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3-7 -- JWC explains how the deposition will taken, how Tighe should not answer questions he does not understand and that he will be provided a copy of the transcript to review if he desires, and introduces the Committee rules and deposition notice as Exhibits 1 & 2.

7-9 -- Tighe gives background information on his birth, present occupations (3 boards of irectors). He earned a B.A. degree from Loyola University in Los Angeles. He was drafted into the Army in 1942, was commissioned an officer in Australia, separated from the Army in 1946 and took a reserve commission in the Air Force and was recalled to active duty in 1950 at the outbreak of the Korean War and remained on active duty until September 1981 when he retired as a Lieutenant General from his position as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

9-11 -- Tighe reviews his initial intelligence-related assignment. of his 39 years in the military, all but two were spent in intelligence positions. Tighe went to Vietnam in the summer of 1966 as a Colonel where he was Director of Targeting for 7th Air Force at Tan Son Nhut AB near Saigon. After one year in Vietnam, Tighe returned to HQ USAF at the Pentagon working in the reconnaissance division of operations. After four months he was assigned to publish a magazine for the Director of Operations on Southeast Asia Air Operations which he did until November 1969.

12 -- Tighe's next assignment beginning in late 1969, was as Director of Intelligence Applications at HQ, USAF at he Pentagon. This job involved in writing Air Force estimates contributed to the National Intelligence Estimates.

13-14 -- Tighe's first exposure to the POW/MIA issue was as an intelligence officer of the 8th Fighter/Bomber Group in Korea where he briefed and debriefed air crews on their responsibilities under the code of conduct. New rules were put into effect allowing captured personnel to give more than just the name,, rank, serial number if it would help to survive in captivity.

15-16 -- In the 1966-67 period, General Moymer was commander of all Air Forces in Vietnam. At this point in time, Tighe recalls that it was the services themselves, not a single agency or office that kept track of POWs and MIAS. Eventually, the Joint Casualty Resolution Center (JCRC) assumed responsibility for this function.

16-17 -- At SAC Headquarters, Tighe was in charge of photo interpretation. Also as Deputy Chief of Staff (197172) and then Director for Intelligence (1972-74) of the Pacific Air Forces, he was involved in the tracking of POWs and monitoring any intelligence available on their status.

18 -- When Tighe went to, CINCPAC in March 1972 he was directed to assemble knowledgeable people from each military service and assemble all available data to come up with "a composite list of those we expected to be returned on the basis of our knowledge of what had happened to them." A file for each individual expected to return at operation Homecoming was created and forwarded to Joint Chiefs of Staff.

19 -- At CINCPAC, Tighe worked under Admiral John McCain and Admiral Lowell Gayler who was the former Director of the national Security Agency.

20-23 -- There were several indications in 1972 that the war was winding to an end. The services' director of personnel was responsible for keeping track of each missing serviceman. For the Air Force it was General Bob Dixon. Tighe believes the responsibility of keeping track of missing personnel was taken very seriously at least by the Air Force.

23-24 -- Tighe makes a recommendation that DoD should establish a special office under the JCS with personnel who are cleared and qualified to evaluate intelligence relating to POW/MiAs. The files kept in this proposed office must be historical and automated so that inevitable rotation of personnel does not impede the ability to correlate information which comes in later.

25-28 -- Discussion of how DIA came to be the source of information on POW/MIA matters. Tighe says he was not satisfied in the 1971 time frame with the amount of information he was receiving relating to POW/MIAs. Tighe was not responsible for tracking POW/MIAs as Deputy Chief of Staff but he did as director of intelligence for PACAF (8/71 to 3/72) under GEN Lucius Clay, Jr., USAF, PACAF Commander.

28-29 -- Tighe cannot estimate what percentage of his time was devoted to POW/MIA issues during the 1971-72 period but he said it was an issue of great interest to him and he had to brief on it every week. Tighe thinks that DIA got all relevant operational and intelligence data on POW/MIAs it needed except for State Department cables.

