The original plan of the Minority Staff was to review the U.S. government's handling and evaluation of "live-sighting reports." Such accounts are first-hand narratives by witnesses who believe that they have seen American military personnel alive in various locations. They provide tantalizing glimpses of POW/MIAs who then vanish into the mist of the bureaucratic nightmare. For example, American POW/MIAs from the Korean War were seen alive as late as 1982 in the censored CIA document (obtained under a FOIA request) dated 1988 which is reproduced on the opposite page. There is no reason to believe that this is the last report on North Korean POW/MIAs.

For Vietnam, the U.S. Government has at least 1,400 such reports, including reports that have been received in 1991; indeed, even, one is told, in the past few weeks. In addition, the U.S. Government has received thousands and thousands of second-hand reports --accounts often full of vivid detail, such as "my brother told me he saw 11 American POWs being transported in a truck at such and such a place."

Yet amazingly, the U.S. Government has not judged a single one of these thousands of reports to be credible. Instead, the policy enunciated by an official statement of the U.S. Government in 1973 was that there was "no evidence that there were any more POWs still alive in all of Indochina." In spite of 1,400 unresolved reports of first-hand live- sightings, the Department of Defense, remarkably, still believes it has "no evidence." How does it dismiss these reports?

In reviewing hundreds of the raw intelligence files on the 1,400 reports, Minority Staff investigators found a predisposition by DOD evaluators to ignore corroborative evidence, and little interest to follow- up what normal searchers would consider as good leads. Many cases, of course, were quite properly disposed of.

Yet often DOD evaluators seemed more intent upon upholding the validity of the 1973 "no-evidence" statement, as though "no-evidence" were a policy rather than a description of fact.

It is contrary to common sense that all of the reports--all 1,400--are spurious, especially in the light of such obvious contradictions as the actual return of the unfortunate Private Robert Garwood in 1979.

Garwood was a battle casualty taken into custody by the North Vietnamese under fire. However, his court martial as a collaborator and deserter solved two problems for DOD: By bringing up the charges DOD sought to redefine his case as a voluntary expatriate and therefore not technically a prisoner--and it enabled DOD evaluators to dismiss fully two hundred of the live-sighting reports. Since Garwood reported that he had been moved from prison to prison, the faulty logic of DOD seemed to demand that any report from the prisons he cited must have been a sighting of Garwood. The policy that there was "no-evidence" of living prisoners made it necessary to assume that other U.S. prisoners in those prisons could not exist.

Garwood was convicted of one count of simple assault on a fellow POW, one count of aiding the enemy by acting as a translator, interpreter, and interrogator, one count of wearing black pajamas--the enemy uniform--and one count of carrying an AK-47 (unloaded) during a patrol. Whether these convictions added up to meaningful collaboration with the enemy or not, it was not proved that he was a voluntary deserter. Nevertheless the living proof that the "no-evidence" policy was not correct was thoroughly discredited.

Convenient as the Garwood case was for DOD, the embarrassment still remained. Garwood was alive. There had been a live-sighting report on him in 1973 after DOD had publicly issued the "no-evidence" policy. Indeed, documents and witnesses available to the Minority Staff show that CIA and DIA knew of Garwood's whereabouts, as well as other so-called U.S. deserters in Vietnamese custody, after 1973.

And now the reports proved to be correct. Since Garwood was alive in Indochina from 1973 to 1979, DOD logic was saved by his court martial. As a "collaborator" he may have been in North Vietnamese custody in 1973, but he no longer fit the definition of "prisoner," and so the integrity of the 1973 policy statement remained unassailed. Nevertheless, Garwood, upon his return, reported seeing another presumed deserter, Earl C. Weatherman, alive in 1977. He stated also that a third presumed deserter, McKinley Nolan, was also alive after 1973. It may be assumed that Garwood was not reporting a live-sighting of Garwood in these cases.

