From: Nhan Tran <tran@peora.sdc.ccur.com>
Subject: NEWS/VN: US POWs left in Indochina, Reagan aides say
Originator: daemon@media-lab.media.mit.edu
Reply-To: tran@peora.sdc.ccur.com
Organization: N/A
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 14:37:18 GMT


08/12

U.S. POWS LEFT IN INDOCHINA, REAGAN AIDES SAY

    By Jim Wolf
    WASHINGTON, Aug 12, Reuter - U.S. officials from the Reagan-era responsible
for prisoner of war issues testified on Wednesday they believed Americans were
left behind in communist captivity at the end of the Vietnam War.
    They also blamed previous White House administrations for botching chances
to win the prisoners' release.
    "It is my view today that people are there," Richard Armitage, the Defence
Department's coordinator on the issue during the 1980s, told the Senate Select
Committee on POW (prisoner of war) and MIA (missing in action) Affairs.
    Armitage, who now coordinates U.S. aid to the former Soviet Union, left open
the possibility that surviving Americans might be living freely.
    A growing list of current and former U.S. officials have testified that
former President Richard Nixon's administration was so eager to extricate itself
from Vietnam in the spring of 1973, as it became mired in the Watergate scandal,
that it prematurely closed the book on evidence that POWs were still being held
in Laos.
    Richard Childress, who oversaw the POW/MIA issue on former President Ronald
Reagan's National Security Council staff until 1989, said Vietnam could solve
hundreds of MIA cases by repatriating allegedly warehoused remains.
    "Given my experience, we should never take Vietnamese pledges, promises or
excuses at face value," he told the panel, set up last year to investigate the
fate of the 2,266 Americans still listed as missing or killed in Southeast Asia
without recovery of remains.
    "Unlike us, they do not have to live with their words forever, for they
represent tools to national goals, not pledges in the Western sense," he said.

==============================================

08/12

POW-MIA

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

By LARRY MARGASAK
 Associated Press Writer
   WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. Vietnam War veterans still could be alive in
Southeast Asia, but there is no evidence any are being held prisoner, three
current or former government officials told senators Wednesday.
   The three, who played key government roles in trying to locate U.S.
prisoners, said it was possible that Americans could be in Southeast Asia
voluntarily.
   Testifying before the Senate's POW-MIA committee were retired Lt. Gen.
Leonard H. Perroots, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency; Richard
T. Childress, a staffer of the National Security Council; and Richard Armitage,
a former assistant secretary of defense who currently is coordinating
humanitarian assistance to the former Soviet Union.
   The witnesses agreed with committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., that
Americans likely were left behind in 1973 when U.S. officials announced all
prisoners had either been returned or were dead.
   The three said they had no hard evidence that Americans remained alive now,
but all said it was possible.
   "I don't think there's an organized, institutionalized effort to hold a lot
of people," Perroots said, but added he could envision Americans living
voluntarily among Southeast Asians.
   Armitage said, "There are Americans in Indo-China. I don't know the
circumstances. They may be living freely."
   Childress added, "I believe there's a possibility of Americans in Southeast
Asia in some categories."
   The witnesses said they made strenuous efforts in the 1980s to learn whether
Americans were alive and denied there was a conspiracy by U.S. government
officials to cover up evidence of living Americans.
   Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., trying to make the point that there is no evidence
of a government conspiracy, asked, "How many active duty military and civilians
would have been involved in a coverup?"
   "Hundreds, thousands," Perroots replied.
   But Perroots said there were times when the government should have worked
harder to resolve the prisoner question.
   "When the trail was hot, when there should have been ... a full court press,
there was less effort," he said, adding the search effort had a low priority in
the Defense Intelligence Agency before he took over in 1985.
   Childress told senators that the U.S. government's data base on possible
prisoners being held in Southeast Asia is incomplete.
   But, he said, "I also believe that if such knowledge existed to prompt action
and it was not taken, it would have been exposed long ago."
   Childress said documents he reviewed in the mid-1980s indicated the U.S.
government was ready and willing to act if a specific prison site or specific
prisoners were found.

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