AUG 27 '92 13:20 KISSINGER ASSOC

P. 10

10

"appropriate action" if there were any delays in POW releases.

In a March 2nd press conference, the President repeated publicly that POW releases could not be linked to anything other than the rate of US withdrawal.

Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese were violating the other provisions of the Agreement, in particular with massive illegal movement of troops and materiel South across the DMZ. During March, we made a number of private protests to the North about these violations and about our growing concern on the accounting for MIAs. They regularly, and disingenously, responded that they were innocent of all charges. We rejected their answers, calling them in one note "an insult to our intelligence".

During this period, as I have reported in my memoirs, I was in favor of stepping up military action against the north to drive home our concern over Hanoi's repeated violations. The President was ambivalent, feeling that on balance it was better to have one more negotiating round.

To give the flavor of contemporary press commentary, I would like to make a few comments. Certainly most of our critics opposed any effort to pressure Hanoi. A far from exhaustive list of newspaper comments is attached as appendix C.

As the deadline for the last POW release approached, the

AUG 27 '92 13:21 KISSINGER ASSOC

[4J]

White House officially issue a threat on March 25 that US troops would remain in Vietnam until all POWs in Indochina were released. All the known prisoners were released as scheduled.

Uncertainty Remains After March POW Releases; US Leverage Erodes

The last known POWs were released to us on March 28. However, our intelligence services continued to receive reports, none ever confirmed, that Americans might still be alive in Indochina. In his address to the nation the next day, President Nixon noted that "there are still some problem areas. The provision of the agreement requiring an accounting for all missing in action in Indochina .... [has] not been complied with...".

Since we had unconfirmed reports of additional POWs and had not received a satisfactory accounting for our missing, our government continued to press Hanoi. However, with the American prisoners home and our forces withdrawn, congressional support for standing up to the North's continued violations evaporated. During this period, political figures and pundits publicly debated not whether we should retaliate for the North's blatant violations but whether we had the right to retaliate. Let me cite just a couple of examples:

On April 1, 1973 the New York Times editorial stated that "The President continues to imply in dark and guarded language that he is ready to use the power of

12

the United States to force adherence to the cease-fire
terms. Nowhere in the official records of the truce is
there provision for any one nation to deal with
violations by its own bilateral actions."

-- Two days later the _Washington Post_ wrote that "the Constitution does not authorize the President to bomb foreign countries at his own discretion. It does not say that, to help enforce shaky cease-fire agreements, the President is entitled to make war as he sees fit."

-- The _Des Moines Register_ said on April 4, that" it would be a grave mistake for the United States to decide the peace violations by the other side were intolerable and jump back into combat again...The agreement calls for the United States to get out and stay out and leave the Vietnamese to settle the future of Vietnam."

-- Several days later the _Atlanta Journal_ wrote that "the Paris peace settlement makes no provision for one of the former belligerents to have recourse to military action if any part of it should break down."

Nor did Congress offer us support for resisting Hanoi's

AUG 27 '92 13:22 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.13

[47]

13

violations. At appendix D is an illustrative list of Congressional resolutions debated in 1973. A sample of examples from the series of 1973 resolutions may be found at:

- On April 5, 1973 the Senate passed the Byrd Amendment, providing that there could be no aid to Hanoi without congressional approval, by 88 votes to 3.

- On May 10, the House adopted an amendment which prohibited the use of funds for military activity in southeast Asia.

- Two weeks later, this Committee approved a similar proposal.

- On May 31, the full Senate rejected a Republican-sponsored amendment which would have made the cut-off of American military activity in Laos and Cambodia contingent upon the North Vietnamese making a good faith effort to account for MIAs.

- On June 4, the Senate approved the Case-Church amendment to cut off all funds for military operations in Indochina.

And so, despite our Administration's continued concern with Northern non-compliance with the provisions of the Paris Agreement, including those involving a full accounting for our

14

MIAs, the American press and Congress effectively denied us both carrot and stick.

US Rapidly Loses T leverage over Hanoi

And so
Mr. Chairman, we were left with only words to fight the
North's violations. Our government issued a detailed public
statement April 20 listing all the North's violations and
specifically criticizing their failure to provide information on
US MIAs. The President instructed me to meet again with the North
Vietnamese in mid-May and to "hit them hard on MIA accounting...!"

In May and June, I had twelve days of talks with the North
Stalin in mild
Vietnamese. In these sessions, I reviewed in detail the North's
violations. But Hanoi sensed our leverage was rapidly eroding
and the North Vietnamese again stonewalled. In response to my
presentation about the North's violations, their representative
disdainfully read back to me editorials and stories from the
American press detailing the political debate over whether our
government had the authority to resume military action in the
face of the North's violations. His unstated message was clear:
I understand what you are saying but I also know that you have no
way to back up your threats. So I will ignore them.

US Continues to Press Hanoi in Summer

AUG 27 '92 13:23 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.15

[4]

15

These negotiations resulted in a joint US-North Vietnamese
communique on June 13 which again specifically reiterated the
North's commitment to release any remaining POWs "without delay".
It called upon Hanoi to make a full accounting for MIAs.
When the North subsequently still did not give us such an
accounting, the American government issued a lengthy protest
statement on MIAs on July 29, noting that after six months, the
North had failed to comply with the agreement and that we still
had some 1300 listed as missing. We again called upon the North
to provide information on the names we had provided. In the
following months we continued to raise with the North their
violations of the agreement and issued additional public
statements about those on September 10 and October 26.