Indeed, a list has circulated among POW/MIA families purporting to show that 20 U.S. personnel listed as deserters, or AWOL, were left in North Vietnamese custody after OPERATION HOMECOMING, the 1973 prisoner exchange. Four others are listed as disappearing under unexplained or unusual circumstance. The Minority Staff takes no position on the validity of this list, but it does note that almost all of the individuals cited appear on a DIA alphabetic list entitled "U.S. Casualties in South East Asia," dated 2/26/80, but are conspicuously absent from a similar DIA list dated 8/22/84.

In the light of what appears to be a compelling need on the part of DOD to uphold the "no-evidence" policy, the Minority Staff believes that every live-sighting should be pursued vigorously without prejudgment. The Minority Staff believes that, if even one POW who was detained in South East Asia is still alive, no resources of the U.S. Government should be spared to locate him and effect his return to the United States if he so desires.

In recent days, the Government of North Vietnam has announced that it is willing to open its territory to relatives to search for any POW/MIAs or their remains. While that is an encouraging development, DOD should reciprocate with a similar gesture. DOD should open its territory too. The files of live-sighting reports and second-hand reports should be made available to families of the POW/MIAs and to any qualified investigator, particularly to Senators, Members of Congress, and their staffs.

Such openness has not, up to this time, characterized the operations of DOD's Special Office of POW/MIA Affairs. On February 12, the Director of the office, Col. Millard A. Peck wrote a letter of resignation to his superior decrying the mind-set of cover-up and the policies which prevented a vigorous search for POW/MIAs who might still be living.

Observers described Colonel Peck as a man who had accepted the position with high motives and a sense of deep dedication. Yet his letter shows that he felt that he could no longer fulfill the demands of duty, honor, and integrity under the policies which he was asked to implement.

Nevertheless, he did not rush to seek publicity for himself. Colonel Peck's resignation first became known and was discussed publicly at a meeting of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in early April, but his letter did not become public until May.

The full text of the colonel's letter appears in this report as the Epilogue. It is in itself a sufficient commentary on the findings of this report.

Colonel Peck confirms that a "cover-up" has been in progress. He speaks of a "mindset to debunk"--that is, to discredit witnesses rather than to ascertain the truth of their statements. He says that there was no effort to pursue "live-sightings." He states that "any soldier left in Vietnam, even inadvertently, was, in fact, abandoned years ago." He also criticizes the U.S. government's treatment of the families and friends of the POW/MIAs.

These statements should be evaluated in the light of Colonel Peck's long career of faithful service in the U.S. Army, including three combat tours in Vietnam, for which he was awarded numerous medals of gallantry, including the nation's second-highest award, the Distinguished Service Cross. These are serious charges put forth by a man who knows their seriousness. Moreover, he is one of the few who have intimate knowledge of the way the U.S. Government's POW/MIA policy operates.

Finally, the Minority Staff notes that Colonel Peck's conclusions are remarkably similar to the conclusions which the staff arrived at independently, having worked for nearly a year before Colonel Peck was appointed to the POW/MiA office. Our only acquaintance with him was during the few days in which his superiors allowed only Senator Grassley and staff to review live-sighting reports under strict constraints. Because of the atmosphere of tension surrounding these issues in the Executive Branch, our observations were limited to the fact that Colonel Peck was a competent professional acting according to his instructions. We now know in addition that he is a person of sound judgment and integrity.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has been gathering reports on live sightings of American prisoners since the United States became involved in the war in Southeast Asia. Firsthand live-sighting reports are defined as eye-witness accounts of a person or persons whom the witness believes to be an American POW or American POWs seen in captivity in Southeast Asia.

The DOD states that it has received in excess of 1,400 first-hand live-sighting reports since the end of the Second Indochina War (1955- 1975). With the exception of a very small percentage of live-sighting reports that remain "unresolved," DOD has concluded that the vast majority of live-sighting reports do not pertain to any American POWs still in Southeast Asia. Given DOD's record of disproving these hundreds of live- sighting reports, there is little reason to assume that the few live- sighting reports that are still "unresolved" will ever be determined by DOD to be valid eye-witness accounts of American POWs.

