Friday was also marked by the expiration of the formal 30-day deadline for the formation of a coalition government in Laos. So far there has been little progress toward setting up the coalition under provisions of the cease-fire signed last Feb. 21, with government officials accusing the Communist Pathet Lao of causing the delay."
[Soth Petrasy, the Pathet Lao spokesman] "broke a long silence on POW's last month to say they were holding Americans and that persons captured in Laos would be returned in Laos, despite U.S. contentions that North Vietnam had agreed to release Laos POW's in Hanoi.
The Pathet Lao declined to give further details about prisoners. In contacts since then, U.S. officials say they have been unable to learn anything more.
The list of nine American and one Canadian names was provided by the North Vietnamese when the United States inquired why no Laos POW's were included in the 555 names turned over at the time the Vietnam cease-fire was signed."
COMMENT: This tells it all in Laos. The POWs held in Laos became pawns in the uncertainty and confusion which characterized the United States interpretation of the Agreement and subsequent events regarding the POW/aid linkage. It is very important to note that when the United States complained at the last minute about the North Vietnamese failure to return POWs from Laos, the North Vietnamese produced nine POWs who had been captured in Laos and subsequently moved to Vietnam. Despite our awareness that
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there were POWs imprisoned in Laos, which was affirmed by the North Vietnamese and the Laotians themselves, not one of these POWs was released; they were held back as pawns and as collateral. Also, the nine POWs captured in Laos and released from Hanoi had been held separately from the other POWs captured in Vietnam. They had never been integrated into the regular POW system. [For a personal account of this isolation read Ernie Brace's book, A Code to Keep. According to Brace's testimony before the House Select Committee on Missing Persons on April 9, 1976, all the prisoners captured in Laos who ended up in the Hanoi prison system were segregated from the other prisoners and held separately in a group known as the `Lulu' group. In January 1973, the Lulu group was told of the Paris Peace Agreement but were informed they would not be released until there was a peace settlement in Laos. In March 1973, they were informed they would be released with the other American POWs.]
Two additional considerations warrant comment. First, in April 1973, Soth Petrasy told my mother and father in person that the Pathet Lao were holding over 100 American POWs. Second, there was a great discrepancy in our government's POW numbers in Laos. Whereas the tally purportedly was 320 in 1973, today it is approximately 560 (which implies that the live POW count was/is 175.) The real number is an ultra classified secret, because Laos officially was a neutral country per the Geneva Protocols of the early 1950's and the United States was not supposed to be involved in the war there.
March 26, 1973 Pacific Stars and Stripes, "New Snag Stalls Prisoner Release."
"North Vietnam told the United States Sunday it intended to release the last group of American prisoners it holds at Hanoi's Gia Lam Airport on Tuesday and Wednesday, but said the U.S. demand that it also release POWs captured in Laos `is beyond the jurisdiction of the agreement [the Paris Peace Agreement].'"
COMMENT: Here, North Vietnam told the United States unequivocally that the POWs in Laos were the responsibility of the Laotians and not the North Vietnamese. In other words, if the United States wanted the POWs from Laos returned it would have had to deal with the Laotians and offer a similar aid package to Laos, as well.
March 27, 1973 Pacific Stars and Stripes, "Hanoi Drags Feet."
"Bui Tin, chief spokesman for the North Vietnamese delegation, said the Pathet Lao `have assured us that the American POWs they hold will be released' and that the Pathet Lao said they `are making preparations for the release.'
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`It is for this reason we are insisting that the withdrawal of U.S. troops and the release of the prisoners take place with no relation to the POWs held by the Pathet Lao,' said Tin."
COMMENT: The North Vietnamese reiterated that there were POWs in Laos and that the situation regarding these POWs was unrelated to the withdrawal of American troops from South Vietnam and the prisoner exchanges in the two Vietnams; it was up to the United States and the Laotians.
Note that by this time everybody -- the North Vietnamese, the Laotians, the State Department and Defense Department -- had affirmed that there were POWs in Laos. There could be no more compelling proof than three separate governments saying there were POWs in Laos. However, not one of these POWs was released. They continue to rot in jungle prison camps today -- some dying slow, cruel deaths, and abandoned by their own country.
