally, shot down. They were carried as MIAs until they were either reported as POWs or their graves were located, or a large number of their wing men or other aircraft in the air at that time reported shot or downed in flames.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Grassley 06/25/92	Without this statement, that the President made and of course those attendant follow-on policy decisions, there is absolutely no electrifying conflict. People are incensed. I don't suppose people are incensed with bureaucratic incompetence, they have learned to handle that, but they are incensed because of the deception around this issue, deception by our own government.
Accounting	Grassley 10/15/92	...the Paris Peace Accords hearings gave the live-sighting reports a context, a plausibility quotient. In my view, we must revisit this issue before our work is complete, and we must certainly get a response on the discrepancies.
Accounting - Comptroller's Records	Grassley 09/24/92	Presently, there are 1,278 military personnel who are unaccounted for as a result of the hostilities in Southeast Asia. Of this number, 67 are officially listed as prisoner of war based on information that they reached the ground safely and were captured. Now, that is from Clements to President Nixon. And that is on, I believe, the 17th of July, 1973. Now, the point that I want to raise and that I would like to have you respond to is, as I see it, the bottom line is that we may not have known with 100 percent certitude that these men were prisoners. But it seems to me that we sure as heck believed that to be the case, to the point that we would list them as current captured. We believed it to the point that we had a list entitled ``Current captured.'' And, at the least, it seems to me, this information conflicted with both the Nixon statement on March the 29th and the Shields statement on April the 14th.
Accounting - Comptroller's Records	Grassley 09/24/92	I have got in front of me documents that are entitled number of casualties incurred by U.S. military personnel in connection with the conflict in Vietnam. And the bottom line has a figure that is current captured. And I do not know whether they are daily or weekly reports, but probably weekly reports. On March the 31st, 1973, there are 81 listed; 7 April, 73, 80; 14 April, 73, and that is the date that Shields made his statement that there are not any alive. We had 75. April 28th, 72.
Accounting - Status Changes	Kerrey 09/22/92	My own belief is that a full accounting of our people will not occur until the Vietnamese Government itself is accountable to its own people. This is a Government that has lied to its people ever since they seized illegitimate power in 1975. They have continued to lie and misrepresent facts to their own people.
Accounting	Kerrey 09/24/92	It is very important for us to try to figure out what we are going to do today, not [just] what we should have done 20 years ago.
Accounting - Left Behind	Kerry 06/25/92	So there is certainly that measure of information that we have received. There are other acknowledgments that I think are not insignificant; acknowledgements that we are not really dealing with a universe of 2,266, [that] it is smaller. In fact the committee, through its exhaustive review, suggest that somewhere in the vicinity, in 1973, of 244 is a reasonable number, minus those immediately determined to have died in captivity, which leaves you somewhere in the vicinity of 133, which is close, as Vessey said, to the numbers he has come up with.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Kerry 09/22/92	Before Operation Homecoming, our officials in the military, and you in the executive, expressed the conviction that POWs were about to be left behind because the Laos list was incomplete. But after Operation Homecoming, the statements seemed to have shifted and been calibrated more towards putting people at ease, and urging an acceptance or encouraging the belief that the goal had been achieved.
Accounting	Kerry 09/21/92	Chairman Kerry: President Nixon won in 1968 on a peace platform and indeed, no sooner was he elected than he began withdrawing troops. Our withdrawal was forestalled in 1968. For four more years the war went on. More prisoners were created and finally, we negotiated with the recognition that the country was fed up and South Vietnam was to either stand alone or fall alone with enormous military support, I might add, from us... We are here 20 years later trying to understand in the dynamics of where we got to, whether or not we got our prisoners out or not...It was not us who stated that we do not have all our prisoners back, that was in memos that your colleagues in Government created. The families, however, knew this and for 20 years they have sought an honest accounting from us, so we are here today to do that and I am sure you are sympathetic to that.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Kerry 06/25/92	Dr. Shields, do you not think that it is a little disingenuous to stand up before the Nation and have a policy announced that says we have no indication that there are any Americans alive when you know people are carried as POW and have nothing to suggest they are dead? Why did you not say, "You know, we have got 244 questions. We have got people we list as POW, and we do not know," instead of saying, "There are no indications that anybody is alive." Because the last thing you knew was that they were alive.
Accounting - Left Behind	Kerry 09/24/92	Evidence was available to American policy makers in 1973 that some POWs might have been alive. Clearly, there were people listed as POW who did not return. That does not mean that they were alive. It also does not mean the converse; that they were dead.
Accounting	Kerry 06/25/92	What we did say unequivocally is that there were a body, a group of people listed as POW for whom there was a reason they were listed as POW, about whom we knew enough to call them POW. And we did not get an accounting at that time. And we had reason to believe that many of them were alive.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Kerry 09/24/92	Well, I would say, Admiral [Moorer], I think your effort to explain it that way is understandable and noble, but the fact is I read this morning a series of statements made by the President which did not refer to we are getting back the people on the list, it said all our prisoners are home. ...Secondly, on May 24th, in a speech to the POWs once they were all back, he said 1973 saw the return of all our prisoners of war. He did not say to them, we are still concerned about some of your friends; we are going to pursue it. He said you are all back. And in a speech on June 15th, he said that for the first time in eight years all of our prisoners are back, all our prisoners are home here in America. So I must say to you that the evidence is overwhelming to the committee that there is a gap between the stated public policy and between reality at that point in time.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Kerry 09/24/92	If there were a clearer way for the Commander in Chief to send a message to Hanoi, or to the Pathet Lao, or to the American public and to our defense and intelligence officials that the active search for a live American prisoner was at an end, I do not know what that might have been. Now, no question, there is reference after reference in these documents to our continued desire for a full accounting for those listed as missing. But nowhere is there a reference to a belief in the likelihood that live Americans might still be held.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Kerry 06/25/92	(Tape) Question: Do you think there still are POWs alive and well somewhere in either Laos or Cambodia? Answer: We have no indications at this time that there are any Americans alive in Indochina. (End tape) Chairman Kerry: That was your statement at a press conference on the 12th of April, 1973. We have no indications at this time that there are any Americans alive. Now it is a fact, is it not, that as of February of 1973 you personally had information about an EC or an EQ- 47 shot down in Laos, and you believed that four member s of that crew survived, did you not?
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Kerry 09/24/92	So I frame that we have not got a full accounting in the context of having heard there is no evidence that anybody is still alive, and my immediate next thought is, OK, that must mean we have got to find out who is dead or how they died. There is a huge difference. I mean I am in politics. I understand what it means to give a message. I remember those days too. I was riveted to the television set the night the President said all the prisoners are coming home...I thought they were all coming home too. I must tell you, and I thought I was pretty aware back then, I never knew what I am learning today. I never knew you guys had a list of people that you thought were still prisoners. I never heard of it.