30-32 -- He does not remember being concerned that information, such as SIGINT, was missing from individual casualty files. Tighe is not familiar with the Presumptive Finding of Death (PFOD) Statutes. Tighe points out that each intelligence agency and the services are almost completely dependent on the good will of their counterparts to receive relevant information on POW/MIAs. tighe says he was instrumental in the 197172 time period in getting NSA to provide information of combat value to pilots in Vietnam.

33-34 -- Tighe talks about his attempt to use special reconnaissance units to find out what happened to pilots in Korea who were last known alive on the ground. He also ran into problems trying to get access to information when he was trying to find out what had happened to Senator McCain.

35-36 -- Tighe comments on the deception that President Johnson's military advisors were pulling by assigning targets to be bombed that they knew had already been destroyed the day before.

36-38 -- Tighe sketches and describes a line and block chart of the organization of PACOM in the 1972 time frame and it

is introduced as Exhibit 4.

38-42 -- Tighe describes the task force of majors and lieutenant colonels from the different services who came together to assemble the lists of individuals who PACOM expected to be returned after the war. COL Conroy, USMC may have been delegated responsibility by Tighe to monitor the task group. Tighe describes where these records should be located at PACOM and JCS.

42-43 -- Tighe believes a fairly uniform standard was applied by the services in determining who PACOM expected to be returned. Tighe personally arbitrated cases that there were differences of opinion on and says he "would always arbitrate on the side that we would expect him back ...."

44-45 -- Tighe was assigned this task at PACOM and believed that JCS in Washington would have an even better list in that they had access to CIA special operations reports, State Department reporting, NSA reporting. Tighe thought NSA should have been able to break Vietnam's Ministry of Interior communications.

45-48 -- Tighe does not remember exactly how many personnel PACOM had on their list but he does recall that their were dramatically fewer returnees than expected (perhaps about half). Tighe estimates that there may have been 900 to 1,000 names on his "list."

48-49 -- Tighe remembers the list consisting of name, rank, serial number, service, last sighting, loss coordinates, date/time group and any related comments. The file on each individual however had every tidbit of information that could be found on the individual. He does not recall any categorization of the men as to who was definitely in captivity, probably in captivity, possibly in captivity, etc. If only one chute were seen, Tighe thinks they would have only carried one individual as expected to be returned.

49-53 -- Tighe believes he would have compared the list given to Kissinger with his expected returnee list with his deputy at the time in the vault at CINCPAC. Tighe says he took his list and the List given to Kissinger and showed Admiral Gayler the discrepancy. Tighe thinks that when Admiral Gayler forwarded the information to the JCS he was told to "sit down and shut up-" Tighe is sure that the CJCS (probably GEN Wheeler) would have registered loud concerns with the Secretary of Defense,

the State Department, the President.

54-56 -- Tighe noticed immediately the lack of men coming back that were lost in Laos. Tighe read the papers about the Laos saying that no negotiations had been held with them so people thought additional men might come back from Laos. Tighe says that he and others had "convictions from photography and other sources that there were quite a large number of live Americans in Laos.

57-59 -- Tighe said the Vietnamese had access to whatever parts of Laos that they wanted during the war. Most of the US losses were over the Ho Chi Minh trail portions of Laos, which were the eastern third to half of Laos.

59-60 -- Tighe was very close to Admiral Gayler and although Tighe has not talked to him about the POW/MIA issue since they left Hawaii, he believes Gayler and he shared the same views at the time about the issue.

61-67 -- Tighe knew very little about the Defense Intelligence Agency prior to his arrival there. Tighe says that official records and memorandums on the POW/MIA lists kept by CINCPAC should still be available from CINCPAC.

67-70 -- JWC asks Tighe the basis for the 113 men listed as POW at the completion of Operation Homecoming. The 113 would have been "last known alive in captivity" men who had been seen by other POWs in captivity or whose photograph had been published.

71-73 -- Admiral Gayler had political as well as military responsibilities, spent a lot of time with Henry Kissinger and attended Chiefs of Missions (ambassadors) meetings. State Department had a representative on the CICPAC staff (Mort Abramowitz). Kissinger had a great deal of influence and leeway in trying to conclude the war. Vernon Walters is someone the Committee should talk to as he was a confidant of Kissinger.