But Mr. Chairman, I must stress that these efforts to pin
Hanoi down on our MIAs amounted to firing empty cannons. We had
no way to force their compliance with the Paris Agreement. The
domestic political debate effectively tied our hands.

On theory we had three levers available: Bombing the North, aid to Hanoi, and aid to Saigon to provide an incentive to seek a peaceful resolution by depriving Hanoi of the hope for military victory. All three levers were removed from our hands.

On June 29, less then two weeks after the conclusion of
the latest peace agreement, the Congress prohibited all military

AUG 27 '92 13:24 KISSINGER ASSOC

action in, over and near Indochina, including reconnaissance
flights.

flights.
-- In August (it became clear that Congress would not approve
economic aid to North Vietnam.
-- In each of the years that Saigon remained independent,
Congress cut aid to it by 50%.

Congress cut aid to it by 50%.
-- It cut off aid to Cambodia alltogether in 1975 and was
debating a "terminal grant", only 75% of its last inadequate
annual grant, when South Vietnam collapsed in 1975.
In these conditions, we had no bargaining position left. I
had one final meeting with the North Vietnamese in December. I
remember being armed with a long list of violations to raise with
them, including the fact that Hanoi had failed utterly to comply
with the agreements on MIAs. As I recall the meeting, Le Duc
Tho's response was again to link our MIAs to their interest in
"political prisoners" in South Vietnam -- the same linkage we had
rejected consistently for more than a year. But in the December
January was made. We called it the Basic Agreement.
Meeting Hanoi took the even more extreme position of linking
compliance with every provision of the basic Agreement before any
MIA accounting was made.

[NOTE TO HAK: We still need to put something in about 1974-76
handling of POWs/MIAs]

AUG 27 '92 13:26 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.20

[Y]

18

of this record I resent the libel that American prisoners were abandoned by their government. No issue was closer to my heart than the fate of our prisoners. I met frequently with the wives and families, as Sybil Steckdale, the head of the group, describes in her book. I felt an obligation to vindicate their suffering and their courage and their dignified patriotism.

When I received the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the Vietnamese War, I donated all the money to a scholarship fund for the education of children of servicemen killed or missing in Indochina.

So let us stop torturing ourselves. If servicemen where left behind, there is one villain and one villain only: the cold hearted rulers in Hanoi. Stop providing them with an alibi.

1

DRAFT - SFRC (8/26/92)

Mr. Chairman, Ladies & Gentleman of the Committee:

When the Chairman called me months ago to inform me of the
investigation being started, I told him that the Committee would
perform an important service in clarifying once and for all the
fate of our Missing-in-Action in Indochina.

I personally have no positive proof either way in this
heartrending question. But I start from the premise that if any
prisoners were held back, there would be only one guilty party:
the Vietnamese Communists who, if it is true that live prisoners
exist knowingly, flagrantly and unforgivably have detained them
in violation of their most solemn agreements.

I have observed with dismay and chagrin that the
investigation by the Committee staff seems to be taking a
different turn. The charge seems to be that the United States
government knowingly or [and?] callously colluded in keeping
American prisoners behind.

Not even the Vietnamese Communists have made such a claim.
They have never denied their obligation to return the prisoners.
They have simply denied that they had any.

2

[4]

I want to begin my testimony by protesting in the strongest
terms the outrageous, malicious insinuations dribbled into the
media that any American leader would so betray his trust. Where
has this country come to if for weeks a nitpicking inquiry
examines "factoids" out of context, obscuring what common sense
would tell any reasonable person must be true. Any American
official of whatever administration would move heaven and earth
to fight for the release of American prisoners. To suggest
otherwise is to play a cruel game

-- with those who fought and suffered in Vietnam with every
reason for confidence that their government would stand
behind them;

-- with the families of the MIAs, who are entitled at least
to the consolation that their government kept faith with
their suffering;

-- with the American people to whom it is being suggested
that their leaders capped a cruel and divisive war by
abandoning prisoners.

To tear the scabs off the wounds of the Vietnam war in such
a manner is truly reckless.

For four years the Administration in which I served sought
to end a war it inherited from its predecessors. When we came
into office we found 525,000 Americans fighting in a region as
far removed from the United States as it is possible to be on

3

this globe. The number was still increasing according to a
schedule established by our predecessors. Four years later we
had unilaterally withdrawn all but 25,000 of the 550,000 troops
we found there.

After four years of anguishing negotiations, we negotiated
an end to the war which met our principal conditions:

a) America would not overthrow the government of an allied country and turn over to the Communists tens of millions who, in reliance on America's word - given by a previous Administration - had cast their lot with us.

b) America would insist on a return of all of its prisoners
and a full accounting of all the MIAs.

For four years we negotiated, first secretly on weekends,
later in full view in day-and-night sessions, harassed by
protesters, attached in the media, facing endless Congressional
resolutions underwriting our negotiating positions only to
achieve the terms we set out to obtain and that their critics had
told us were impossible.

How those who attacked every effort at what we considered
honorable __?__ must laugh when they now find those whom they
criticized as being too demanding in their terms suddenly accused
of having been too negligent with respect to America's own
fighting men. Twice during that period I had to move out of my

4

[4]

residence in the face of protesters insisting we were not sufficiently flexible. Some novelist decades hence will be able to write a Kafka-like story on this reversal of roles.