Accounting	Kerry 11/15/91	I am a little disappointed that you folks do not have at your fingertips those numbers and the ability to tell me, Senator, here is how many went down. Here is exactly how many were unaccounted for.
Accounting	Kerry 06/25/92	If you have evidence to show that somebody ought to be on a list, now is the time to come forward. But it is not sufficient for anybody to simply say gee, it ought to be bigger. We are dealing with reality. And we have taken and put together lists from every possible list we have been able to find, subpoena, summon, locate, uncover in the archives, and there just are not any other lists. Moreover, there is a finite universe of people who went to Vietnam and either came back or did not. We know their names and we know the locations and the dates and times and we have records. And we are going to deal with records. We are not going to deal with hypothesis, theory, supposition, fantasy, and ultimately even hope, no matter how deep that hope may be. We have to base this on reality. We all have hope, but we are trying to figure out what is real here. Now, I want to emphasize again that the committee does not assert that every one of the names of the 133 were alive. We do not do that. We cannot do that. No one could do that.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Kerry 09/24/92	Chairman Kerry: Well, does that raise a question in your mind today as to whether they were, in fact, all home on the March -- Admiral Murphy: Well, yeah, if I'm looking at a piece of paper that says there are 67 of them left.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Kerry 09/24/92	...while there is truth to the statement that I could not say where so-and-so was specifically on this day, we did have evidence that individuals had been captured and that individuals were not returning. And I think that is the centerpiece of the quandary we find ourselves in 20 years later. That those families know that, and now the country knows that. Those families knew that for 20 years. We also have evidence that there were people within the military, and in the State Department and elsewhere, who believed that.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Kerry 09/21/92	The President mentioned the MIA issue in conjunction with a number of issues that were not meeting with full compliance...he did not personalize and raise the issue of noncompliance on POWs with the notion that we believe there were people that could be accounted for who were not being accounted for. There was just sort of this general sense of, well, MIAs are not being accounted for, which is distinct from the notion that you believe you have prisoners that were held and they have not returned. I think the Americans would have reacted, obviously, very differently to the latter than the former. Secondly, his broader comment was not, we have gotten back all the prisoners that they have given us a list of. It was that all the prisoners have come home. So, there was a real distinction between what we knew or thought we knew about prisoners versus MIA generically. And that is, I think, something that lingered.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Kerry 09/24/92	Chairman Kerry: You would agree with me, Mr. Secretary, there is a distinction between someone listed as POW and someone listed as MIA. Richardson: Definitely. Chairman Kerry: And you would agree with me, then, that the people listed as MIA, some of them did not come home, correct -- excuse me, people listed as POW, some did not come home, correct? Richardson: Yes. Chairman Kerry: Therefore, a statement that all POWs are home is also incorrect, is it not? Richardson: Yes. This is a colloquy... He could have rationalized it, I suppose, on the basis that all the ones we know of have been accounted for.
Accounting - Comptroller's Records	Kerry 09/24/92	Chairman Kerry: You, in July, are still left with 67, by your own account. Now, you have already taken into account the people who came back and who died. Those briefings are several months prior. You are reporting to the President, memorandum of the United States of America on 17 July, you folks yourselves are saying 67 are officially listed as prisoner of war, based on information that they reached the ground safely and were captured... I do not want this to be contentious, but do you not see the problem here? If you have 67 people that the Secretary of Defense is telling the President are prisoners because they reached the ground and they were captured? Do you not understand why people say hey, wait a minute, there is a prisoner of war over there that we have not gotten back?
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Kerry 09/24/92	And they are on the list that Senator Grassley has provided of the 67 still listed as captured, and you say by March we had decided there were none there, and yet people were still listed as prisoners. So what was it that allowed this decision to be made that just sort of -- wiped it away? What strikes me is that there was this group that we believed were POWs that somehow slid off into a category other than POW in people's minds, into a sort of MIA category without really having been accounted for, quote, as POWs.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Kerry 09/22/92	...we have found statements where the President said we are still worried about the full accounting, but it was for MIAs. The problem is there was this distinction drawn between MIAs and those that we believed were POWs.
Accounting - Status Changes	Kerry 09/24/92	Chairman Kerry [to Clements]: Now, I want to come to the next critical point. Governor, this was your memorandum of 17 July, and you talk about Public Law 37 U.S.C. 551558, where the Service Secretaries are specifically charged with the responsibility for status changes. You say at that time this system has been used effectively to make status changes for missing in action, and you send over to the President, for some reason, a fact sheet discussing the provisions of the law, which raises in our minds the question of why the President might have been interested in the status changes, and if he was, why then, at a prior time, had you made a decision personally, in your own handwriting, to require the Service Secretaries for the first time to go through you in order to change somebody? Now, I understand there were 50 -- according to your own deposition -- there were some 50 to 75 requests by the secretaries to list somebody as POW, not as MIA, and you did not approve any one of those, correct?
Accounting - Left Behind	Kingston 06/25/92	On 19 November 1975, I testified before the House Select Committee Missing Persons in Southeast Asia [Montgomery Commission]. I was also asked, how many cases did you have of men that were seen alive in captivity but not heard from subsequent to that time? I replied, I do not know accurately. I was then asked, can you estimate how many there were? I replied, around 100.
Accounting - Left Behind	Kingston 06/25/92	Sen. McCain: When you were head of the JCRC, did you ever see any hard evidence that Americans were alive? Kingston: Not to my recall.
Accounting	Kingston 06/25/92	I interpreted that my mission was to search for, recover and identify dead and missing U.S. personnel.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Kissinger 09/22/92	On March 29th, President Nixon announced that all of our American POWs are on their way home.
Accounting - Left Behind	Kissinger 09/22/92	If servicemen were kept by our enemies, there is one villain and one villain only; the cold-hearted rulers in Hanoi.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Kissinger 09/22/92	Either people were known as prisoners, or they were missing in action, and therefore what President Nixon conveyed was that those we knew were prisoners were on their way home, and he also said those who were missing in action we were not satisfied with, and that was the state of our classification at the time.
Accounting - Left Behind	Kissinger 09/22/92	Nor did any Administration know that there were live Americans kept in Indochina.
Accounting - Left Behind	Kissinger 09/22/92	Fundamentally, I would have to say I can find no rational reason for them to hold prisoners.
Accounting - Left Behind	Kissinger 09/22/92	Personally, I have no proof whether Americans were kept behind by Hanoi. My present gut feeling is that probably no prisoners were left behind in Vietnam. Possibly some prisoners were left behind, were kept behind in Laos, which has been my feeling more or less since the middle Seventies, but I'm not dogmatic about this... But I want to make clear, they were left -- if so, they were kept in violation of the agreement, in total ignorance of the American Government.