73-74 -- Tighe believes that Kissinger provided the Vietnamese a list of Americans they expected back and that bothers him because if we did we were giving away our hand. The list Tighe created was for US use only and not intended to be turned over to the Vietnamese.

74-75 -- Tighe hints at "special communications" which were occasionally received from POWs. (Note: I believe he is talking about the visual signs pilots were trained

to make in the event they were shot down or captured.)

76-78 -- In June 1974 Tighe was confirmed as Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Tighe did not have very high regard for Roger Shields and had a very negative reaction in April 1973 when Shields said that all the POWs were back. Tighe did not believe Shields statement at the time.

79-80 -- There was very little intelligence during and immediately after Operation Homecoming that POWs might still be held in Southeast Asia. There was reporting that was correlated to Garwood but not much else until the refugees began flooding out in the late 1970s.

80-81 -- Tighe worked for General Daniel Graham at DIA. His initial responsibility was to run the internal aspects of DIA. Tighe was Deputy Director of DIA from June 1974 until December 1975 at which time Tighe became Acting Director. General Graham was very interested in the POW/MIA issue and told Tighe to get involved.

81-82 -- Tighe is not aware of how Roger Shields got the number 57 or 59 for the number of POWs we expected back that did not return. Tighe says he only made the mistake of citing a specific number once. when you give a specific number that relieves the Vietnamese of the obligation to account for the rest.

82-84 -- The POW/MIA shop when Tighe arrived at DIA was an extremely small office. LCDR Trowbridge was in charge. Tighe was surprised that even he did not have access to the debriefings of the returned POWs. He was also surprised that the returned POWs insisted that they knew all of the other POWs and that none reported having been interrogated by Russians or Chinese. The fact that the returnees reported only one Cuban interrogator in addition to the Vietnamese surprised Tighe. He feels there was collusion between the US and USSR to keep the Vietnam war from escalating.

85-86 -- Tighe remembers adding a few additional personnel to the POW/MIA shop and was always told on Capitol Hill that he could have all the resources he needed. Tighe relied on Trowbridge and then the military officer over Trowbridge to communicate what additional resources were needed and these requests were always modest. Most of the work had been done by the individual services.

87-89 -- Tighe remembers that he began a dialogue with the POW/MIA office as they would put special color folders on his desk with the latest refugee source, and Tighe would tell them to get some funds and go interview him, etc. There were very few sources the first few years until the late 1970s. Looking back, Tighe thinks that one of the major shortcomings of the POW/MIA office at that time was that there was nobody from NSA assigned to that office. Tighe does not remember any SIGINT coming in at that time. Tighe classified the files once a lot of sources started coming forward. Tighe now regrets having classified those files.

89-92 -- Although Tighe feels that the Ford Administration was "a time to heal,, for the government, he does not think anybody would have come out and said that the POW/MIA issue should be dropped or ignored. Tighe thinks that when the POW/MIA issue became a high national priority it should have been given to a permanent Presidential Commission with the authority to collect all necessary records. He thinks the Select Committee should transfer its final database to a Presidential Committee when it is done.

93 --- Tighe believes the North Vietnamese promised to return any Americans lost after the time of the Paris Peace Accords and he does not remember that issue being of great importance. Tighe thinks the 113 he testified to Congress about would probably be a "known in captivity" subset of the 400-500 expected returnees who did not return. The discrepancy between Tighe's list and Nixon's public comments was not known publicly

95-96 -- Tighe says there are two ways to get proof for the POW/MIA issue. One is to declare war and go back into Vietnam, the second is to establish a cooperative relationship with the Vietnamese. Tighe thinks the Vietnamese have always left a way in their official statements to still have POWs under their control in southeast Asia.

97-100 -- JWC asks if there were two sets of books, one which allowed PFOD's and another which was retained which had the information which might indicate that people could still be alive. Tighe does not answer that question but talks about the changes that have been made in the official USG position on the POW/MIA issue. Tighe then recounts the question from Steve Solarz and his personal opinion response which made all the newspapers on June 25th 1981. Tighe read the live sighting

reports and the mortician's testimony which was why he had the personal opinion that he did.