In the opinion of my staff, many of the "unresolved" live-sighting reports should be re-examined. There are numerous instances in which the Defense Intelligence Agency(DIA) explains away the validity of a report with a flawed or, at least, questionable analysis. Among the common explanations used by DIA to resolve live-sighting reports are the following: that a particular report in question is:

1) a fabrication:

2) a sighting of Soviet, Cuban, or other East bloc advisors; 3) a sighting of volunteers from Western countries working in Southeast Asia;

4) a pre-1979 sighting of Robert Garwood, the American POW who returned in 1979 and was, later, convicted of collaborating with the enemy;

5) a sighting of American civilians detained for various violations of the Vietnamese criminal code;

6) a sighting debunked or discredited -- in other words, disregarded -- because the source's statement was found to be inconsistent with information DOD considered to be factual; or,

7) an out-of-date sighting of POWs who were repatriated during OPERATION HOMECOMING (1973).

Many times such rationales are valid for particular reports; however, the same explanations are also used in a rigid, bureaucratic manner in order to resolve reports and close the files. Staff reviewed hundreds ofclassified and declassified live-sighting reports. In the opinion of staff, many live-sighting reports were closed prematurely and disregarded when minimal additional effort may have resolved the veracity of live-sighting reports.

In some instances, the analysis and conclusion that these sightings do not refer to American prisoners cannot be supported by the contents of the respective files. The findings, in these cases, were premature or worse, could not be supported by the facts of the case. Moreover, DIA's analysis in a general sense reflects an approach by DOD that appears to be geared toward disproving each live-sighting report, rather than each report receiving, as proscribed by official DOD policy, the "necessary priority and resources based on the assumption that at least some Americans are still held captive."[1]

Thus, DOD has been able to construct a rationale to discredit "officially" nearly each and every live-sighting report. Staff found instances where DOD merely excluded from its analysis certain details of a valid sighting, such as the source's statement about the number of POWs sighted, their physical condition, a description of the camp or cave they were held in, whether they were shackled, or, whether they were gesturing for food; and by the exclusion of such corroborating details, the report could be labeled a fabrication. Furthermore, the exclusion of these details would not be known to anyone reading just the summary of the live-sighting report, or even by reading DOD's analysis of the report. Only by reading the "raw intelligence" can one learn such details.

DIA's greatest effort at corroborating a source's report is directed at the source's information about themselves, the source's description of the location of the live-sighting, and the source's explanation of how and when the sighting occurred. Great effort was not expended, however, to corroborate whether American POWs were in fact being held prisoner, or were working in or being transported through a particular location.

Any slight indicators of what DOD felt was an inconsistency in the source's description of the time, location, or circumstances of the sighting was used by DIA to erode, and therefore disprove the credibility of the source and/or the source's information. This lack of credibility of the source becomes the basis by which the source's live-sighting report is disregarded. It should also be noted that the debunking of such reports was not confined just to allegations of inconsistencies in the source's information; some live sighting accounts were dismissed for what, in the opinion of the staff, seems to be dysfunctional analytical reasoning.

Once an analyst makes a conclusion, it seems to be cut in stone. In other words, the DIA is reluctant to change its conclusions concerning some individuals even when reliable evidence to the contrary is presented for review. Although it is obvious that the reliability of source varies, it appears that DIA starts with the premise that every source is lying, and then works toward substantiating that premise. A more positive procedure would be to make every possible effort to substantiate the information before setting it aside.

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[1] See Department of Defense "POW/MIA Fact Book," 1990.

One example of DIA's debunking mentality is illustrated by the case of U.S. Navy pilot LCDR James E. Dooley.[2] Dooley was shot down, October 22, 1967, conducting a bombing run near Hanoi flying an A-4E aircraft. He crashed just south of Do Son, Haiphong Province, Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). Fellow pilots saw Dooley's aircraft after it was hit, watching it go down gradually until it hit about one mile offshore in the vicinity of Do Son. They did not see him eject from the aircraft. Limited observation by fellow pilots, weather, and the swiftness of the incident may have led to some confusion over whether or not Dooley survived the crash of his aircraft.

