From: mdo@socrates.umd.edu ("Mike T. Do")
Subject: [NEWS] SENATORS TOUR HANOI'S P.O.W. CLOSET
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Date: 18 Nov 92 21:10:34 GMT

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From New York Times (11/18/92)
By Philip Shenon
Special to The New York Times

HANOI, Vietnam, Nov 17 - Three Senators and a group of Pentagon officials were
allowed today to tour longsecret areas of Vietnam's military headquarters and
to runmage through a storeroom of museum artifacts that could hold clues to the
fate of Americans missing from the Vietnam War.
     The visits were evidence of what Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet of Vietnam
described today as his nation's determination to "resolve all aspects of the
issue of missing Americans' and to establish full diplomatic and economic ties
with the United States.
     In the dank storeroom in Hanoi's central war museum, Senator John F. Kerry
a Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Select Committee on
M.I.A.-P.O.W. affairs, opened a dust-covered wooden closet and green flight suitthat, according to the Vietnamese, had been worn by American airmen shot down
over North Vietnamese territory.
     Defense Department investigators had not been granted access to the
storeroom until today, and they appeared starled by Senator Kerry's discovery.
     At least some of the flight suits borename tags and, according to
investigators, could provide the United States with important evidence in
trying to determine the fate of polots and other airmen who aare among the
2,265 Americans still listed as unaccounted for from the Vietnam War.
     After touring the musemum, Maj. Gen. Thomas G. Needham, who oversees
Pentagon teams investigating the fate of missing Americans throughout Indochina,said that Vietnamese cooperations "has markedly increased almost every day,"
"We've no reason to believe that we're not getting the information we want,"
he said.
     Senator Hank Brown, a Colorado Republican who is a member of the select
committee, said today in Hanoi that he detected an "enormous effort by Vietnam
to change - to work toward friendship, to work toward cooperation."
     The three Senators - Mr. Brown, Mr. Kerry and Tom Daschle, a South Dakota
Democrat who is also a member of the committee - are making the panel's last
scheduled visit to Vietnam before the committee is to complete a final report
and go out of business in January after a 17 month investigation.
     The report is expected to judge the quality of Vietnamese cooperation in
resolving the question of Americans missing from the war.  The Senators hinted
this week that President bush, as one of his final acts in the White House,
will relax a 17-year American trade embargo that has discouraged foreign
investment in Vietnam.
     Calls by Americans to relax the embargo have accelerated since Vietnam's
announcement last month that it would allow American investigators full access
to military museums and archives holding information about Americans.
     Today's visit to the Hanoi war museum, the Museum of the People's Army,
came after the three Senators and a team of Pentagon officials toured the
Citadel, a complex of buildings that serves as Vietnam's military headquarters.
     Over the years, American intelligence reports gathered from Vietnamese
refugees have suggested that American prisoners might have been held in the
citadel long after the end of the Vietnam War.  But Senator Kerry said after
touring the building that "we found significant information" discounting at
least one such report, asserting that a goup of about 30 Caucasian men was seen there in 1986.
     Vietnamese officials, hopeful that President Bush will relax and perhaps
even lift the economic embargo before he leaaves office in January, appeared
anxious today to convince the Senators and Pentagon officials that Hanoi was
cooperating fully in the search for missing Americans.
     Senator kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, said he was very impressed
with the Vietnamese efforts.
     "I think the cooperation, at least in the couple of days we've been here,
has been as much as  we can ask for," he said.  "Everything we've asked for
has been done."
     The senators also met today with Prime Minister Kiet, who later with
reporters that American and Vietnamese officials "understand each other very
clear and well."
     Senator Kerry was presented by museum's director, col. Pham Duc Dai, with
several wartime arifacts and documents, including a handful of Social Security
cards and one identification card that had been collected from captured or
killed American soldiers.
     The senators were given a blue and gold airman's helmet that, the
Vietnamese said, had been worn by Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican
who is a member of the select committee and who was a prisoner of war in North
Vietnam for more than five years.  Inside the helmet were the initials "J.M."
     "I would think there must be piles of this stuff elsewhere," Senator Kerry
said, pointing to the other wartime relics that were turned over to the
American delegation today:  items of military clothing, what appeared to be an
American pilot's charred log book, a handbook titled "Survival" on American
military search and rescue techniques.



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