Accounting - Left Behind	Kissinger 09/22/92	Secretary Schlesinger was not exactly shy in expressing his disagreements with the views of the Administration. I do not believe you can find one memorandum, one phone conversation, one meeting, or one anything in which he expressed at the time the views he expressed yesterday. And I can assure you, if we had known, if we had heard this, we would have acted on it, because nobody was more dissatisfied with the performance of the Vietnamese than I. Nobody was more eager to enforce the agreement.
Accounting - Left Behind	Kissinger 09/22/92	Some prisoners may - I repeat may - have been kept behind by our adversaries in violation of solemn commitments. No prisoners were left behind by the deliberate act or negligent omission of American officials.
Accounting - Left Behind	Kissinger 09/22/92	The committee also owes to the American people a statement of this simple truth. Some prisoners may -- I repeat, may -- have been kept behind by our adversaries in violation of solemn commitments. No prisoners were left behind by the deliberate act or negligent omission of American officials. Anyone suggesting otherwise is playing a heartless game with the families of the MIAs.
Accounting - Left Behind	Kissinger 09/22/92	I think it is possible that they were held, and it would have been in total violation of the agreement. We did not have any information at the time that I was in Government that was considered reliable.
Accounting	Kissinger 09/22/92	The return of POWs and accounting of the MIAs was an integral part of every American proposal and was always declared as non-negotiable by us.
Accounting	Kissinger 09/22/92	...until October 8, 1972, the Vietnamese had never agreed to give any accounting of anything. So the issue that you're addressing did not arise until we were down to 25,000 [troops].
Accounting - Left Behind	Kissinger 09/22/92	Healing those wounds preoccupied me then, it has preoccupied me since, and it is one reason I find this inquiry so painful. Mr. Chairman, you have stated that this inquiry was designed to heal the wounds of Vietnam. I agree, but it cannot be done by blaming American officials for Vietnamese transgressions, nor by innuendos, distortions and outright falsehoods being leaked out of this inquiry, nor did any -- So let us stop torturing ourselves. The United States kept faith with those who served their country. No administration knew that there were live Americans kept in Indochina. American prisoners may have been kept in Vietnam by a treacherous enemy in violation of agreements and human decency, but no one was left there by the deliberate act or negligent omission of any American official.
Accounting - Left Behind	Laird 09/21/92	Now, it was a 50-50 chance on that situation that prisoners of war would not be there, but I submit to you as members of this committee that every prisoner of war in North Vietnam and also in the South knew about that raid, and it gave them hope that we cared about them and it was a successful raid, and the idea from my standpoint that it did show that we in the United States cared about our POWs, and we did recognize them.
Accounting	Laird 09/21/92	When I first became Secretary of Defense, the total number of letters that we had received since January 1st of 1960 to February of 1969, the total number of letters we'd received were 620. After we went public in January of '72 the number of letters had gone up to almost 5,000. 1,000 of those particular letter did come through various peace activists.
Accounting - Left Behind	Lord 09/21/92	Chairman Kerry: There is no question in your mind, is there, that those represented legitimate questions of people who were held as a prisoner? Lord: Absolutely. Chairman Kerry: So, in effect, when we got out in January and the prisoners started coming home and the President said all the prisoners are on their way home, you knew that could not be accurate based on the information you had seen.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Lord 09/21/92	Chairman Kerry: ...it is very hard for the committee to understand that if the United States Government is publicly saying we do not have any indication of anybody alive, it would kind of be meaningless to sit with [the North Vietnamese] and make real your notion that you are worried about discrepancies or that they have to worry about it...
Accounting	Maguire 12/04/92	What Mr. Mooney seems to have done is, in every case where it either mentions a shoot down, a parachute being seen, a search being conducted for an individual, he put that person in a POW status, and that just -- that's a jump in logic that's not supported by the other evidence. The problem is that Mr. Mooney was really restricted to a small body of intelligence with which to make his assessment, and that body of intelligence was the known U.S. losses at the time of the report. What we have information on is the search and rescue efforts that happened after the loss incident. We've had subsequent intelligence reports from other sources, and when you put that all together, you can't support 300 or more people ever even being captured through signals reports. So if he saw a report that said on the 22nd May the 283rd AAA Battalion shot down an F-4, he would go to a list of F-4 losses on that day, and any F-4 that happened to have a person unaccounted for, he would put that person into a POW status, totally disregarding any other losses where we may have rescued an individual, and in many cases he totally disregarded the losses of anything other than U.S. aircraft.
Accounting - Left Behind	McCain 09/22/92	...if both former Secretaries of Defense knew or believed at the time that there was Americans left in Southeast Asia, then I think they have a great deal of answering to do as to why they did not do more, especially before the Woodcock and Montgomery Commissions, to bring these concerns or their beliefs to light.
Accounting - Left Behind	McCain 09/24/92	[to Moorer] Your message on March 22nd says, the JCS message says, "Do not commence withdrawal of the fourth increment until the following two conditions are met: the U.S. has been provided with a complete list of all U.S. POWs, including those held by the Pathet Lao, as well as the time and place of release; and the first group of POWs have been physically transferred to U.S. custody." That was the criteria on March 22nd. Then, on March 23rd, a message was sent, and I know, Mr. Chairman, this is part of the record, both of these messages, it said: "Seek private meeting with North Vietnamese representative. Our basic concern is the release of the prisoners, as we do not object to the PLF playing the central role as long as the men are returned to us. We need precise information and understanding on the times and place of release of the prisoners on the list provided by 1 February. Of course we intend to pursue the questioning of other U.S. personnel captured or missing in Laos following the release of the men on the 1 February list."
Accounting - Nixon Statement	McCain 09/22/92	I would like to, again, refer to the full statement made by President Nixon on March 29th, 1973. The chairman and others continue to refer to a statement where he says all of our American POWs are on their way home. I think it is important to add that he one sentence later said: "There are still some problem areas: the provisions of the agreement requiring an accounting for all missing in action in Indochina, the provisions with regard to Laos and Cambodia, the provisions prohibiting [et cetera] have not been complied with." So the President of the United States did not just say all Americans are on their way home. He caveated it, and very strongly. . . . So both Dr. Shields and the President of the United States in 1973 stated unequivocally that there were still serious problems with the full accounting of the MIA/POWs.
