Notwithstanding numerous government documents available under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), documents in public archives, and published works, most of the extensive covert military operations throughout Southeast Asia between 1955 and 1975 remain classified. As a result, DOD's list of U.S. personnel lost while on covert or "black" military operations in Southeast Asia (i.e., Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Burma, and the southern provinces of the People's Republic of China) is highly suspect.

As a result, this precludes a presentation of evidence that the lists of POW/MIA and KIA-BNR from Southeast Asia are skewed as a result of withholding of casualty counts from black operations. But the continued effort by the U.S. government to keep records of these operations classified, or to withhold information related to these operations under FOIA exemptions tends to indicate information on U.S. casualties related to these activities may not be accurate. An early 1970's Senate hearing on military operations on Southeast Asia was given classified information on losses from classified operations in Southeast Asia, but that information remains classified and is not included in this report.

Needless to say, the covert nature of classified operations has to remain secure even when personnel involved disappear. According to sources interviewed for this report, if an individual on a covert military of intelligence operation is lost -- becomes an unrecovered casualty, i.e. either captured or KIA-BNR -- he might be declared dead immediately (KIA- BNR); or he might be listed MIA, followed by presumptive finding of death issued after 12 months elapsed. According to these sources, benign cover stories were sometimes prepared to explain the disappearance of individuals lost on covert or classified missions in Southeast Asia to reflect a MIA or KIA-BNR status. If such a cover story remains as the official account of such casualties, then it would impact on any future evaluations of an individual casualty file because the official case file contains erroneous information as to circumstances or location of the casualty.

One source interviewed alleges that, in order to protect the existence of some classified operations conducted during the Second Indochina War, U.S. casualties from these operations may have been explained away as training accidents in an entirely different geographic location (e.g., Thailand or Okinawa), or as battle losses in areas of South Vietnam even though the loss occurred in another Indochina location (e.g.,Laos, Cambodia, or North Vietnam). If casualty information has been manipulated, as alleged by some people, to protect the secrecy of special operations, then what guarantee is there of oversight of accountability for U.S. personnel who were declared KIA-BNR or MIA from such covert operations?

Due to the classified nature of these covert or special warfare missions, there exist no easily accessible records of those involved in these missions; therefore, "presumptive findings of death" might be based upon faulty data in such individual case files. Or, perhaps if the review boards for individual casualty cases for persons lost during classified operations in Southeast Asia had access to the true circumstances of the loss, they might be able to make absolute findings of death in some cases rather than prolonging the agony of the survivors by ublishing faulty findings based on circumstances contrived to conceal covert operations.

In order to arrive at a true accounting for U.S. personnel from "black" operations in Southeast Asia, the following fundamental questions must be answered:

1) When did the United States begin covert operations in Southeast Asia?

2) Which U.S. agencies or military departments participated in such operations?

3) How many U.S. citizens served in Southeast Asia on classified operations during those years?

4) What were the losses of personnel in these operations?

5) Where did the losses occur?

6) What efforts have been made to account for those persons who failed to return from the classified missions?

The extent of United States covert operations in Southeast Asia identifiable through nonclassified, or declassified sources indicates a large number of U.S. military and civilian personnel were lost on these missions. DOD has publicly stated, after release of this investigation's Interim Report last October, all personnel lost on covert missions during the Second Indochina War are on the public casualty lists and that there is no secret list of casualties from covert operations in Southeast Asia.

However, sources interviewed by staff indicate otherwise. Are the public versions of these lists accurate as to the time, date, place, and status of the individuals engaged in classified operations when lost? Are survivers from classified operations the source of live-sighting reports of American POWs in Laos? There is reason to question DOD further on this problem of losses related to classified or covert operations in Southeast Asia.

One case in point is the March 11, 1968 combat loss of a U.S. Air Force communications/navigation site located on top of Phou Pha Thi, Sam Neua Province, Laos, known as Site 85. Eleven U.S. Air Force personnel were lost when the site was overrun by Communist forces. Except for four personnel lifted out by an Air America helicopter during the battle, the remaining eleven personnel manning the site that day are officially listed as KIA-BNR.

The site was classified, its mission classified, and the circumstances of these March 1968 battle casualties remain classified for many years. Even today, much of the information related to Site 85's equipment, purpose, effectiveness, and battle loss is still classified.

The site provided the Air Force with all-weather capabilities for bombing Hanoi and Haiphong, North Vietnam. Its primary electronic navigation system was known by the acronym TACAN. The site was identified with a nearby classified landing strip operated under CIA covert funding and known as Lima Site 85. The former Air Force TACAN site on Phou Pha Thi is generally referred to as "Site 85."

