Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Thu, 8 Oct 1992 16:57:49 -0400
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      OP-ED: Low priority's search for MIAs

10/07

Low Priority' Search For MIAs

By Rowland Evans And Robert Novak

    Anger boiling up inside the Senate Select POW-MIA Committee is now aimed at
the Defense Intelligence Agency, suspected by several Republicans either of not
understanding or of routinely sitting on obvious calls for help from prisoners
of war who may have been left behind after the Vietnam War.
    That charge, under wraps until this week, might partially explain the
committee's rare and unpublicized meeting with Defense Secretary Dick Cheney
and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft late Monday in a Capitol hideaway
scrubbed for security. Principals told us that Cheney and Scowcroft wanted to
"tie up loose ends" as the panel's sensational probe begins to wind down. The
real purpose might have included an effort to protect the DIA from the
certainty of an investigation that could turn into a public relations disaster.
    The POW inquiry has been guided thus far by an unusual working alliance
between its chairman, Democratic Sen. John Kerry, and Republican vice chairman
Bob Smith. Their basic disagreement, muted until recently, is whether any POWs
or MIAs left behind after the Paris Peace Accords might still be alive,
although two weeks ago they erupted in a brief shouting match behind closed
doors. Kerry is highly skeptical, as is Republican Sen. John McCain, the
former POW hero, about living American POWs in Southeast Asia. But Smith and
others seem certain that some are still alive.
    Thus the issue transcends differences in temperament and conviction between
Kerry and Smith, whose exhaustive investigation has taken them to Vietnam and
other remote areas together. It is not senatorial personality but the conduct
of the DIA in pursuing "signals" from living Americans in Vietnam or Laos
following the Nixon administration's declaration in the spring of 1973 that no
known POWs were left behind.
    On Monday, this rising emotion was first expressed on the Senate floor by
Sen. Charles Grassley, a member of the select committee. He asked a question
that astonished other senators: Could Congress "trust DIA to competently
evaluate evidence of possible survival" of any POWs or MIAs?
    A senator who treads cautiously and seldom moves until he is sure, Grassley
made a bitter point: Since the Nixon administration had publicly declared in
March 1973 that there were no POWs left in Southeast Asia and that any MIAs
were probably beyond rescue by the United States, the DIA had every reason not
to follow up reports that continued to trickle in that living Americans had
been left behind.
    Behind Grassley's attack are known facts that raise a series of new
questions about the administration's handling of the POW-MIA mess following the
Peace Accords with Hanoi.
    Up to that time, a separate, highly trained and disciplined outfit called
the Joint Services SERE Agency investigated every report of American pilots
downed in hostile territory, Marines lost or captured in battle and other
Americans suspected of being behind enemy lines. "SERE" stands for "search,
escape, rescue, evasion."
    Grassley said the select committee "does have evidence that suggests
survival" of some POWs, evidence that has come to the United States by radio
intercepts, distress signals and "authenticator numbers" assigned to each pilot
for quick radio transmission back to headquarters after being shot down.
Indications of live Americans are also a product of satellite and air
photography, which as recently as January 1988 found the classic "walking K"
marker - meaning a live, downed pilot - made from rice sacks in a field near
Sam Neua in Laos. The DIA did nothing to follow that up for 11 months.
    Once the United States declared that all POWs were back home, the JSSA
suddenly became a vestige, no longer used or necessary. It was cut out of the
loop and had no chance to investigate DIA evidence. "After the war years,"
Grassley said, "the intelligence community all but stopped looking for distress
signals. This was consistent with official policy that all our men were home.
The government's institutional memory on the subject was lost," and monitoring
intelligence for "symbols" of POW or MIA life "became a low priority."
    As Grassley and other angry critics of the DIA see it, the Pentagon's
intelligence agency "hasn't even analyzed the data it's been sitting on for
years." Grassley wants a public probe, and the betting is he will get it.

 1992, Creators Syndicate Inc.
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