Accounting - Left Behind	McCain 09/24/92	One reading this would reach the conclusion that the Joint Chiefs of Staff dictated a certain policy: suspend everything on one day, and then the following day said go ahead and move forward with the proceedings.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Mooney 01/22/92	Chairman Kerry: What did you do in 1973, when you saw Operation Homecoming? At that time you knew that there was a discrepancy between those coming home and those who most readily, in your memory, were on the list. Mr. Mooney: Yes sir. I was not really concerned, because we still had the highest requirements on the book, and we did not expect many of these people to come home.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Mooney 01/22/92	When President Nixon made his statement that all the men are back, that wasn't even taken seriously. . . . [because] when Nixon made his statement. . . the highest tasking on every reporter's desk in the field was to continue to search for, identify, isolate, locate American POWs, particularly in Laos. And that requirement stayed on the books.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Moorer 09/24/92	Yes, could I make a comment please, sir? I believe that you will find that when the President made that statement he was in Key Biscayne. He made it through Ziegler, the public affairs officer, and I'm confident he was referring to simply the package that we had ready to come out. And all of those, 150 or so that were ready to come out except one that was found a little later down in South Vietnam, but they were on the way back. And I think that is probably what he meant when he said all. He meant all of the ones that we had scheduled. There is another sentence in that public announcement, I think, that goes on to say but there are probably others we've got to search for. Sen. Grassley: It is unfortunate, but I believe the public then and now has not read that statement any other way, and I do not think there has been any effort on the part of Nixon to clarify it.
Accounting - Left Behind	Moorer 09/24/92	...I think that for all practical purposes we really lost the war, particularly from a political point of view, because we couldn't get in an airplane and go to each point of contact where we thought there might be a POW confined and held against his will.
Accounting - Left Behind	Moorer 09/24/92	...the question arises now whether you would be willing to detain those boys who thought they were coming home while we went through another long discussion and negotiation with North Vietnam. So my position was, let's get those we have home and continue to press to find out whether there are any more.
Accounting - Left Behind	Murphy 09/24/92	...in my personal view there were no confirmed reports of live U.S. military personnel left behind in Vietnam or Laos. I do not recall seeing any such reports, and I would have been very upset, as you would be, if you had to read such a report in that position.
Accounting - Comptroller's Records	Murphy 09/24/92	It would seem to me, somebody in the comptroller's office would have to testify to just how they were using these numbers. I will admit that it says current captured, is a real number going down to 67 by the end of this period.
Accounting - Left Behind	Nagy 12/01/92	There certainly was a change in attitude on the part of the Reagan administration that was evident during the 1980's. That certainly let, and I believe throughout the period of the seventies and eighties that it was basically a continuation inside of DIA, and that was that there remained the possibility that there were still live Americans present in Southeast Asia remaining after the departure of the United States from that area.
Accounting - Left Behind	Oksenberg 06/25/92	Sen. McCain: Did you see any hard evidence or any evidence that Americans were alive? Mr. Oksenberg: I saw no hard evidence that Americans were alive. Obviously, with the upsurge of refugees came increasing reports of live sightings.
Accounting - Left Behind	Oksenberg 06/25/92	I can assure you, Senator, that at no point during my time on the watch did we come to the conclusion that there were certainly no live Americans in Indochina.
Accounting - Left Behind	Otis 12/03/92	In spite of the high visibility of Commander Dodge's case, the North Vietnamese chose to deny any knowledge of him. Commander Dodge was not repatriated in 1973. I was extremely concerned about the media reports that proclaimed all POWs returned. I received letters from President Nixon, Vice Admiral David Bagley, Chief of Naval Personnel, and Roger Shields, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, all assuring me of their commitment to securing the fullest possible accounting. The only letter that even mentioned live Americans was that of Dr. Shields, who stated, quote, there is no specific knowledge of any live Americans left, unquote. In other words, fullest possible accounting meant search for remains. There was no public challenge of the Vietnamese by the United States that captured servicemen were left behind. There seemed to be a naivete that all prisoners had been returned and that remains would be forthcoming. I was shocked and bewildered, but I could not believe that the missing were already abandoned by our own Government, press, and public.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Perot 08/11/92	...[the Vietnamese] said, your own Government declared these men dead in 1973. Why should we think your Government wants them back?
Accounting - Shields Statement	Perot 08/11/92	I said Roger, I'm surprised that you declared all the men dead in April 1973. He said, I was ordered to do it. And he said he was ordered to do it by the Deputy Secretary of Defense, William Clements. Then he said words to the effect that he protested, because just two weeks earlier these memos were going around.
Accounting - Left Behind	Richardson 09/24/92	Chairman Kerry: Looking through this, obviously retrospectively, but looking at it as we're trying to look at it and looking at it as the American people are looking at it 20 years later, unfortunately, would you say that the record suggests that the American people and certainly the families were not leveled with respect to this? Richardson: I would say that information on the face of it was withheld from them, and one would have to use some rationale for doing that -- that is, for withholding it.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Richardson 09/24/92	Well, I tried to call attention to the distinction of the degree of certainty with which a given proposition can be stated. For purposes of our best estimates as to the number of current captured, the intelligence resources of the Government would put together all the bits and pieces they had and come up with a number which represented the weight of that evidence, and I suppose that is what this number reflects. The President's statement would presumably be tilted in a direction designed, as I suggested earlier, not to raise false hopes and so on, whatever may have been the considerations. Somebody could rationalize the distinction between the basis for this number and the basis for his statement. But how it actually came about, for all I know he deliberately chose to lie. But I don't -- I try to give him the benefit of the doubt, I would say that he -- what he meant was that every prisoner as to whom we have definitive information.
Accounting - KIA/BNR	S. Stockdale 12/03/92	I don't think we're as close to it as some might like to believe, but I think that there will come a point in time when you have to take the responsibility to make the judgment that some people are never -- no remains -- nothing is ever going to be returned. And that's your job.
Accounting	S. Stockdale 12/03/92	I can see why they are that convinced, because of the long history of the deception. And maybe a lack of recognition that there are always some people in war who are lost. There will never, in my opinion, be a satisfactory accounting. In our League's list of objectives we said that we wanted to get the fullest possible accounting. When you lose a war, you don't get to go in and account for your people. Even if you win the war, you don't find everybody.
Accounting - Left Behind	Schlesinger 09/21/92	Chairman Kerry: I think I want to start by asking a very simple question. In your view did we leave men behind? Schlesinger: I think that, as of now, that I can come to no other conclusion, Senator. That does not say that there are any alive today, mind you. But in 1973, some were left behind.
Accounting - Left Behind	Schlesinger 09/21/92	Despite the Paris agreement, there was no reason, in my judgement, to assume that the North Vietnamese would release everybody.
Accounting	Schweitzer 12/04/92	Why has it taken 19 years for us to get to this starting point, is probably the most important of these three questions... First, the U.S. emphasis has been on live-sighting reports, and much of the POW/MIA community simply wasn't interested in researching existing proof that these men were dead. This lack of vision has cost us years in the search for answers.