When I presented the agreement to the press on January 24, 1973 I concluded as follows:

> "...as for us at home it should be clear by now that no one in this war has had a monopoly of anguish and that no one in these debates has had a monopoly of moral insight. And now that at last we have achieved an agreement in which the United States did not prescribe the political future to its allies, an agreement which would preserve the dignity and self-respect of all the parties, together with healing the wounds in Indochina we can begin to heal the wounds in America."

No objective has occupied me more than this; it is now being threatened by the turn this investigation is taking.

Staff investigators who were in grade school when the events you are looking into occurred can not be expected to know the context. Yet the context is key. During the negotiations there were two North Vietnamese demands:

a) the overthrow of the Saigon government;

b) the unilateral withdrawal of American forces.

We rejected the overthrow of the Saigon government both for

5

[4J]

reasons of honor and on practical grounds. There were 700,000 Saigon troops, close to 500,000 Communists (including guerrillas). If Saigon collapsed, the residual American force would become hostages; the number of our prisoners would increase exponentially.

The most intense debate concerned the demand for American withdrawals. Protest groups specialized in spreading the word that they had been told that setting a deadline would create "favorable conditions" for the release of American Prisoners of War.

We had been down this road before. Our predecessors had agreed to a bombing halt on the "understanding" that Hanoi would not take advantage of it. Within weeks Hanoi started an offensive that killed over 1,000 American a month.

Above all, we knew what Hanoi was really proposing from the secret talks. They demanded that America set a deadline for withdrawal unilaterally independent of all other conditions. While American troops were being withdrawn there would be negotiations about a cease-fire, the replacement of the Saigon government and the release of our prisoners. In other words, while our negotiating position was being dismantled, the Saigon government dismantled it and, in the absence of a cease-fire, we were to talk about our prisoners.

6

[4]

This we rejected. Protesters not withstanding, Hanoi knew
very well that we were prepared for a deadline for withdrawal
<u>provided</u> there was a cease-fire and a <u>simultaneous</u> release of
prisoners. This Hanoi consistently rejected.

Nevertheless, a cascade of unilateral withdrawal resolutions
was introduced in the Congress urging unilateral withdrawal.
Most were "sense of the Congress" resolutions, which meant they
were not binding, but they clearly affected Hanoi's calculation.
I am attaching a list of resolutions introduced in 1972. Some
passed; others did not. Whether they passed or not, they
affected our negotiating position. The following exchange with
the chief North Vietnamese negotiator, Le Duc Tho, on May 2, 1972
can serve as an example:

"LE DUC THO: I would like to quote a sentence from Senator Fulbright to show you what Americans themselves are saying.

KISSINGER: Our domestic discussions are of no concern of
yours, and I understand what the Senator
said.

LE DUC THO: I would like to give you the evidence. It is
an American source, not our source. Senator

7

Fulbright said on April 8 that the acts of
the liberation forces in South Vietnam are in
direct response to your sabotage of the Paris
Conference -

KISSINGER: I have heard it before. There is no need to translate. Let's get on to the discussion.

LE DUC THO: I would like to quote -

KISSINGER: I have heard it before. Please go ahead."

Do my responses suggest excessive flexibility?

Despite all these difficulties, we negotiated an agreement
for the release of our POWs and an accounting for the MIAs, for a
cease-fire in place and withdrawal of American forces in the same
stages as the release of our prisoners. Nor did we over throw
any allied government.

Mr. Chairman, your investigators, in interviewing former
associates, have kept asking them why I took this or that
position without asking me, the person who would of course know
best. I am of course fully responsible for the overall
negotiations. But I want the families of the prisoners to know
that it was not a one-man show. I negotiated the overall

8

[47]

agreement. It was buttressed by implementing protocols prepared by technical teams under Ambassadors Sullivan and Porter, who I know did a meticulous job.

Let me now turn to implementation. I will focus on 1973, the year on which the committee has focused and on what I remember of those activities in which I was personally involved.

As the Committee knows, we signed the Paris Agreements on January 23rd. Under Article 8, the parties were committed to exchanging complete POW lists on January 27 and to account for MIAs throughout Indochina. All POWs were to be released within 60 days. As I indicated at a press conference on January 24, we had been told that there were no American POWs held in Cambodia and that those held in Laos and Vietnam would be returned to us in Hanoi.

The North Vietnamese, in what was to be a constant pattern over the next two years, immediately began to violate the agreement. For example, they did not hand over the POW list for Laos until February 1 and then only after we had threatened to withhold a message relating to post-war reconstruction. Moreover, their list contained only 10 names, whereas our intelligence listed many more as missing there.

We considered this situation unacceptable. Secretary of

9

State Rogers testified before this committee on February 8 (and again on February 21) that we did not regard the Laos list as complete and noted we would continue to press for the fullest information on the some 1300 American MIAs in all of Indochina not on the lists provided by Hanoi. When I visited Hanoi for negotiations in mid-February, I raised the POW and MIA issues, presenting evidence on specific discrepancies and asking the Vietnamese to follow up. They were evasive.

In the last week of February, our government became deeply concerned about the POW release schedule. The North was refusing to hand over the list of men to be freed February 27, and in violation of the Peace Agreement, was hinting at tying their release to the freeing of what they called "political prisoners" in South Vietnam. This was a linkage which we had explicitly rejected in the Peace Agreement and rejected again now. We reacted strongly to the North's stalling by suspending our troop withdrawals and mine-clearing operations. The White House spokesman issued a tough statement reiterating that under the terms of the Agreement the release of American prisoners was unconditional. The Vietnamese got the message and the POWs were released as scheduled.