Dooley is officially listed as KIA-BNR. Dooley was not returned or accounted for during OPERATION HOMECOMING in 1973. In 1987, a North Vietnamese refugee was interviewed by U.S. intelligence personnel at a refugee camp. The refugee described the shootdown of an American jet aircraft he witnessed in 1968 while in the area of Do Son, Haiphong Province. According to the source, he saw the pilot bail out with a tri-colored parachute and try to swim out to sea to escape capture. The pilot fired a pistol at his pursuers before being captured. The refugee said, the captured pilot was stripped of his one-piece flight suit, placed in the sidecar of a motorcycle, driven across Do Son airfield and taken away by North Vietnamese officials to a waiting Chinese automobile.

An early DOD evaluation of the fisherman's information concluded the fisherman probably witnessed the shootdown of a NAvy pilot named J.M. Hickerson, who was shot down two months after Dooley in the same general area of Dooley's shootdown. Hickerson was captured, and repatriated from North Vietnam in 1973.[3]

However, after OPERATION HOMECOMING, information that Dooley was alive began to surface. In 1973, a U.S. POW who had been repatriated said he saw Dooley's name written on the wall of a prison cell in Hanoi. Two Thai special forces soldiers released from North Vietnamese custody in 1973 identified Dooley's photograph as a fellow inmate. Finally, a Communist propaganda photograph of captured U.S. pilots in Hanoi, dated after Dooley was shot down, shows a partial profile of a person that strongly resembles Dooley.

In April 1989, former POW Hickerson, in a written statement, described the details of his parachute landing and capture. Hickerson was disturbed that the fisherman's eyewitness account of the shoot down of an American Navy pilot was wrongly attributed to his shoot down. In his statement, Hickerson pointed out that he landed on the inside of the peninsula at Do Son, and therefore, he could not have been swimming out to sea when he was captured, as the fisherman described. Furthermore, Hickerson wrote, he did not fire his pistol before capture, as the fisherman described. Hickerson stated that his parachute was all white, not tri-colored as the fisherman stated. Hickerson further stated that when he was shot down he wore a Marine utility uniform, consisting of pants and shirt, not a one piece flight suit as the fisherman described. Finally, Hickerson was taken to riding on the back of a bicycle, not in a jeep as the fisherman described.

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[2] After Dooley was shot down he was promoted to his current rank, lieutenant commander, which was shortly before the U.S. Navy declared him dead.

[3] Message, "From: JCRC, Barbers Pt. HI, To: COMNAVMILPERSCOM, date/time group 101802Z," April 1987, which references an earlier Cable, "From:JCRC, Bangkok, Thailand, date/time group 151000Z," January 1987.

Despite these sharply contrasting differences between the actual events of Hickerson's capture,and the fisherman's description of the shoot- down he witnessed, DOD refused to change its original conclusion that the captive witnessed by the fisherman was Hickerson.[4] The fisherman may indeed have witnessed a capture, but the description of events more closely resembles the capture of Dooley, not Hickerson. In other words, a significant question remains: was Hickerson's shoot-down correlated to the fisherman's live-sighting report -- despite the significant factual discrepancies between the two events -- only because Hickerson was repatriated, and therefore the fisherman's live-sighting could be "resolved"?

In a message dated April 10, 1987, the Joint Casualty Resolution Center at Barbers Point sent an evaluation of the Dooley file to the National Security Council (Col. Childress), noting Dooley was listed in a "presumptive status of dead, body not recovered."[5] The message says that Dooley's case was presented to North Vietnamese officials in August 1984 as a case under consideration during a POW/MIA technical meeting in Hanoi. What was the status of the JCRC inquiry in 1984? Were they looking for remains, or were they trying to ascertain the fate of a person believed to have been a POW in Hanoi's custody and not accounted for?