Accounting - Left Behind	Secord 09/24/92	Sen. Kassebaum: It seems to me one of the major debates after Operation Homecoming was how to rate the intelligence. You made the comment earlier that creditable evidence, I believe, led you to argue that there were Americans still Laos. Is that correct? Secord: Yes, Senator, that's right.
Accounting - Left Behind	Secord 09/24/92	Sen. Grassley: I would like to have you describe for the committee how confident you were in the data, and how specific it was. And just give us some examples. Secord: I think a lot of the data was flaky, but there is a law of large numbers that comes into play here. And we had a lot of case studies on each and every one of these downings, or nearly every one of them. Some of them were just gone, and we had nothing, but many, many hundreds of downings. We had all kinds of operational data, including some that I described earlier -- everything from good beeper, good chute, good beeper on the ground, transmitting on the survival radio.
Accounting - Left Behind	Secord 09/24/92	Sen. Grassley: In your view, were there prisoners left behind in Laos after Homecoming? Secord: Yes, sir. Sen. Grassley: Were the number of prisoners significant enough to warrant military action? Secord: We believed so.
Accounting	Sheetz 06/25/92	Sen. McCain: Why is it that it took 20 years to get one list, in your view? Sheetz: 20 years to get one list? We always had access to the files of the JCRC in paper files. What's been difficult is every time a team goes out into the field in one of these joint iterations we learn something that we didn't know before, and that information causes you to then reevaluate what you know about a particular case, and our databases are always sort of chasing after one other as new information comes in. This is not -- these numbers are not static numbers. They are always in fluidity.
Accounting - KIA/BNR	Sheetz 08/04/92	...some of the KIA cases, the descriptions that you read, are more compelling than others, but having reviewed each and every one of them, we do not find that there are fatal flaws in the documentation and the judgments that were reached by the field commanders who were responsible for reporting the status of their lost men.
Accounting	Sheetz 12/04/92	Chairman Kerry: Let me understand. You have 196 discrepancy cases?... Sheetz: Fate has been determined on 61 of those. So, when you subtract that out, that gets you down to the 135 figure. The 196 is the actual cases that existed, and we've been able to get answers on the fate on 61 of those. So, 135 are still to be determined; fate to be determined. Chairman Kerry: And 90 in Laos? How many fate determined in Laos? Sheetz: None, sir. But I might add, again, from prior sessions we have explained that 85 percent of the losses that took place in Laos that are still unaccounted for took place in the Eastern-most provinces, right along the Ho Chi Minh Trail area, and only 9 of those 90 discrepancy cases are cases in which they took place clearly in areas of Pathet Lao control. So, essentially, 80 to 81 of those cases are in the border, Vietnamese- controlled areas where we are going to be working in the tripartite arena with the Vietnamese and the Lao to try to get answers on those cases.
Accounting - KIA/BNR	Sheetz 08/04/92	Chairman Kerry: ...And the person is listed as KIA in that particular category based on first-hand reports from people within a unit or aircraft, or whatever, is that correct?... So what I am saying is that in the case of almost 100 percent of those 1,095, there are sufficient multiple reports of the incident to permit you to draw the conclusion you've drawn, are there not? Sheetz: Yes, sir... Chairman Kerry: So I ask you again the same question I asked you a moment ago. Is it not fair to say, and even more appropriate to say, that there ought to be, maybe, a new category that in the case of those 1,095, while their body has not been returned, in some cases based on the report it is clear, is it not, that a body will never be returned? Sheetz: That is true, sir... Chairman Kerry: So that person is in effect accounted for. The family has accepted the accounting, and in point of fact it does not belong on a POW/MIA list. It is not POW, it is not MIA, it is KIA, body not recoverable.
Accounting - KIA/BNR	Sheetz 08/04/92	Chairman Kerry: Now, if you are saying that 1,095 were KIA, well, they have not been returned. Are they not accounted for? Mr. Sheetz: The fullest possible accounting has three levels of evidence, if you will. [Level] 1, the most ideal outcome would be the return of a live American prisoner. Level 2 would be... recovering their remains and repatriating those remains to the United States. The third level of outcome is for those who perished, where remains cannot be recovered, to develop sufficient documentation as to confirm the fate of the individual... Chairman Kerry: These 1,095 fall into the third category, correct? Mr. Sheetz: At the present time, they do.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Shields 09/24/92	Chairman Kerry: Why did not the President of the United States stand up and say, the prisoners are not back? Why did not the Secretary of Defense say, I stood up a few months ago and I had 14 people I said did not come back and, by God, they are still not back, and why will Americans not care about it?
Accounting - Shields Statement	Shields 09/24/92	Chairman Kerry: Now look at the cause and effect. Here are the papers coming off your press conference. [Headline] "POW unit boss: no living GIs left in Indochina." Here, [Headline]: "Rumors that there were hundreds of U.S. servicemen still left in Laotian prison camps do the families of the missing a disservice." Headline: "All U.S. POWs free Pentagon maintains." Headline: "Unreturned GIs are feared dead..." Shields: I never said that the men were all dead. I never said that. I've never said that to this day. Chairman Kerry: No indication that any of the missing are alive in Indochina. We went through this last time; there were indications. Shields: Senator, I don't believe that I could tell Mrs. Hrdlicka or Mrs. Van Dyke or the Van Dyke parents or anyone else that I had indications at that time that their loved ones were alive.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Shields 09/24/92	Vice Chairman Smith: But from March 28th to April 12th a heck of a lot of things have happened here that reversed all information that we had in the pipeline on prisoners of war, in Laos especially. And in 2 weeks we went from a memorandum to the President of the United States via the National Security Advisor from the Secretary of Defense saying there are POWs in Laos. Not alleged, there are POWs in Laos, and we had better do something in terms of getting them out before we get out of here. Now that is essentially what the memorandum said. We went from that to a press conference by the President of the United States the next day which says all POWs are coming home. There are no more living Americans in Indochina, you then said on April 12th.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Shields 06/25/92	Shields: Senator, there is a difference in saying people are alive and in captivity and saying we don't have indications now that they are. Chairman Kerry: That is the disingenuous piece of this. Shields: It is not disingenuous, Senator. This was and still is a very serious issue. I read in the newspaper yesterday that your committee has information that an American was alive in Indochina in captivity in 1989. Chairman Kerry: No, no, no. That is wrong. Shields: It was reported in the paper, Senator. Chairman Kerry: Let me just make it very clear. Senator Smith has an opinion personally as to that. I will tell you I personally do not share a judgment on that or that opinion, nor do I think has the rest of the committee come to any conclusion whatsoever as to anyone in 1989, and I will tell you that this committee has no evidence today of any specific individual in any specific place being alive now. Shields: And that's exactly what I said, Senator. Chairman Kerry: But it's not. Shields: And the information you have on an individual in 1989 is more recent than a lot of the information that I was dealing with, and that's exactly why I did not say they were all alive nor did I say they were all dead. I did not know that.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Shields 06/25/92	...we really did not have proof positive, at that time, of current information that would allow us to go back. I'm sure that had we known at that time of the evidence of people, had Senator McCain or some of his comrades said, we left a man in this camp, I'm sure we would have done something about it. There were three foreign nationals and we did.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Shields 06/25/92	... we had no hard, specific current information at that time. And I think we had done enough of our debriefings at that time, because we had asked men immediately if they knew about living Americans.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Shields 09/24/92	Chairman Kerry: I am not challenging your honor. I am trying to determine whether or not you do not see what America saw out of your statement. Not your fault, maybe, but what America saw out of your statement were the headlines that I read. You may not have willed that, but that is what happened. Shields: ...I have given that statement to innumerable people since we met last time. And they have looked at this statement; no one has come up with the impression that the said all the men dead. Chairman Kerry: But do you not see that when you say that there is no indication that anyone is alive-- Vice Chairman Smith: What is the difference between that and they are all dead? Chairman Kerry: You are basically taking somebody in POW status, and you wrote that, and saying we no longer believe that person is a POW.