In the following week we kept up the pressure at the Vietnam Peace Conference in Paris. Representing the US there, Secretary Rogers told the press that President Nixon would take

[4]

10

11

White House could only issue a threat on March 25 that US troops
would remain in Vietnam until all POWs in Indochina were
released. All the known prisoners were released as scheduled.

-- On April 1, 1973 the _New York Times_ editorial stated
that "The President continues to imply in dark and
guarded language that he is ready to use the power of

12

-- A fuller list is attached.

13

violations:

-- On April 5, 1973 the Senate passed the Byrd Amendment, providing that there could be no aid to Hanoi without congressional approval, by 88 votes to 3.

-- On May 10, the House adopted an amendment which prohibited the use of funds for military activity in southeast Asia.

-- Two weeks later, this Committee approved a similar proposal.

-- On May 31, the full Senate *rejected* a Republican-sponsored amendment which would have made the cut-off of American military activity in Laos and Cambodia contingent upon the North Vietnamese making a good faith effort to account for MIAs.

-- On June 4, the Senate approved the Case-Church amendment to cut off all funds for military operations in Indochina.

14

US Rapidly Loses Leverage Over Hanoi

Mr. Chairman, we were left with only words to fight the
North's violations. Our government issued a detailed public
statement April 20 listing all the North's violations and
specifically criticizing their failure to provide information on
US MIAs. The President instructed me to meet again with the North
Vietnamese in mid-May and to "hit them hard on MIA accounting..."

In May and June, I had twelve days of talks with the North
Vietnamese. In these sessions, I reviewed in detail the North's
violations. But Hanoi sensed our leverage was rapidly eroding
and the North Vietnamese again stonewalled. In response to my
presentation about the North's violations, their representative
disdainfully read back to me editorials and stories from the
American press detailing the political debate over whether our
government had the authority to resume military action in the
face of the North's violations. His unstated message was clear:
I understand what you are saying but I also know that you have no
way to back up your threats. So I will ignore them.

15

We had three levers available: Bombing the North, aid to Hanoi, and aid to Saigon to provide an incentive to seek a peaceful resolution by depriving Hanoi of the hope for military victory. All three levers were removed.

On June ____, less then two weeks after the conclusion of
the latest peace agreement, the Congress prohibited all military

16

-- In August it became clear that Congress would not approve
economic aid to North Vietnam.

In these conditions, we had no bargaining position left. I
had one final meeting with the North Vietnamese in December. I
remember being armed with a long list of violations to raise with
them, including the fact that Hanoi had failed utterly to comply
with the agreements on MIAs. As I recall the meeting, Le Duc
Tho's response was again to link our MIAs to their interest in
"political prisoners" in South Vietnam -- the same linkage we had
rejected consistently for more than a year. But in the December
meeting Hanoi took the even more extreme position of linking
compliance with every provision of the basic Agreement before any
MIA accounting was made.

*

*

*

*

17

Mr. Chairman, our government worked hard at the POW/MIA issue. Against the advice of critics we negotiated a tough agreement which clearly linked our troop withdrawals to the release of our POWs and a full accounting for our missing.

Almost from the first day, the North violated this and most other provisions of the Paris Agreements. They sent massive amounts of men and armor to the south. Eventually these completed the military takeover of the government there. Hanoi cynically played with families' emotions by stalling and obfuscating on our POWs. While we believe all POWs were released, we continued to receive ambivalent intelligence about possible living Americans. Hanoi did not help resolve the confusion because it never provided satisfactory information about our MIAs.

As I have explained today, we were outraged by these blatant violations and frustrated by our inability to respond to them. The domestic political climate in the US and Congressional actions effectively closed off our ability to punish the North Vietnamese violations or to reward their compliance. We were caught in the classic nightmare of every statesman -- we had nothing to back up our tough words but more words.

Mr. Chairman, I am not here to defend myself. In the light

18

of this record I resent the libel that American prisoners were
abandoned by their government. No issue was closer to my heart
than the fate of our prisoners. I met frequently with the wives
and families, as Sybil Stockdale, the head of the group,
describes in her book. I felt an obligation to vindicate their
suffering and their courage and their dignified patriotism.

19

APPENDIX C

-- On March 16, the *Denver Post* editorialized that "the movement of the North Vietnamese is primarily a problem for the South Vietnamese...(H)aving halted aerial bombing in the both the north and the south, the United States ought not to resume it. Having moved most of the way toward a total troop withdrawal from Vietnam, the United States ought not to stop the withdrawal."

-- Writing in the *New York Times* two days later, James Reston argued that "what the President cannot legally do on his own after our prisoners and troops are gone is to carry out his implied threat to send the American bombers back into the battle...if [the North has] to be punished in order to maintain the balance of power in Vietnam, this can be done practically and legally by aid to Saigon."

-- The *Los Angeles Times* wrote on March 21, 1972 that "once the last Americans are out of Vietnam, the United States will have no justification, no rationale for resort to arms of the threat of arms in that region." A week later the same paper was blunter: "Washington is not the policeman of the cease-fire."

AUG 26 '92 09:15 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.14

7

Mr. Chairman, I have gone into this matter in order to establish the context in which we dealt with the POW/MIA issue. I would like now to turn to a brief description of the events after the signing of the Paris Agreements in January 1973. I will focus on 1973, the year on which the committee has focused and on what I remember of those activities in which I was personally involved.