April 3, 1973 Pacific Stars and Stripes, "Torture Stories Dampen Chances Of Hanoi Aid."
"Reports from returning prisoners of war of torture and mistreatment by Hanoi have stirred new attacks in Congress against U.S. aid for North Vietnam.
President Nixon has said he plans to ask Congress for such aid as `an investment in peace.'
Senate Democratic leader Mike Mansfield of Montana said the torture stories have not changed his own position that aid to Hanoi would help ensure the peace. But, he added, he does not know what effect the stories will have on getting aid through Congress.
`Even before this it looked difficult,' Mansfield said.
Sen. James L. Buckley, R-NY, called on Secretary of State William P. Rogers to issue the `strongest possible protest' to North Vietnam over treatment of U.S. prisoners of war.
In a statement Sunday Buckley also urged President Nixon to `carefully reconsider any proposal for economic assistance to North Vietnam in light of the POW reports on treatment and prison conditions.'
Rep. Joel T. Broyhill, R-Va., said the stories `convince me that not a cent of American aid money should be spent on rehabilitating a country that is apparently run by savages.'"
COMMENT: Congress was now starting to say "No" to aid for North Vietnam. The amazing aspect of this was that Congress was unaware that Nixon had promised the North Vietnamese $4.75 billion in his secret letter of February 1 and that the North Vietnamese had tied this to the release of the POWs whom they held back as collateral.
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April 7, 1973 Pacific Stars and Stripes, "Senate: No Aid to N. Viet Less We OK It."
"The Senate voted Thursday to bar any aid to North Vietnam unless Congress specifically approves....
The ban on use of funds already appropriated for other purposes was added to a bill to revalue gold in support of the recent devaluation of the dollar in foreign exchange.
Administration spokesmen in the Senate pointed out also that no Indochina aid proposal has been submitted to Congress and said President Nixon is not going to make any such proposal until observance of the January cease-fire in Vietnam is assured.
Continued U.S. bombing in Cambodia became an issue in debate. An amendment by Sen. George McGovern, D-S.D., to cut off funds for any further U.S. military operations in and over any part of Indochina was ruled out of order.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, D-Mont., demanded an end to bombing in Cambodia as a price for his support of aid to Indochina.
`How can we speak of rebuilding when B52 bombers, day after day, are still making some of the heaviest bombing runs of the war?' Mansfield asked in a Senate speech."
COMMENT: Congress now explicitly stated to Nixon there would be no aid for North Vietnam. Moreover, the war in Cambodia was still going on and U.S. bombing was about to resume in Laos (as stated below). Nixon's and Kissinger's interpretation of the Agreement as extending to all of Indochina was ludicrous. I believe that Nixon and Kissinger were so desperate to get out of this undeclared and catastrophic war that they knowingly signed a sham agreement.
April 13, 1973 Pacific Stars and Stripes, "Hanoi Aid Opposed By Hebert."
"House Armed Services Chairman F. Edward Hebert has served notice he will introduce a proposal to prohibit any U. S. aid for Hanoi.
`We might as well bite this bullet right now,' Hebert told his committee.
The Louisiana Democrat also said justification for President Nixon's request for $1.3 billion aid to Southeast Asia so far `is either nebulous or nonexistent.'...
Hebert said he will introduce the amendment prohibiting aid to Hanoi to the bill.
None of the weapons money likely would go to the North Vietnamese anyway, but Hebert's statement put his weight against the controversial
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Hanoi aid that President Nixon has said he may ask for later."
COMMENT: Hebert, a very powerful Congressman, cited $1.3 billion as Nixon's aid request to all of Southeast Asia. Apparently Nixon had conveyed the smaller sum to Congress in early April in hope of getting at least some funds to try to fulfill his commitment to the North Vietnamese. However, Hebert said, "No", to any funding.
At this stage, all was now lost for Nixon regarding his pledge to the North Vietnamese. He could not get the funding and he knew that without it the North Vietnamese would not release the POWs they held back. The same was true for the POWs in Laos, as the Laotians, too, were looking for American aid in return for our POWs.
April 14, 1973 Pacific Stars and Stripes, "POW-Unit Boss: No Living GIs Left in Indochina."