Accounting - Returned POWs	Shields 06/25/92	We hoped that our returnees would be able to provide us with substantial information about the missing, but relatively few cases were cleared up on the basis of returnees information.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Shields 06/25/92	Sen. McCain: How do you account for the President of the United States saying all POWs are home? Dr. Shields: Senator, I don't control the statements of the President of the United States. I did not at that time. I was as dismayed at that statement as anyone else was.
Accounting - Left Behind	Shields 06/25/92	Shields: We did raise those issues, and we raised them with a great deal of vigor. Chairman Kerry: You recall that being a sort of publicly perceived grievance that was expressed, or you raised them in private channels? I do not recall this Nation being in turmoil over the notion that we thought Vietnam might be holding people. Shields: I think, Senator Kerry, that the Nation was probably ecstatic that the conflict was over, and that we were not adding to those POW/MIA lists.
Accounting - Left Behind	Shields 06/25/92	You are aware of the efforts that were expended on behalf of Chi Chan Harnaby, Lieutenant Dodd, and so forth. They were men that you and your comrades said had been left behind. And even though they were not Americans, we left no stone unturned to bring them home. And in fact, they did return home to their loved ones. In the case of Emmet Kay, we knew he was a prisoner, and we pursued that and he was returned. In the cases of Charles Dean and Neal Sharman, we knew that they had been captured. That was not a secret. We made that evidence available to anyone, and we acknowledged that. We did not bring them home. We were not able to do that.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Shields 06/25/92	Chairman Kerry: No one on the committee is suggesting that the 1973 policy should have suggested that you say yes, they are all alive. Shields: What is the difference between saying they are alive and we have no indications now that they are alive? Chairman Kerry: We did have indications that some people were alive. We had absolute intelligence. You in your own deposition,... you agreed that recent information could go back 6 months, 12 months. And we had recent information 6 months and 12 months that so and so was seen alive or so and so was alive. Shields: I'm not aware of that, Senator. Within 6 months? Recent information specifically relating to a man? I'm not aware of that information.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Shields 06/25/92	Shields: Senator, people were asking if we knew whether we had left anyone behind, and the answer was we do not have indications at this time. Chairman Kerry: That has been the official line... But the questions is what did we know in 1973 and what did we do? Shields: We know that men had been alive in captivity at one time... And those that returned did not know of men who had been left. Chairman Kerry: To say all prisoners had returned as the President announced on the 29th of March, a week before your press conference, was wrong. He knew it was wrong. Let me tell you why. You recall going to see Secretary of Defense William Clements in his office in early April, a week before your April conference, correct? Shields: That's correct. Chairman Kerry: And you heard him tell you, all the American POWs are dead. And you said to him, "You cannot say that." Shields: That's correct. Chairman Kerry: And he repeated to you, "You did not hear me. They are all dead." Shields: That's essentially correct.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Shields 06/25/92	At the termination of Homecoming we had no current hard evidence that Americans were still held prisoner in Southeast Asia... None of those who returned had any indication that anyone had been left behind. We knew that there was a possibility that defectors were alive in enemy- controlled areas, but had no firm evidence to confirm this either. Robert Garwood was an example of an American whom we felt might be alive and in an enemy-controlled area, But according to the returnees who saw him last, he was not being held as a prisoner.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Shields 09/24/92	[Describing 1975 testimony] Then the famous question, do you think that there are still POWs alive and well somewhere in either Laos of Cambodia. And this is the statement with which you have had such great trouble. We have no indications at this time that there are any Americans alive in Indochina. What the people at the hearing did not hear, and what was never reported in the press were these words, as I said, "we do not consider the list of men that we received from Laos, the recovery of 10 individuals, nine of whom were American and seven military, to be a complete accounting for all Americans who were lost in Laos. Nor do we consider it to be a complete statement of our information known to the Pathet Lao in Laos. With regard to Cambodia, we have a number of men who are missing in action there. Some that we carried as captive." Again, the statement of people who were carried as prisoner who did not return. "We intend to pursue that, too... even though we have no indication that there are any Americans still alive, we are going to pursue our efforts in the process of accounting for the missing... we anticipate that if any Americans are yet alive...that we would be able to ascertain that through this process..."
Accounting - Shields Statement	Shields 06/25/92	Admiral McCain... repeatedly asserted that he felt a small number of American were still alive in Indochina. When asked how many, he opined that perhaps 20 to 30 were alive. When asked whether he had any evidence at all that there is anybody alive, he admitted he did not.
Accounting	Shields 06/25/92	...the practical impact of lists relating to status was always limited... it had a mixed impact on family members, depending on what status a man had. It appears also to have had a limited impact on prisoners and missing. Ronald Ridgeway was classified as killed in action, but that did not prevent his repatriation. Frank Cius was carried as missing in action in Laos, but he also returned home to his loved ones. David Demmon was carried as a prisoner in South Vietnam, but to this day, he remains unaccounted for.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Shields 06/25/92	Chairman Kerry: ... we have uncovered some 244 people... were carried by DoD as POW, prisoner of war. You did not know until after the debriefs that 111 of them died in captivity. When you made this statement, those debriefs had not been completed, had they? Shields: No, they had not.