As the Committee knows, we signed the Paris Agreements on January 23rd. Under Article 8 the parties were committed to exchanging complete POWs lists on January 27 and to account for MIAs throughout Indochina. All POWs were to be released within 60 days. As I indicated at a press conference January 24, we had been told that there were no American POWs held in Cambodia and that those held in Laos and Vietnam would be returned to us in Hanoi.

The North Vietnamese, in what was to be a constant pattern over the next two years, immediately began to violate the agreement. For example, they did not hand over the POW list for Laos until February 1 and then only after we had threatened to withhold a message relating to post-war reconstruction. Moreover their list contained only 10 names, whereas our intelligence listed many more as missing there.

P.15

8

We considered this situation unacceptable. Secretary of State Rogers testified before this committee on February 8 (and again on February 21) that we did not regard the Laos list as complete and noted we would continue to press for the fullest information on the some 1300 American MIAs in all of Indochina not on the lists provided by Hanoi. When I visited Hanoi for negotiations in mid-February, I raised the POW and MIA issues, presenting evidence on specific cases and asking the Vietnamese to follow up. They were non-committal.

In the last week of February, our government became deeply concerned about the POW release schedule. The North was refusing to hand over the list of men to be freed February 27 and in violation of the Peace Agreement, was hinting at tying their release to the freeing of what they called "political prisoners" in South Vietnam. This was a linkage which we had explicitly rejected in the Peace Agreement and rejected again now. We reacted strongly to the North's stalling by suspending our troop withdrawals and mine-clearing operations. The White House spokesman issued a tough statement reiterating that under the terms of the Agreement the release of American prisoners was unconditional. The Vietnamese got the message and the POWs were released as scheduled.

AUG 26 '92 09:16 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.16

[Y]

9

Rogers told the press that President Nixon would take
"appropriate action" if there were any delays in POW releases.
In a March 2nd press conference, the President repeated publicly
that POW releases could not be linked to anything other than the
rate of US withdrawal.

Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese were violating the other
provisions of the Agreement, in particular with massive illegal
movement of troops and material South across the DMZ. During
March, we made a number of private protests to the North
about these violations and about our growing concern on the
accounting for MIAs. They regularly, and disingenuously,
responded that they were innocent of all charges. We rejected their
answering call for aid in our note "an unkindest act of

During this period, as I have reported in my memoirs, I was
in favor of stepping up military action against the north to
drive home our concern over Hanoi's repeated violations. The
President was ambivalent, feeling that on balance it was better
to threaten to delay troop withdrawals. We are more
negotiating around.

Certainly most of our critics opposed any effort to pressure
Hanoi. For example: A list of news articles is attached as an appendix
of newspaper comments.

10

-- Writing in the *New York Times* two days later, Scotty Reston argued that "what the President cannot legally do on his own after our prisoners and troops are gone is to carry out his implied threat to send the American bombers back into the battle...if (the North has) to be punished in order to maintain the balance of power in Vietnam, this can be done practically and legally by aid to Saigon."

-- The *Los Angeles Times* wrote on March 21, 1972 that "once the last Americans are out of Vietnam, the United States will have no justification, no rationale for resort to arms of the threat of arms in that region." A week later the same paper was blunter: "Washington is not the policeman of the ceasefire."

As the deadline for the last POW release approached, the White House could only issue a threat on March 25 that US troops would remain in Vietnam until all POWs in Indochina were released. ~~All the known prisoners were released as scheduled,~~

AUG 26 '92 09:17 KISSINGER ASSOC

11

# Uncertainty Remains After March POW Releases: US Leverage Frodes

Since we had unconfirmed reports of additional POWs and had not received a satisfactory accounting for our missing, our government continued to press Hanoi. However, with the American prisoners home and our forces withdrawn, ~~domestic support for~~ *unconfirmed* standing up to the North's continued violations evaporated. During this period, ~~as the North was shipping an army south of~~ the DMZ in direct contravention of the Peace agreement, American politicians and pundits publicly debated not whether we should retaliate for the North's blatant violations but whether we had the right to retaliate.

-- On April 1, 1973 the *New York Times* editorial stated that "The President continues to imply in dark and guarded language that he is ready to use the power of the United States to force adherence to the ceasefire terms. Nowhere in the official records of the truce is

P.19

12

-- The _Washington Post_ editorial for April 23 asserted that "to insist on 'full' implementation (of the peace accord) when it is plain that both Vietnamese sides mean to cheat just about every chance they get is merely to provide a rationale for open-ended American

AUG 26 '92 09:18 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.20

[Y]

13

participation in a struggle among the Vietnamese."

Nor did Congress offer us support for resisting Hanoi's
violations:

-- On May 31, the full Senate rejected a Republican-sponsored amendment which would have made the cut-off of American military activity in Laos and Cambodia contingent upon the North Vietnamese making a good faith effort to account for MIAs.

14

And so, despite our Administration's continued concern with
Northern non-compliance with the provisions of the Paris
Agreement, including those involving a full accounting for our
MIAs, the American press and Congress effectively denied us both
carrot and stick.