Site 85 was built in 1967, over the objections of the U.S. Ambassador to Laos, and manned by a handpicked team of Air Force technicians in 1968. The Air Force technicians for Site 85, listed as Lockheed Aircraft Systems employees on paper, had been discharged from the military and were paid through Lockheed. The Air Force promised that their service credit would be restored once their classified mission was completed. This cover was necessary to avoid violating the provisions of the 1962 Geneva Peace Accords for Laos prohibiting foreign military presence in Laos.

Almost immediately after the March 10-11 attack on Phou Pha Thi, the indigenous forces Thai and Hmong, providing security to the site were ordered to destroy it with heavy weapons fire before leaving the mountain top on March 11. These U.S. sponsored, CIA led indigenous guerrilla troops carried out their orders. To insure the complete destruction of the site, American A-1 aircraft in Laos attacked the site with rocket and machine gun fire.

After the successful Communist attack on the mountain site, the U.S. Ambassador to Laos declared the eleven missing Air Force personnel dead. No U.S. bodies were recovered or, for the most part, none identifiable with this group were seen after the attack. Finally, U.S. jet fighters were brought in from out of country to finish the destruction of the mountain site with bombs and rockets. On March 12, 1968, the U.S. indigenous guerrilla force from the mountain site were all accounted for at a rendezvous point.They had no Site 85 survivors from Phou Pha Thi with them.[1]

However, the Thai sergeant in charge of the indigenous guerrilla force guarding Site 85 told Committee staff that three of the Air Force technicians at the TACAN site were taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese/Pathet Lao attacking force. He gave this information to American intelligence officers in 1968.

A review of POW live-sighting documents, declassified under FOIA rules and released in 1978, contain reports that three American prisoners were brought to a village near Phou Pha Thi by North Vietnamese troops about the time of the attack on Phou Pha Thi. Documents from these files also refer to Americans held in the caves near Phou Pha Thi, while other caves in Sam Neua were used by Pathet Lao, North Vietnamese, and advisors from the Peoples Republic of China.

Throughout the declassified POW files used by this staff, it was not uncommon to see reports that American prisoners were seen in these caves in Sam Neau Province. Since no bodies were ever recovered from Phou Pha Thi by U.S. forces, and there are no eyewitnesses to say that all eleven missing men were killed in the battle.

The Air Force officer in command of Site 85 and other similar activities in Laos was at the unit's Udorn, Thailand headquarters when Site 85 was overrun. According to him, he was told the destruction of Site 85 was not attempted until after there was reasonable evidence that no Americans were still alive on the mountain top.

But a declassified CIA report of the incident show the destruction of the site by the indigenous guerrilla force and American A-1 aircraft was started almost immediately. The jet aircraft bombing of Site 85 on March 12 was a day or more sooner than what the former commander believed to be the truth. According to reports of the loss of Site 85, aerial photos taken on March 11 and 12, 1968 show bodies on the ground, but the bodies cannot be identified as non-Asian or, U.S. military personnel assigned to Phou Pha Thi.

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[1]According to a declassified CIA message, the heavy weapons fire and initial air attacks used to destroy the site were carried out on March 11, 1968.

In September 1990, an Air Force captain traveling in Laos while conducting research related to his doctoral study arranged to interview a Pathet Lao general officer. During the interview, the Lao officer claimed to have taken part in the March 10-11, 1968 assault on Site 85. The Lao officer told the Air Force captain that three U.S. Air Force technicians survived the Phou Pha Thi mountain battle in 1968 and were turned over to North Vietnamese troops for further transport to North Vietnam.[2]

This information corroborates the Thi sergeant's report that three U.S. personnel were captured during the battle for Site 85.

In view of this most recent information on survivors from Site 85, the prisoner of war intelligence reports concerning three Americans seen at a village near Phou Pha Thi after the attack on Site 85 and other POW reports for that time period need to be reviewed and reevaluated to determine if any of them pertain to the Site 85 personnel. If three men survived the battle at Site 85, why haven't they been accounted for by the North Vietnamese? What was their actual fate? Given that no prisoners were ever repatriated from Pathet Lao control this incident takes on even greater significance.

The Air Force losses at Site 85 are only one example of the controversy over U.S. casualties in Southeast Asia as a result of covert, or classified military operations. Cross-border operations by U.S. Special Forces (SF), Army Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP), and Marine Force Recon sometimes resulted in their members never being seen or heard from again. Air Force air support operations in Laos under the name of the "Ravens" resulted in numerous casualties, while members of the Ravens were officially listed as "civilians' serving in Laos. Navy SEAL, swift boat, or riverine force operations into North Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia remain classified, including their non-recovered casualties. The so- called "black operations" undertaken by DOD organizations, the Department of State, and the CIA in Indochina are still not openly discussed by veterans.[3] Moreover, military history monographs and a number of other books have been published on Navy Riverine Forces in Southeast Asia, but preliminary research show the true story of these shallow draft boats is still buried in U.S. Navy Files.