"The Pentagon's prisoner of war task chief said Thursday there are probably no more live American soldiers loose anywhere in Indochina.
Dr. Roger Shields also said there is no evidence that any POWs had been executed in captivity, with three exceptions....
The Pathet Lao in Laos and the insurgent forces in Cambodia will hopefully provide more information about fate of the Americans missing in those countries, Shields said, but `we have no indication at this moment that there are any Americans alive in Indochina.'
Rumors that there were hundreds of U.S. servicemen still in Laotian prison camps `do the families (of the missing) a disservice,' he said."
COMMENT: This is the culmination of the great POW tragedy. Unable to get the funding for the aid he had promised the North Vietnamese (and implicitly, the Laotians), Nixon defaulted on his aid commitments and abandoned the POWs. With this announcement (by his POW spokesman at the Pentagon, Dr. Roger Shields) Nixon slammed the door on the North Vietnamese and the Laotians and on the POWs who he and his State and Defense Department staffs knew were still in captivity. He cut and ran on the POW-aid subject and abandoned the POWs whose very existence the State and Defense Departments had been affirming all along.
April 18, 1973 Pacific Stars and Stripes, "New U.S. Air Raid in Laos."
"The United States resumed bombing of Laos Monday after accusing the North Vietnamese of violating the seven-week-old cease-fire by overrunning a Laotian village and air field....
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Defense Department spokesman Jerry W. Friedheim said Monday that only a few hours earlier the North Vietnamese -- using both infantry and tanks -- overran Tha Vieng, a village and air strip on Route 4 between the Plain of Jars and city of Paksane.
Less than four hours later the Pacific command in Honolulu announced, `at the request of the Royal Laotian government, U.S. aircraft, including B52s, April 16 conducted operations over Laos.'"
COMMENT: This headline is self-explanatory: United States involvement in the war in Laos commenced again, effectively eliminating any chances of getting the POWs released from Laos.
July 23, 1973 In The Congressional Record Congressman Jack Kemp (R-NY) quotes from an article in the U.S. News & World Report, "Mystery of Missing GI's."
"North Vietnam is known--by Hanoi's own claims--to have captured men who were not returned, not listed as dead, and not accounted for.
No National Red Cross team has ever been allowed to visit and inspect the places where American prisoners were held....
No prisoners held in Laos have been sent back, and no accounting made of the dead.
The nine POWs supposedly repatriated from Laos actually had been held in North Vietnam....
Among the families of the MIA's, there is growing suspicion that some captured Americans are still alive in North Vietnam and Laos, being held as pawns for further bargaining with the U.S. over final terms of the war's settlement....
U.S. officials are reluctant to comment on this possibility. But one says openly: `We do not think that everyone now on the missing list is dead.'"
COMMENT: Not all Americans were fooled by the cover-up regarding American POWs in Indochina.
Also, it is very important to note that with the U.S. having officially denied that there were any American POWs in Indochina, the Vietnamese and Laotians had no alternative other than to echo that denial. They could not go public and say, "Look, we held your POWs back," in violation of the Paris Peace Agreement. Paradoxically, Nixon's pronouncement that there were no POWs in Indochina forced the Vietnamese to say the same thing.
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July 21, 1976 Transcript from Hearings of The House Select Committee on Missing Persons in Southeast Asia. (selected pages)
Undersecretary of State Philip Habib: "Already before the Paris negotiations began, we were conscious of the need to account for our men because of the Communist side's refusal throughout the conflict to provide complete information on our prisoners of war, as required by the 1949 Geneva Conventions. As a result, we knew we would have to do all we could by all available means to obtain information about our missing personnel.... the Communist side bracketed the release of prisoners with what they described as `U.S. responsibility for war damage in Vietnam' in a single numbered point. Although humanitarian issues such as POW/MIA's have been subjects of disagreement in the settlement of other past conflicts, I know of no instance in which an adversary so openly treated this humanitarian problem in this way. We thus recognized from an early date what we were up against and accounting for the missing a basic element of our own negotiating strategy.
I might note that international law, as framed in the Geneva Conventions, does not permit the linking of humanitarian obligations to other issues in the way done by the North Vietnamese."...