AUG 26 '92 09:19 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.22

[Y]

15

But Mr. Chairman, I must stress that these efforts to pin
Hanoi down on our MIAs amounted to firing empty cannons. We had
no way to force their compliance with the Paris Agreement. The
domestic political debate effectively tied our hands. On August
15, Congress voted to mandate the end of bombing in Cambodia.
The President's veto of the War Powers Act was overridden by
Congress on November 7. The message was clear: There would be
no actions to back up our diplomacy.

AUG 26 '92 09:20 KISSINGER ASSOC

17

[L]

PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL
ATTORNEY/CLIENT COMMUNICATION
ATTORNEY WORK PRODUCT

September 2, 1992

MEMORANDUM FOR THE KISSINGER ASSOCIATES FILE

RE: March 28, 1973 Memorandum from Richardson to HAK re US POWS/MIAs in Laos

The Senate POW/MIA Committee is likely to want to question Dr. Kissinger about the Richardson memorandum. Although HAK's papers in the Library of Congress do not contain a copy of the memorandum, a copy does exist in the NSC files. The NSC copy contains a (classified) cover memo from Holdridge and Kennedy dated March 31, 1973 in which they point out that Hanoi's failure to provide an adequate list is one of only a number of violations of the Peace Agreement by the North Vietnamese:

> While we share Richardson's concern [about the inadequate accounting], we believe that this scenario [of increasingly strong military action] overreacts to the situation and could backfire.

...

Should we tie our post-war relations with Hanoi solely to Lao POWs/MIAs? We would prefer that the questions be geared to the whole issue of implementing the agreement of which POWs/MIAs are one part.

Kennedy and Holdridge recommended that HAK sign a short response to Richardson thanking him for his memorandum and stating that the NSC would review his suggestions. It is not clear if a response was sent.

A subsequent memorandum from Kennedy to HAK dated May 12, 1973 providing background material for the May 15, 1973 WSAG meeting immediately prior to HAK's trip to Paris notes that the inadequate accounting for POWs in Laos may be a topic at the WSAG. Kennedy recommends to HAK that the USG apply pressure in the context of all North Vietnamese violations.

John B. Bellinger, III

September 3, 1992

RE: Review of Nixon Papers at NSC, September 1 and 2, 1992

With the permission of Stan Mortenson, President Nixon's attorney, I have reviewed several hundred documents from the Nixon Library that will be released to the POW/MIA Committee this week. The documents span the period from 1969 to 1974 and cover a wide variety of POW-related topics, including the Paris negotiations, details of POW releases, post-Agreement violations, Project Homecoming, and meetings and correspondence with POW/MIA families. Almost all of the documents are from or to HAK, but most would not have been seen by the President.

For present purposes, the relevant documents included numerous pre-1973 cables and Memcons indicating that HAK and the U.S. negotiators insisted that the North Vietnamese arrange for the release of U.S. POWs in Laos and Cambodia, whether as part of the formal agreement or as part of an understanding. Dr. Kissinger may want to emphasize in his statement to the Committee that contrary to some recent allegations U.S. negotiators were very much concerned about POWs in Laos and Cambodia and received ironclad guarantees that these POWs be released.

Post-1973 documents confirm that the USG was unhappy about the inadequacy of POW lists provided by the North Vietnamese, particularly with respect to Laos, but had no hard evidence that any POWS remained. None of the documents contained intelligence reports of any kind that indicated that any POWs were alive and in captivity after March 1973. Moreover, returning POWs firmly believed that no POWs remained behind. Nevertheless, the documents indicate that US officials were concerned about a number of cases of pilots who were known to have been alive when they reached the ground but were not ultimately accounted for. HAK and the U.S. negotiators pressed the North Vietnamese repeatedly about these cases. In February 1974, HAK told the National League of Families that he believed that there were no more U.S. POWs in North Vietnam but that it was conceivable that U.S. POWs were still being held in Laos. The following are excerpts from specific documents:

1) March 30, 1972 Memorandum from Negroponte to HAK regarding upcoming meeting with Ambassador Porter. Negroponte recommends that HAK resist Porter's recommendation that HAK ask North Vietnamese

(DRVN) to make gesture with respect to POWs.
Negroponte says Porter and Laird place excessive
emphasis on POW issue. "You may want to make the
point that you often have made in the past that if
we get a settlement we'll get our POWs back
anyway. Moreover, we have now sufficiently
dramatized our concern for POWs." [Note:
Although this sounds somewhat callous, in fact the
treatment of POWs had been the US negotiators'
exclusive concern in the Paris talks for some
time.]

2) undated memorandum comparing DRVN's August 1, 1972 peace proposal and USG's "12 Point Proposal." The memorandum points out that the DRVN proposal limits POW releases to Vietnam, with no mention of Laos or Cambodia. US proposal insists on release in Laos and Cambodia as well.

3) August 14, 1972 Memorandum of Conversation between HAK and Le Duc Tho. HAK insists that release of POWs must apply to Laos and Cambodia. HAK rejects North Vietnamese proposal that applies only to Vietnam.

4) August 19, 1972 Memorandum from HAK to Nixon reporting on talks with North Vietnamese. "They seem to be saying that they have to work formally through their allies but will exert the necessary influence. I have made clear that we cannot compromise and must have all of our prisoners back."

5) September 26, 1972 Memorandum of Conversation between HAK and Le Duc Tho. HAK says: "The President will under no circumstances sign an agreement that leaves any American prisoners anywhere in Indochina. There would be no support in America whatsoever for any agreement that made a distinction between American prisoners that are held in Vietnam and American prisoners that are held in Laos and Cambodia." Le Duc Tho responds that in Laos "there are very few" and in Cambodia "there are none."