Accounting - Left Behind	Shields 06/25/92	The only individuals whom hard, and at that time current, information indicated were in captivity and for whom no accounting has yet been received were two civilians; an American, Charles Dean, and Neil Sharman, an Australian, who were captured in 1974. They were unquestionably in the hands of the Pathet Lao when the events that led to the fall of Saigon and Vientiane in mid-year 1975 occurred. Our intelligence capability and our ability to track them in captivity ended with the collapse of the friendly governments. It is unlikely, I believe, that an accounting is obtainable now which will resolve the doubts of many families about the status of their loved ones missing in Southeast Asia. The record has become too convoluted and distorted for that to happen.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Shields 06/25/92	Sen. Robb: Why was not some effort made, either institutionally or individually, to say hey, we have information that is simply at odds, at variance with the information that you have just announced or articulated through either policy papers or official pronouncements, whatever the case may be? Why was there not some critical questioning or skepticism that can be raised at that time, and why was there a passive acceptance? Shields: Senator, there are statements by General Walters at the CIA. I don't know him well, but my understanding is he doesn't accept much passively at all... I don't think that the United States Government possessed the kind of information that you are speaking of.
Accounting	Shields 06/25/92	There has been some concern, I believe, over the fact that DIA carried some men in classification, in particular the prisoner category, which differed from those of the services. The reason for this is simple, and I believe valid.
Accounting - Status Changes	Shields 06/25/92	By law, only the service secretaries have the legal authority to determine an individual's status, and the law was observed in this regard during my tenure in the Department of Defense.
Accounting	Shields 06/25/92	The facts regarding individual cases were not in dispute. If a man listed by the Navy as missing was carried by DIA as captured and that led to better correlation of intelligence reports, then our own efforts were improved.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Shields 09/24/92	Chairman Kerry: [citing Shields' comments] "We do not consider the list to be a complete accounting", then you went into MIA and some who were listed as captive. That is not a phrase that grabs me in any way as if you believe somebody is still a prisoner...
Accounting - Shields Statement	Shields 09/24/92	Vice Chairman Smith: I want you to tell me about the Nixon meeting. That is where we are now, April 11th. I want you to lead me into that meeting. Did anybody say anything to you? I just want you to give me some very specific answers, and I want a long discourse. Did anybody say anything to you prior to that meeting, at any time, about what you should or should not say to the President of the United States, yes, or no? Shields: Absolutely nothing...
Accounting	Shields 06/25/92	We understood long before we received the DRV-PRG list in Paris in January 1973 that Operation Homecoming would only be one phase of our work. It was evident that the process of accounting for those who did not return would be long, arduous, and complicated under even the best of circumstances.
Accounting - Left Behind	Sieverts 06/25/92	Sen. McCain: ... if Mr. Shields said -- in his memorandum, he says DoD had no specific knowledge, that is different in my view than no indications. That is a very different use of language. I think, frankly, that in your memorandum no specific knowledge is a defensible position. No indications, I think, is not. I think what I am trying to get at here is what was the thrust of the belief? Is it that the President of the United States said there are no more Americans alive in Southeast Asia and we closed the book until the agitation on the part of families and other Americans brought this back to the attention of the American people? Or has there been a good-faith effort? Or is it somewhere in between, in the view of many of us, that during the 1970's the issue was ignored to a certain degree because of the desire of the American people and the American Government to put this issue behind us, which could have led us to some failed opportunities to return some Americans who may have been held alive. I know that is very difficult, but I think it is a philosophical question that is important to be cleared up, and maybe we could begin with you, Mr. Sieverts. Mr. Sieverts: The root question is whether there were any opportunities to achieve the return of living Americans. That's the sole question. And no, I don't think there were any. I don't think we had any indications of Americans in captivity. Some of my testimony is intended to bear on that question, because of our past experience, of the lengths to which Americans would go -- we're talking about POWs held
Accounting - Left Behind	Sieverts 06/25/92	The root question is whether there were any opportunities to achieve the return of living Americans. That's the sole question. And no, I don't think there were any. I don't think we had any indications of Americans in captivity... the lengths to which Americans would go-- we're talking about POWs held against their will in captivity-- the lengths they would go, one way or another, to let us know of this. It bears on the photographs, for example. The idea of Americans cheerfully being photographed and not using the opportunity to somehow convey who they are and what the circumstances are is beyond my imagination. But it's beyond my experience, more importantly, of being responsible for this subject during the long time when we really did have Americans in captivity and we did get indications which were quite solid.
Accounting	Sieverts 06/25/92	Sen. McCain: Mr. Sieverts, was that the policy on your watch, that we did not know whether they were alive or dead? Or was it that we assumed they were all dead, or what? Sieverts: ...Our approach during that entire period was to present information in a positive spirit through the channels that were available pursuant to the Paris agreement and, to the extent that it was possible, and it was not at all easy, to do so in Laos, as well. At every opportunity, we would shade the interpretation of cases and lists in a favorable direction... In the direction of saying we know you have more information... Over a period of time, we broadened those lists. We added to them, we gave specific case records, detailed case records. The difficulty was that at the same time if you overstated that assumption for a domestic audience you would create what was clearly exaggerated and possibly an entirely false hope among families.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Smith 09/24/92	Dr. Shields, all I am saying to you is based on the documents that I have read -- not on my opinion, the documents that I have read, the depositions we have taken, the witnesses we have talked to, the information that I have been able to glean from whatever I have been able to see, that is not what went into the pipeline prior to March 28th. It was not gut feeling, it was not visceral, it was simply -- it was so factual and at least so definitive that the Secretary of Defense made a recommendation to resume the war and risk bringing home the last group of American POWs. And that changed, that changed. So my question to you is what is the point of a press conference after the President speaks and says all the POWs are home?..You had a private meeting with the President of the United States and you come out of that meeting and you hold another press conference. And you say, in addition to what the President already said, there are not any more living Americans.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Smith 06/25/92	...the point is that we continued operations in a third country that we were not supposed to be at war with, and we were losing people while we were bringing home American POWs from Vietnam. We were still losing people and still standing up saying that there are no prisoners when we had no idea what happened to them. And somebody has to be accountable for that.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Smith 09/24/92	...the document says on June 30th that we are listing and distinguishing between missing and POWs. We now are listing 67 hostile captured people as prisoners of war on June 30th, when in fact the official position as announced by the President and others is that there are not any more POWs. Am I correct? Sen. Grassley: Yes. President Nixon made his statement on March the 29th, and Dr. Shields made his statement on April the 14th. Vice Chairman Smith: And this is June 30th, listing 67 people as prisoners? Sen. Grassley: Yes.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Smith 06/25/92	... on January 27th and 28th there were lists exchanged and provided. But we still were flying missions over Laos after those lists were exchanged. We were losing Americans in Laos in a secret war... So when you say on April 12th that you do not have any information on live Americans, that is simply not true.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Smith 09/21/92	...Actually, there were two policies, one right after the other, with the same data base...the first policy was full accountability. Then there was a statement when the President said all the POWs are home. The policy then changed to everybody is home, all the POWs were home. But the data base, the intelligence information that you had, did not support that claim, as you have all as you have all said.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Smith 09/24/92	...as to why this data base was apparently looked at differently as we came down to this period of March 28th through April 15th, in that period of time when President Nixon made his statement, Mr. Shields made his statement? What happened differently? Was there something there that we are missing that caused this change in analysis of the intelligence? Or do you believe that there were people there after Operation Homecoming, based on what you knew? General Secord: Well, yes, of course I believe there were people after Operation Homecoming. This memorandum was written contemporaneously.