100-102 -- Tighe explains how he was Acting Director at DIA until May 1976 and then went out to Strategic Air Command (SAC) for six months and then returned as Chief of Air Force Intelligence at the Pentagon for six months and then Sam Wilson who had been given the Director DIA job in May 1976 quit and Tighe was appointed to be Director DIA by President Carter in September 1977.

102-105 -- The status reviews (PFODS) conducted by the services were premature in Tighe's opinion. He comments on President Carter's micromanagement style and says he could picture Carter saying well if the MIAs are over the statutory limit then declare them dead but the money aspect of it would probably not have been important because it is such a small amount in the overall defense budget.

105-108 -- Tighe believes the services made their judgments on the PFODs regardless of what DIA had to say about the individual cases. DIA was strictly into collection, analysis and investigation and not in the business of telling the services who should be PFOD. JWC says that it sounds like a terribly run system and Tighe explains the difficulty in running a joint agency.

108-109 -- JWC: "Do you think that the policy by the Administration of declaring that there were no more POWs, that they were all dead, set in motion a practice by the services and by the DIA that made that a reality, so that it became a self fulfilling prophecy and nobody was going to look for these people?" Tighe: "No doubt about it .... " JWC: "Did you feel that the military services were reaching out to DIA for all the information DIA had before they were making these decisions?" Tighe: "Nope. The only time I think they were interested is when they had a wife or widow on their hands who was giving them a hard time and they were trying to drag something out, a bone to throw or something of that nature to satisfy the widow.,,

109-111 -- Tighe says his generally optimistic testimony in 1979 before the House Foreign Affairs Committee was accurate as the situation had vastly improved from the 1974-75 time frame. The fact that Garwood had come out in early 1979 and mentioned live sightings was also cause for optimism at DIA, as was reporting on a black (McKinley Nolan) in South Vietnam so Tighe thought the

whole issue was going to break open.

111-115 -- Tighe thinks the Marine Corps "railroaded" Garwood. The Corps has a "thing" about dishonor of any kind. "A steel trap closed over Garwood .... 11 DIA could not talk to him, just as only Marine Corps interrogators were allowed to talk to the Marines who returned from the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Garwood was treated as a prisoner from the moment he got on the airplane in Bangkok. JWC: "Even though he [Garwood] was a national resource, as it were, and having knowledge about our other prisoners, we defaulted or, rather, gave him over to the Marine Corps to treat as ... " Tighe: "Well, he was treated as a disciplinary person, not to be believed at all.,,

116-118 -- Tighe notes that the Tighe Commission changed the wording of its conclusion about American still being held in Southeast Asia from "probable" to "strong possibility." Tighe's conviction in this regard became much stronger when the "boat" people began coming out with correlative reports and passing lie detector tests. The lie-detector tests were instituted under recommendation from the National Foreign Intelligence Board.

119-122 -- All of the senior staff and especially Admiral Tuttle were believers in the possibility that Americans were still being held. Trowbridge tended to go whichever way the wind blew. Tighe sensed a stagnation in the office in the 1977-81 period, a resistance to new techniques and record keeping methods. Trowbridge was also taking a lot of heat from Ann Mills Griffiths who had her own person in the POW/MIA office reporting to her. Tighe received daily reports from Trowbridge on the activities of the office.

122-126 -- Tighe discusses the changes in the official Defense Department position on live Americans as a result of Reagan taking office in January 1981. Tighe believes the Secretary of Defense was involved in any important decisions on POW/MIA issues under the Reagan Administration. Tighe had a one-hour one-on-one personal meeting with Vice President George Bush on January 20th, 1981 on the POW/MIA issue.

126-128 -- Bush called Tighe in the Spring of 1982 because at a White House meeting someone had said that General Tighe claimed there was a government conspiracy on the POW/MIA issue so Bush called to see if Tighe had said

that or believed that and Tighe told Bush of course there was no conspiracy. Tighe says that if there were any type of conspiracy it would be at a low to mid level where people just don't want to give controversial information to their bosses. Tighe says the other incentive for conspiracy would be for people who were left behind in clandestine roles.