6) September 28, 1972 Memorandum from HAK to Nixon reporting on talks. DRVN gave "assurances that there were no American POWs in Cambodia and that the few in Lao would be released by their friends."

[L.C]

7) January 23, 1973 cable from HAK to Godley concerning internal peace Laotian negotiations. HAK cables that the North Vietnamese delegation "again gave us categorical assurances that U.S. POWs captured in Laos would be released in the same time frame as U.S. POWs from Vietnam." Accordingly, HAK advised Godley that the text of the Laotian agreement on POWs was less important.

8) January 29, 1973 cable from Sullivan to HAK. Sullivan reported that the list of POWs supplied by the North Vietnamese had no POWs in Laos. The North Vietnamese representative insisted that POWs in Laos were not required to be listed because they were part of the "understanding" and not part of the formal peace agreement. Sullivan rejected this explanation and demanded the list.

9) January 29, 1973 Memcon of January 26 meeting between HAK and representatives of National League of Families. HAK says that "Understandings on Laos are absolutely clear concerning POW releases in a time frame similar to that in Vietnam."

10) February 6, 1973 cable from Sullivan to Scowcroft relaying message from North Vietnamese. The DRVN message reads: "The DRVN side has repeatedly pointed out that to its knowledge the number of U.S. militarymen captured in Laos was very small, of only 5 or 6 men. On October 21, 1972, the DRVN said Laos would release all U.S. POWs within 60 days of an agreement. On October 22, 1972, the President said he was 'satisfied with respect to Laos and Cambodia and all U.S. prisoners.' The DRVN side on February 1, 1973 handed over to the U.S. side the list of U.S. military personnel captured and detained in Laos which had been supplied by the Lao Patriotic Front. The DRVN has been informed by the Lao Patriotic Front that the list...was a complete, full list."

11) May 15, 1973 Memorandum from Richardson to HAK. Richardson notes the lack of substantive progress in resolving MIA issues and recommends that HAK raise with Le Duc Tho the lack of information regarding U.S. personnel in Laos.

12) undated talking paper regarding POW/MIA situation in Laos. Paper attaches examples of missing men known to have been alive on the ground but not on the February 1, 1973 list. Paper concludes that the Pathet Lao list does not represent all US POWs

[L]

captured in Laos. "There is evidence that the Pathet Lao have information on captured/missing US personnel and should be able to provide a list of alive U.S. POWs and information on the fate of many others."

13) undated memorandum to HAK transmitting talking points for his meeting with National League of Families following his return from Paris in June 1973. Regarding the discrepancy between the number of missing men in Laos and the February 1 list, the proposed talking point is: "We have talked to the other side repeatedly and they say we must wait for a political settlement."

14) July 17, 1973 Memorandum from Clements to Nixon. Clements noted the conflicting pressures from POW families and requested authority to continue to make status determinations in accordance with existing guidelines. Clements noted that there were 1278 MIA still unaccounted for including 67 officially listed as POWs based on information that they had reached the ground safely and had been captured. But Clements also stated that the returned prisoners "are of the firm opinion that no others are held captive." Clements said that "It is not our intent to write off our missing men prematurely, but at the same time we cannot condone building undue hope for the family members without justification." By memo dated July 23, 1973, Scowcroft authorized DOD to continue to make status determinations.

15) February 6, 1974 Memorandum from Sieverts to HAK transmitting talking points for HAK's meeting with National League of Families. "To date, USG has no information that any of our men missing before the ceasefire continue to be held."

16) February 15, 1974 Memcon of February 9, 1974 Meeting between HAK and representatives of National League of Families. In response to a question about MIAs, HAK said "I myself can't believe that they hold anyone. They would have no reason to, and our returning prisoners also believe that all of whom they knew were returned...It is my genuine belief that there are no more POWs in North Vietnam....In Laos, it's unlikely, but conceivably there might be POWs."

John B. Bellinger, III

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Washington at Work

New York Times, 10 August 1992, p. A13.

# The Senator Pursues ‘Untold’ M.I.A. Story

By BARBARA CROSSETTE
Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 — Senator John F. Kerry remembers well the advice he got a year ago when he was considering whether to lead a new investigation into the fate of prisoners of war and other Americans who never came home from Vietnam.

"Everybody on my staff, everybody I knew thought I was crazy, and said, Don't do this," he recalls. "They said it's a no-win tar baby."

But Senator Kerry, a 48-year-old Massachusetts Democrat, a Vietnam veteran and former prosecutor, had a hunch that there might be a dispassionate, credible way to strip this issue of much of its controversy by marshaling two decades of public and secret documents. He dug deep into his own past and knew he couldn't walk away.

"This is a fascinating untold story, an incredible story," he said. "This thing has consumed American politics for 20 years."

Exposed B.C.C.I. Scandal

The junior Senator and former Lieutenant Governor from Massachusetts, who began his Congressional career in the shadow of the state's more famous son, Edward M. Kennedy, was sometimes criticized by colleagues for being an opportunist

with little depth in any major national issue. But he has recently acquired a reputation for taking on cases other legislators shrank from tackling when he began exposing the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, while government officials were playing down the importance of the scandal.

Last August, the Senator became chairman of the Senate Select Committee on P.O.W.-M.I.A. Affairs, and began a journey through the labyrinth of fact and fiction on which a powerful grass-roots crusade has been constructed.