Who has accounted for their battle casualties and how accurate are those records? In addition to the military operations, there is ample evidence of Americans participating as civilians in covert operations, or classified activities outside of the Republic of Vietnam (e.g., Air America, Continental Air Services, CIA para-military operations), who accounts for those losses resulting from such "civilian" activities?

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[2]Cable, "From: JCRC Bangkok, TH, To: CDR, JCRC Barbers Point, HI, time/date group 110910Z, September, 1990" provides this information without names of individuals. Institute of East Asian Studies,INDOCHINA CHRONOLOGY, Vol. IX, No. 3, July-September 1990, p. 42, identifies the captain as Timothy Castle. Another source identified the Lao as Singkapo Sikhotchounamaly.

[3]See Christopher Robbins, THE RAVENS: THE MEN WHO FLEW IN AMERICA'S SECRET WAR IN LAOS (New York: Crown Publishers, 1987); Shelby L. Stanton (Novato: Presido Press, 1985). These are two well-documented works on clandestine or special warfare operations in Indochina. THE RAVENS describes the clandestine air operations in Laos and THE GREEN BERET AT WAR describes Special Forces operations in Indochina from 1955 through 1973.

U.S. military and civilian losses in Southeast Asia during the entire period of the Second Indochina War must be reviewed for accuracy, as well as a means of providing information to the next of kin of these battle casualties. DIA, in its news release concerning the Interim Report released by Committee staff in October 1990 asserted that ALL American casualties are accounted for on its lists of MIA, POW, or KIA-BNR for the war in Southeast Asia. Without cross checking between operational reports from covert and/or classified missions and unclassified casualty list, this will remain an open question.

Two methods are used by DOD to account for missing Americans in Southeast Asia. One is the statutory presumptive finding of death in individual cases; the other is categorizing casualties as Killed in Action- Body Not Recovered (KIA-BNR). In either case, when human remains are repatriated from Southeast Asia, they are identified against persons in these two categories. When an identification is made, the individual is accounted for as having died while in the Indochina War zone.

Individually, members of the military services, or U.S. Government employees who were missing while serving in Indochina and remain unaccounted for, can be declared dead by the secretary of the military service or head of the government agency responsible for that individual.[1] Basically, the U.S. Code permits the secretaries and/or heads of agencies to declare an individual dead after the person has been missing for 12 months under circumstances indicating he or she may have died. Each case is decided on its own merits and cases may be reopened if sufficient evidence is presented indicating the individual may still be alive, although not physically returned to U.S. control.

Both presumptive findings of death, and KIA-BNR status strongly prejudice subsequent evaluations of live-sighting information. For example, live-sighting information is much more likely to be disregarded in the field as a result of an individual having been already assigned to one of the legal status of death categories without identifiable human remains to substantiate the status.

Supposedly, KIA-BNR status has a stricter evidence criteria than does a presumptive finding of death. However, even KIA-BNR status has its problems when it comes to accounting for missing Americans in Indochina. Two illustrative cases of KIA-BNR problems--that were NOT among classified files reviewed by staff--follow.

In one case, a Vietnamese source identified the picture of a U.S. Marine as a person he saw in the custody of North Vietnamese forces. However, the U.S. official debriefing the source concluded the source was mistaken because the Marine identified in the photograph by the Vietnamese source was officially listed as KIA-BNR.[2] As a result of the U.S. official's conclusion, this live-sighting report is considered to be "resolved". Since even in the extremely short Gulf War, Americans officially reported to be killed in battle were in fact captured, and later repatriated by the Iraqis, it is likely that some servicemen reported to be KIA-BNR were in fact captured.

In another case, a U.S. serviceman who was reportedly last seen wounded on a Vietnam battlefield was subsequently listed as KIA-BNR. But a year afterward, he had to be reclassified as POW when a handwritten letter from him dated after his presumed death, was found on the body of a dead

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[1]Authority for "presumptive findings of death" us found in Title 5 USC, Section 5565 through 5566 for civilian employees; Title 37 USC, Section 555 through 557 for U.S. military personnel. These codified sections of law are implemented through regulations issued by the various departments and agencies responsible.

[2]This case was taken from DIA's 1978 declassified message traffic titled "Uncorrelated Information Relating to Missing Americans in Southeast Asia."

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