129-130 -- It was Secretary of Defense decision that Tighe would share the Capitol Hill testimony with General Pinckney of DoD/ISA. Tighe feels that DoD was getting uncomfortable with Tighe's position and wanted someone else on the platform with him to closely monitor it "lest it have adverse political ramifications..,"

131-132 -- Tighe said he immediately realized the significance of the mortician and personally approved all the costs of getting him interviewed, etc. He is not aware of any attempt to get the mortician to CIL-HI to look at remains that he may have worked on.

133-134 -- The daily reports from the POW/MIA office to Tighe were a new procedure and the office resented it because Tighe would write back with instructions on additional leads or follow up tasks, etc. Tighe's executive officer, Russ McGhee, would be very familiar with the daily reports which were usually just one or two page summaries of the previous days activities.

135-136 -- Discussion of the down-playing of the Mortician's live sightings. Charles Trowbridge saying there was no evidence of live POWs remaining in Southeast Asia after Operation Homecoming would be inconsistent with previous information Trowbridge provided to Tighe.

137-139 -- General discussion of Roger Shields, Richard Armitage.

141-206 -- CODEWORD Section of the Deposition

209-212 -- Tighe provides the address of BG Thomas C. Pinckney, OSD Assistant Secretary who testified on Capitol Hill with Tighe several times. JWC asks Tighe why, if he knew that several hundred people we expected back at operation Homecoming did not return, did he not do anything about it when he became Director of DIA. Tighe replies that unless you were willing to restart the war in Vietnam there was little that could be done.

213-214 -- Tighe says that he objected strongly to the thesis of Monika-Jensen Stevenson's book, Kiss the Boys Goodbye, which was that the U.S. betrayed its prisoners of war. Tighe has not read Nigel Cawthorne's The Bamboo Cage.

214-215 -- Tighe says that DIA has several different versions of the Tighe report with different levels of classification. He recommends that the Select Committee get the DIA comments on the report given in closed session by LTG Peroots. After the report was submitted Peroots formed a senior review group on POW matters which met two or three times.

216-219 -- Tighe recommends the Committee talk to General Robbie Risner about the change from "probability" to "strong possibility" of live Americans still being held against their will in Southeast Asia. The Tighe Commission members had a fiery conversation with Peroots who had told him that "probable" would tear the government apart and begged that they change it to strong possibility. Their conclusions were based on reviewing the live sighting reports, case files, mortician, Garwood, etc. Tighe was surprised on his return in 1986 of the "debunking" attitude of the POW/MIA Office.

220-223 -- The entire group was at the meeting where the probability versus "possibility" language was discussed with GEN Peroots. Tighe believes Peroots heartburn with the report was based on his desire to run for office some day and he did not want to create waves in the government and have to brief that the government had abandoned its men in Vietnam. Tighe says that upon turning DIA over to Peroots, Perrots was initially supportive of Tighe's opinion that live Americans were still being held in Southeast Asia but that view eventually changed.

224-226 -- Tighe says if he could do it all over again at DIA he would have put more and better people in the POW/MIA office and would have insured that some fresh blood was rotated in constantly. Tighe said he should also have been less polite and more willing to express his own views rather than the views of the intelligence community." Tighe also would not have classified all the refugee reports. The POW/MIA issue is destroying the DIA because its a political problem not an intelligence problem. The Congressional Research Service or some other organization should handle it.

227-229 -- Tighe says there were no "dissenting" opinions on the

Tighe report but that GEN John Murray, the last Defense Attache in Saigon, kept changing his mind Tighe says he has "some problems." Tighe thinks the figure of 92 to 97 percent of refugee report being accurate is grossly exaggerated and would estimate it would be about 20 percent.

230-232 -- Tighe does not feel that changing the "probability" to "strong possibility" that Americans were still being held against their will in Southeast Asia substantially changed the tenor of the report. The primary conclusion of the report was that their was no conspiracy involved. People in the POW/MIA Office were speaking their mind and providing the task force with whatever it wanted which is not what would happen if their were a conspiracy. There are bureaucratic reasons why information does not get to the level it needs to get to.

