CRANSTON: Regarding the POWs and the MIAs what in your view of how open they (the Vietnamese) are being in letting us look where we wish to look to learn what we can learn?

SOLOMON: The Chairman of the InterAgency Group is best qualified to comment on that.

QUINN: I think that we recognize and General Vessey expressed appreciation for the cooperation the Vietnamese Government has extended to us to this date.

There have been improvements in the way they've cooperated and there have been results coming from the process that General Vessey initiated several years ago.

At the same time we also made it clear that we believe there could be more results, and we're looking for even greater cooperation.

In terms of actually conducting investigations on the ground, General Vessey has focused on 119 discrepancy cases, which is to say those came, which represent, from looking at all the information we know about them, represent the greatest possibility that the men involved might still be alive. We had evidence that they were alive after the incident occurred where the plane was shot down or they were lost on the ground and we don't know what happened to them and what their fate was.

So those represented to General Vessey the Possibility where it is most probable or most likely that they might still be alive.

So, we have now carried out in a cooperative way between our technical people and the technical people from the Vietnamese Government, 13 field investigations in which our people would go to Vietnam, would go out jointly, and go to the area in which the incident took place to look at the crash site, if it involved an aircraft, to interview people who might be associated with it, to try to retrieve any type of documentary evidence that would be there and if they could discover a grave site, excavate remains which would be then repatriated to the United States for forensic analysis.

So that goes on, there are Americans who are on the ground who are going out to these sites and I think we've looked at, at least once, all 119 of the cases, some have been resolved in terms of we've determined what the fate was, and the remains have been returned. That's a small number, we don't have the exact number, we could give it to you.

In some additional cases, we've gotten enough information to say that we've determined what the fate of the individual was, but we have not recovered the remains. We believe the remains could be recovered and so we continue to keep the case open, in terms of we want to continue to investigate it.

Other cases need further investigation.

CRANSTON: "Are we able to state we want to go to this prison, this camp, or this mine or whatever and go at that moment to that place?"

QUINN: uuhh.... I would have, well... errr... I've not heard the issue brought up about going to prisons... uuh... and... err... looking there, so ...eerr... if I could I'd have to take that and ask. I just don't know the answer on that, but that's not come up about going to particular prisoner sites since I've been on the job, but... (interrupted)

CRANSTON: What about work camps?

QUINN: (continues)... but in terms of going to village or hamlets, what we have ... uuhh... insisted on, or worked very diligently to achieve is to have planning when we would go out there and so that people would be available to us to interview them, that we'd not go out in a haphazard way, and then come back with essentially having not gotten any results from being out there. So we're working very hard in joint planning.

On cases of live-sightings, where we've gotten a report where there is somebody who might be alive at a particular place, we, of course review the information to determine whether its a possible validity. And in those cases, where there appears there's a good chance that it is, we have sent people immediately into Vietnam to interview the people involved

CRANSTON: Well, will you report back to us on the matter you said you would.?

QUINN: Yes, I would Senator.