As with a number of cases in JCRC's files, there are conflicts. It is not known how many potential cases of mismatch in casualty incident information there are in DOD files. The Dooley case is but one example of questionable analysis of live-sighting information by DOD of unaccounted for airmen and soldiers from the Second Indochina War.

Beyond the problem of flawed, or questionable analysis are more fundamental problems. Staff has identified numerous weaknesses in the methodology and procedures for collecting and analyzing information from refugees. These weaknesses may be found in the procedures for soliciting the information, follow-up interviews, mobilization of adequate manpower, weak linguistic capabilities, the improper methodology for identification of sources; and the failure in many cases to obtain native language statements from sources during initial contact.

The primary responsibility for collecting this information originally rested with the JCRC, a Joint Chiefs of Staff organization within DOD. Presently, that responsibility rests with DIA. After the fall of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) government in 1975, JCRC offices were stationed within Thailand to carry out this mission.

In Thailand, the procedure for collecting POW information was as follows: JCRC officials, depending on the availability of resources, traveled to various refugee centers to collect information on purported live-sightings of U.S. POWs within Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. At each

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[4]Cable, "From: JCRC Barbers Pt. HI, To: COMNAVMILPERSON, time/date group 251800Z," July 1988.

[5]The Navy issued a DD Form 1300, 12/4/73, changing Dooley's status from missing to dead, body not recovered.

refugee camp, JCRC officers would make announcements in the camps requesting that any refugees who have knowledge of American POWs should report, at a certain time, to a certain location, for debriefing. On occasion, volunteer workers at refugee camps, when initially processing the arriving refugees, would also elicit such information , and report it to JCRC.

The problem with this procedure is that it depends too much upon the initiative of frightened, confused refugees, who have been traumatized by their experience of fleeing their country, and are deeply suspicious of any governmental authority, even one that is trying to help them. The practice of making a general announcement -- often referred to contemptuously by government officials as the "cattle call," with the subsequent interviews as the "round up" -- could easily be seen as a threat or danger signal to anyone who had contact with American POWs; contrariwise, it might suggest to a refugee with a manipulative mind that providing information, even if false, might be a way to get ahead in the refugee resettlement system. In the first case, opportunities to get valid reports are lost through fear; in the second, false reports are encouraged.

A more effective method is the so-called "canvassing method." Each refugee is asked questions about possible POW sightings as part of their initial refugee processing, thereby making it unnecessary for a prospective informant to stand out publicly, and lowering the threshold of resistance to discussing the topic. However, the canvassing method requires that the JCRC personnel be stationed within easy reach of the refugee camps, a practice which was not followed.

Another failure in collecting information from refugees involves follow-ups to initial interviews. Follow-up procedures require JCRC officials to conduct interviews once a source indicates having information pertaining to American POWs still in Southeast Asia. The information would then be sent to DIA for analysis and follow-up interviews, if necessary. Originally, DIA provided to the JCRC staff additional questions to be asked; however, since JCRC did not have adequate manpower to cover the number of refugees pouring out of Laos, Cambodia (Kampuchea), and Vietnam, this procedure was not followed.

In excess of 300,000 Asian refugees fled from these countries; yet JCRC staff never exceeded thirty-four officials in number on-site in Southeast Asia. The cumbersome nature of this procedure impeded the timeliness of the follow-up interviews. As a result, the information collected was dated and, therefore, its usefulness was diminished.

Limited manpower and the methodology used for both initial and follow- up interviews were major weaknesses in JCRC's collection procedures. Initially, this limitation was especially true of the shortage of trained linguist. Indeed, DOD recognized this problem and sought to increase manpower. In 1987, DIA groups were established throughout Southeast Asia to collect POW information first-hand. This effort was code-named "STONEY BEACH." The program added greatly to the quality, quantity and timeliness of information provided by the refugees.

The STONEY BEACH program enabled subsequent debriefings of refugees to be conducted in a a more comprehensive manner. Unfortunately, once information was obtained, no effort was spared to utilize other intelligence methods available to corroborate selected content of the live-sighting report.

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