232-233 -- Tighe thinks there were three problems at the POW/MIA office. One the interviewers and polygraphers may have had their own agendas when they did field investigations. Two, there was an incredible amount of classified information which was readily available to non-cleared personnel. Third, there was a drug-bust set up of a BBC reporter who was meeting with a POW/MIA information source.

233-234 -- Tighe's opinion on live Americans has not changed. He thinks more information may come out of Russia and the whole issue of separate handling of prisoners who may have been taken from Laos because of special talents the Russians may have been interested in. Tighe thinks that the Vietnamese don't have the same aversion to lying that Judeo-Christian nations have and would not be embarrassed to admit they are still holding prisoners if it was politically beneficially to admit it.

235 -- Tighe thinks that the Ministry of Interior files on POWs are the key to resolving the issue. we should demand everything now because Vietnam is flat on its back (economically].

236-237 -- It does not make sense to Tighe that because you went down on the Vietnam side of the border you were returned but because you went down on the Laos side of the border you did not return. this is why Tighe thinks there were two sets of prisoners. He also can't understand why the Soviets and Chinese would not have

been involved.

238-241 -- Tighe never saw any evidence that Americans were taken to the Soviet Union and only very fragmentary evidence of POWs being taken to China. Tighe thinks that a "realistic" number of Americans who might possibly still be alive would be 100 or less and this fits with some live sighting reports of 40, 50, or 60 prisoners being moved. If Tighe were in the Vietnamese shoes holding Americans he would have them in the Northwest corner near the Chinese border or on the rail crossing on the northeast side of Vietnam.

242-244 -- In response to a question on the Tighe report.' suggestion of Vietnamese prison analysis, Tighe says that NSA would have to be tasked to analyze the prison system. Tighe says their was very little analysis of the POW issue in agencies other than DIA. To Tighe it seems that the Navy and Air Force were the services most concerned about the fate of their lost fliers in Vietnam.

245-246 -- Other than the 1981 affair Tighe is only aware of one other planned mission which was Ann Mills-Griffith involving Bo Gritz which never materialized. Tighe spoke to Scott Barnes and was impressed by Barnes knowledge of special operations offices in the Pentagon.

247 -- Tighe is not aware of any government involvement in Bo Gritz's planned operation and is sure that DIA was not involved. Tighe agrees that the letter from GEN Aaron to Bo Gritz asking him to conduct an operation in Laos was probably a forgery.

248-250 -- Tighe believes that there "is a strong possibility of lists of American servicemen who were off-rolled for purposes of concealing U.S. involvement in Indochina that are not on any list," but has no idea how many men that might include. CIA would be in the best position to answer that question, but it should also be directed to the service secretaries and Tighe explains how he would phrase the question. These people would be completely separate from the official lists. Tighe never had access to any information on these individuals while at DIA. General Secord was one of these men who was working for the CIA although he was an Army Captain.

251-252 -- According to Tighe, one of Ann Mills-Griffith "former

employees was directly employed as an employee of the POW shop and reported regularly to her.,' Tighe describes briefly a luncheon meeting he had with COL Richard Childress of the NSC and Ann Mills Griffith where they asked him to keep quiet that their were big things coming up.

253 -- Tighe takes credit for initiating the use of polygraphs in the POW/MIA Office but feels it scared refugees and probably kept some from coming forward.

254 -- Tighe was against DoD or DIA having its own covert operations organization.

255-257 -- Tighe would have taken the Pre-Homecoming list he had created to GEN Moore, the Deputy CINCPAC before taking it to Admiral Gayler the CINC. This list would not have been reviewed with NSA, although their was an NSA rep at CINCPAC during the time he would have been aware that this was going on. A CIA person by the name of Jansen and a State Department person were also at CINCPAC but would not have been involved in this task group.

258-259 -- Only a small number of men (1-2 percent) on that list of 900-1000 were included because Tighe wanted to err on the side of caution. The list probably took one month to put together by 15-20 field grade officers.

259-262 -- General Tighe recommends that the Select Committee gather everything that's ever been published on the POW/MIA issue in addition to taking depositions.