Congressman Benjamin Gilman, R-NY: "...when we were in Hanoi there were references made to some agreements made between our Government and Vietnam with regard to postwar reparations. Can you set forth for us just where we stand with regard to those negotiations? Were there any agreements we are not aware of, secret memorandum that this committee is not aware of?"
Mr. Habib: "There is no agreement or secret memorandum which this committee is not aware of in this respect. There were, as the committee is aware, some letters and exchanges. With respect to those letters, I think the Committee has been informed of the content of those letters as they bear on the question which the committee has raised. That is my understanding."...
Congressman Paul McClosky D-CA: "With all due respect, Mr. Secretary, this committee asked the Secretary of State and you the same question before we went to Hanoi last December. You did not advise us of that secret letter and we discovered its existence only when we got to Hanoi. Can you tell this committee now why we went to Hanoi without being advised of the existence of that letter which was known to the Secretary of State, especially after we asked you about it?...
We didn't have any idea the letter existed. We asked you in November if there were any secret agreements that we should know about before we went to Hanoi and we were not advised by you or the Secretary of State of the letter's existence or of the $3.25 billion figure which we later ascertained."
Mr. Habib: "That is not an agreement. It never developed into an agreement. Very frankly, Mr. Congressman, I didn't know of the existence of the letter at that time, either...."
Mr. Habib, when questioned further concerning President Nixon's letter to Pham Van Dong and when advised that Henry Kissinger had said
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that he could not produce Presidential papers: "Let me make the answer very specific. There is no agreement, there was no agreement, there never was an agreement as far as I know, and I think I would know at this stage. We have researched it and there is no agreement with respect to the question of aid involved in that letter."
COMMENT: Through Mr. Habib's testimony the State Department acknowledged that the United States was aware that the Vietnamese firmly linked the POW issue to the aid issue within the parameters of the Paris Peace Agreement and Nixon's February 1, 1973 letter. That is to say, the North Vietnamese tied the POW issue to reconstruction aid at the beginning of the Paris Peace Negotiations!! This is why they kept POWs as collateral on the aid that Nixon promised. Habib then contradicted himself by stating that the letter did not constitute an "Agreement" to provide aid. To the Vietnamese, who held back POWs pursuant to the letter, it was an unequivocal agreement. [If you do not believe this, put yourself in the shoes of the Vietnamese and reread the letter on page 5.]
It is hard to tell whether Habib was telling an outright lie in his testimony or was just intent on confusing the POW issue further so as to protect the State Department against claims that the POWs had been abandoned. Both interpretations probably are correct.
April 1, 1977 Excerpts of Testimony by Leonard E. Woodcock before the House Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs. (Mr. Woodcock, former head of the AFL-CIO had been appointed by President Carter to head a Presidential Commission to study the POW issue -- the Woodcock Commission. The Commission went to Hanoi and Vientiane for discussions with the Vietnamese and Laotians.)
"The Lao made clear to the Commission that the MIA issue was linked to U.S. assistance, expressing the belief that the two problems should be resolved together since both resulted from the war."
Mr. Woodcock (speaking to Chairman Lester Wolff D-NY): "They were saying to us what had been said right along, that their obligation with regard to the MIA's they felt, was lodged in paragraph 8(b) of the Paris accord, and our obligation to them in healing the wounds of war and reconstruction was lodged in paragraph 21, and those two were linked."
COMMENT: The position of the North Vietnamese and Laotians regarding the POW/MIAs was firm and consistent: the United States would have to pay for their release per our written commitments.
For the United States government today to consider the POW/MIA issue as "humanitarian" is a cruel distortion of the facts. In the beginning we made it an economic issue, and the Vietnamese and Laotians continue to this day to
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hold us to our commitment.
January 23, 1981 The Morning Star, North Carolina, "Witness says Garwood told of POWs who stayed."
"Marine Pfc. Robert Garwood reported seeing `a couple of hundred other Americans' still in captivity in Vietnam and complained of being unable to make that information public, a Navy psychiatrist testified Thursday.
`Garwood said he didn't know exactly who the Americans were, but that he was upset and concerned that he was not debriefed like other people,' Capt. Benjamin R. Ogburn told a jury of five Marine officers in the court-martial of Garwood....