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Smith 09/24/92	...I am just trying to say to you that you had a tabulation; it was a running tab, it was coming into you by the week. Nothing changed in the way it was reported, nothing changed in the documents that went into the pipeline, the information that went into the pipeline. Nothing changed. On the contrary, it was reported to the Secretary of Defense that it was valid information. The only thing that changed is you guys made an announcement, or the President made an announcement on March 29th which was totally at odds with all of that data...
Accounting - Nixon Statement	Smith 09/24/92	...II A has provided U.S. delegation folders with background information on about 80 persons in the category of POW, and then even today, here is a list that we have just received from -- the committee received on the 20th of March, 1992, from Margaret R. Munson, director, DoD, POW-MIA Central Documentation Office. It lists 50 people who are in Category I survival code in Laos. I mean, there is just no way that any reasonable person can conclude based on the documents and the information that this committee has received, that you could make the kind of statement that the President made and know that it was correct. And I will tell you, to speak for myself, this one Senator just does not accept it.
Accounting	Sungenis 06/25/92	Sungenis: The first casualty reporting requirement from the services was in 1963, and that was a numerical report only. In March of 1973 the requirement was made that the services provide us with individual casualty reports. And what they did in '73 was provide us with a DD form 1300 for each individual and a punched card with that information. Since that day we have maintained the file. But as you know, this was after Homecoming when we got into the business.
Accounting	Sungenis 06/24/92	To the best of my knowledge, at no time did this office engage or participate in any policy determination or jurisdictional matter concerning the reporting criteria used by the respective military services.
Accounting	Sungenis 06/24/92	...at the time the official file was transferred to the Archives, the back-up materials, such as the hard copy DD Forms 1300 and other supporting documentation, we discarded.
Accounting - Left Behind	Trowbridge 06/25/92	That we had no current information at the time where we could go and put our hands on some individual that was alive at that time.
Accounting - Left Behind	Trowbridge 06/24/92	Some [names] were written on the walls. No one ever saw these individuals in a prison environment.
Accounting - Left Behind	Trowbridge 06/24/92	Sen. Kerrey: Do you have any recollection of ever having anybody say to you during that period of time in 1973, after Operation Homecoming, that we should just let this matter rest? Trowbridge: No sir. Sen. Kerrey: Were you ever told by somebody, the war is over, let us not drag this our any further with energy expanded in areas that are not apt to be terribly useful? Trowbridge: No sir, never.
Accounting - Left Behind	Trowbridge 06/24/92	... the U.S. Government carried 97 individuals listed as prisoners of war that did not return. This is at the completion of Operation Homecoming.
Accounting - Left Behind	Trowbridge 06/24/92	...When I said 97, or to use your term 80, actually at the completion of Operation Homecoming our agency held 115 individuals in a prisoner status who did not return home.
Accounting - Left Behind	Trowbridge 06/24/92	Sen. Kerrey: Do you not think it fair to say there was an attitude in 1973 that we were indeed glad the war was over and that we wanted very little further discussion of anything in regards to the war, including the status of our prisoners. Trowbridge: Oh, I think that there may have been some very well individuals that thought that way, but I think the moral fiber that runs through the American citizen is a, we don't leave our unaccounted for. We go get them.
Accounting - Left Behind	Trowbridge 06/24/92	We are left with slightly less than 100 men who are officially listed by the service as POWs... in no instance did we have current intelligence to indicate that these men were currently held in captivity.
Accounting - Shields Statement	Trowbridge/ Shields 06/25/92	Vice Chairman Smith: Is there evidence or is there not evidence that Americans remained alive as prisoners of war, taking out Garwood, from 1973 to 1989? That is a simple yes or no question. Is there or is there not, based on your opinion? Trowbridge: Based on my opinion and what I have seen, we have nothing that would indicate that an American prisoner -- confirmed information or evidence, firm evidence, or convincing evidence, that an American prisoner was being held against his will. Vice Chairman Smith: Do you agree with that Dr. Shields? Shields: Senator, the second definition -- indications. We certainly knew that people were alive at one time. I do not have anything that would allow me to make the judgment, which you suggested is the first definition, that would allow me to make the judgment that those Americans were still alive, and say that to a family member, for example. And say, I am confident that based on the information I have your husband is alive. I could not have said that.
Accounting	Trowbridge 06/24/92	That was our responsibility, correlating information to somebody who may be missing. But, until somebody told us he was missing, he was not on our roll.
Accounting	Trowbridge 06/24/92	In some cases, we had very good information that the individuals had been held but had died there. In many other cases, there was no information beyond the original loss data. There were also a few cases where the services listed men as prisoners of war based on data which they later learned was erroneous in that it correlated to a different man. Much of this we learned through debriefing all of the returnees, who also told us of men who had died before entering the prison system.
Accounting	Trowbridge 06/24/92	...the war years within DIA, our office was the focal point for POW/MIA information.
Accounting	Trowbridge 06/24/92	...the agency's position at the time was that we held no information that individuals at that time were being held against their will.
Accounting	Trowbridge 06/24/92	DIA thought it possible that a man was a POW, yet the services carried him as missing in action. The status the service assigned was always their legal status.
Accounting	Trowbridge 06/24/92	DIA did not and does not determine the legal status of a serviceman. That is the sole responsibility of each of the military service secretaries.
Accounting	Trowbridge 06/24/92	We had a very close relationship. Our agency supported Dr. Shields with intelligence information.
Accounting - Returned POWs	Vessey 11/05/91	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 as either returned POWs are through the return for remains, or having been reported as died in captivity.
Accounting - Left Behind	Walters 09/21/92	Sen. Grassley: What happened in your view to those who we expected back who did not come back? Walters: I think they killed them. They're that kind of people.
Accounting- Left Behind	Trowbridge 06/24/92	Until Homecoming, you expected them to come home alive. When they did not come home alive, you ceased to think they should be home alive.

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Report of the Senate Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs: Appendix 6

Report of the
Senate Select Committee
on
POW-MIA Affairs:
Appendix 6