We do not know of any case in history in which a country has gone to as much effort to help a former enemy as Vietnam has. Just a few years ago, there were 196 individuals on the list of last known alive in Vietnam. All but 43 of those cases have been resolved. Despite the obvious success of the current standard, some of our colleagues still are not satisfied, and they have proposed strengthening it in this bill. We think the addition of those words adds all sorts of complications.
Every country has some documents which it classifies.
We know that our Defense Department and our intelligence agencies would not want to be held to a standard under which a foreign nation could go pawing through all of their classified records. We frankly think that this new requirement is too strict. We also object to some of the new specific actions that our colleagues want to impose. The Kerry amendment would strike the new certification standard that has been put in this bill, and would replace it with the current standard. We urge our colleagues to support this amendment.