After listening to Ogburn's testimony, presiding judge Col. R.E. Switzer ruled that his statements about POWs remaining in Vietnam were irrelevant and should be stricken from the record and disregarded by jurors.
Previous attempts by the defense to introduce testimony about remaining POWs in Southeast Asia also had been rejected by Switzer."
COMMENT: By this time the deliberate distortions perpetuated by the Defense and State Departments regarding the POW issue had turned into a cover-up. Even Bobby Garwood's testimony that he had seen American POWs was stricken from the record.
Essentially, the State and Defense Departments were circling their wagons to protect themselves. Since careers were at stake regarding the policy that there were no American POWs in captivity, all steps had to be taken to protect that policy and the people who perpetuated it.
June 25, 1981 House Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, "Servicemen Held Against Will." Dialogue between Congressman Stephen Solarz (D-NY) and Lieutenant General Eugene Tighe (USAF-Retired) on the POW issue.
Mr. Solarz: "And that there are still--and this is a somewhat different question--American servicemen being held against their will in Indochina?"
General Tighe: "My conviction would be `yes' in answer to both questions, sir."
Mr. Solarz: "Now, have you testified to that effect previously, General?"
General Tighe: "I have not been asked the question in exactly that same way, Mr. Chairman, as far as personal convictions are concerned."
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Mr. Solarz: "What leads you to that conclusion, because obviously that is a conclusion that ought to be given great weight, I think, by every member of this committee and the Congress? I am very interested to hear it.
I want to say, with all due respect to the people in your agency, that that was not an impression I had previously received.
Maybe I was not listening carefully enough, but my impression, frankly, listening to other reports I got in private briefings before my trip to Indochina in January was that while there are a lot of reports, whenever they could be tracked down they turned out to be unfounded and the chances are that probably nobody was still alive there.
But you feel otherwise, and I would like to know what leads you to that conclusion."
General Tighe: "I would like to defer that to the closed session. But I suggest that this is a very fast-moving train of evidence. I would also like to clarify the means at our disposal to verify each of these reports that I claim to have checked as much as possible. When you are dealing with a totally uncooperative government or governments, our ability to check is very, very circumscribed."
Mr. Solarz: "We will go into that in closed session. But your testimony is that in your judgment the weight of the evidence indicates that there are Americans still alive and being held against their will in Indochina."
General Tighe: "Yes, sir."
Mr. Solarz: "Are you absolutely certain of that?"
General Tighe: "That is my own personal judgment, sir."
COMMENT: There was no more informed and professional opinion on the POW subject than General Tighe's. Since this testimony was given, the Departments of State and Defense have gone to extraordinary lengths to hide the truth.
September 29, 1986 The New York Times, "P.O.W.'s Alive in Vietnam, Report Concludes."
"A Pentagon panel, after a five-month review of intelligence files, has concluded that American prisoners of war are still alive in Southeast Asia."
[According to Lt. General Eugene Tighe, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency], "...`a large volume of evidence points' to the likelihood that Americans are being held by the Vietnamese Government....
`There were as many differences as you could imagine,' he said of the refugee reports. `They ran the gamut from first-hand sightings to hearsay. But when you have that large volume of evidence that points in those directions, why that's what you conclude.'"
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COMMENT: After this clear statement to the press, a toned-down summary report was issued by the panel. The full report remains classified for no reason other than it would reveal the truth that the State and Defense Departments knowingly left men behind. Allegedly, General Tighe was ordered to tone down the summary.
May 15, 1988 Observer-Reporter, Washington, PA, "Laos wants aid in return for missing soldiers."
"The United States should give Laos humanitarian aid if it wants the country to account for Americans missing in the Indochina war, a senior government official said Saturday.
`We have fulfilled our obligation with the excavation,' said Vice Foreign Minister Soubanh Srithirath. `We are awaiting the humanitarian gesture from the U.S.A.'"
COMMENT: As recently as 1988 the Laotians were still saying that the United States would have to pay for the POWs. The Laotian Foreign Minister made these comments after an
excavation of an American crash site in Laos. A previous investigation of a crash site in Laos had proven that our government had again lied regarding the POW issue.