He says he does not want to draw any conclusions on any aspect of the issue while his committee is taking testimony and its final report is still months away. But in hearings last week on the most contentious aspect of the missing story — the unsubstantiated but persistent reports of Americans seen alive in Indochina since the war — Mr. Kerry said the public should exercise caution.

"The sheer number of live-sighting reports — more than 1,500 since the end of the war — indicates to some that Americans, perhaps hundreds, must have been left behind," he said.

Not Drawing Conclusions Yet

"However, our failure over 20 years to locate any of those Americans has caused others to conclude that the reports must be false," he added, reflecting the opinion of most officials who have dealt with this issue. "We are not going to draw conclusions until this process is complete."

A day later, he alluded to the possibility that relatives will never believe that no Americans are alive in Indonesia as long as the Defense Department officials charged with investigating live-sighting reports cannot go immediately to the sites. Americans are barred entirely from some areas in Vietnam and Laos where people have reported seeing Caucasians.

"You guys," he remarked to a panel of high-ranking Defense intelligence agents who had been testifying for two days, "are caught in the worst Catch-22 craziness in all of history."

Mr. Kerry is nevertheless convinced that a thorough investigation of the issue is necessary "if we are going to move on beyond Vietnam." Other investigations never satisfied those charging cover-ups, like the family members who heckled President Bush at an appearance before their annual convention on July 24.

The Senator's investigation also has its share of critics, some of them on the committee staff, which has

John Forbes Kerry

Born December 11, 1943.

Hometown Boston.

Family Divorced with two daughters.

**Education.** High School: St. Paul's School, Concord; N.H.; B.A.: Yale University; (1966): M.A., J.D.: Boston College Law School (1976).

**Military.** Navy (1966-1969); awarded the Silver Star; Bronze Star with Combat "V" and three Purple Hearts.

Career Highlights

Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts (1982-84);

U.S. Senate (1985-present);

Vietnam Veterans of America, founding member.

**Hobbies.** Skating, flying, playing ice hockey, reading history and other nonfiction.

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THE NEW YORK TIMES **NATIONAL** MONDAY, AUGUST 10

Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts being greeted by supporters as he addressed the National Alliance of Families about the status of missing

No conclusions
'until this process
is completed.'

been shaken by squabbles between
Mr. Kerry's aides and those of the
committee's deputy chairman, Sena-
tor Bob Smith, a New Hampshire
Republican who is also a Vietnam
veteran. Several Smith staff mem-
bers have lost security clearances
and jobs on the committee because of
leaked documents.

In public hearings and many hours
of closed-door testimony, Mr. Kerry
says, he has "established the reality
of what we knew in 1973," adding that
the most difficult part of the job may
be over. In that year, American
forces were withdrawn from Viet-
nam, but not all the prisoners came
home as expected, despite assur-
ances to the contrary from the Nixon
Administration.

"All of us expected a full account-
ing," he said. "All of us expected to
get every one of the prisoners back.
None of us ever anticipated that the
government might not follow through
on the peace accord."

But the Nixon Administration was
caught between an unpopular war
and the mushrooming Watergate cri-
sis, and the public did not want to
hear any more about Vietnam.

Mr. Kerry's committee has now
forced the declassifying of more than

a million documents and has elicited
admissions from a range of officials
who knew that American prisoners of
war were thought to be alive but
unaccounted for in Vietnam in 1973.

Initially, it was believed that 244
prisoners did not come home. But
returning prisoners said 111 of those
had died, reducing the list to 133.
Because many of these were avia-
tors, there is no specific information
about where they disappeared or
where they may have last been seen
alive.

2,266 Unaccounted For

Mr. Kerry says he would also like
the Defense Department to take a
more realistic look at the long list of
2,266 names of people still unaccount-
ed for in Indochina, at least half of
whom are thought to have died but
whose bodies could not be found.

"You can't walk around as a Viet-
nam veteran and have this thing
hanging out there," said the Senator,
a lawyer educated at Yale and Boston
University. As a Navy officer he com-
manded patrol boats in the Mekong
Delta in the 1960's, and was awarded
the Silver Star, Bronze Star and three
Purple Hearts for his distinguished
war service.

A few years after his return to the
United States in 1969, he joined the
antiwar movement and became a
spokesman of the Vietnam Veterans
of America, a group that was consid-
ered radical in its formative years —
so much so, Mr. Kerry says, that he
finally left the organization. The vet-
erans' group has since become more

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Vincent Ricardel for The New York Times

Last month in Washington after he
servicemen.

moderate.

Mr. Kerry says he sees no inconsis-
tency in opposing the war in the
1970's and pressing now for a fuller
accounting of what happened to those
who are still missing. And he says
Americans have been mistaken in
portraying the missing issue as a
right-wing cause.

"Everybody in America cares about this," he said. "We ought to keep faith with people who wear the uniform. I think that goes beyond politics."

He said his quarrel with the Viet-
nam War was not with the original
aim of the United States, which he
called "fundamentally noble," but
with the strategies of both war and
peace pursued by Washington.

'Bodyguard of Lies'

"A bodyguard of lies surrounded
our effort in Vietnam," he said. "We
weren't just helping people to help
themselves; we had taken it over."

When the Nixon Administration be-
gan making secret overtures for
peace in 1968, he said, he and other
skeptics allowed time to pass before
joining actively in the antiwar move-
ment.

"I came back in 1969," he said. "It was not until 1971 that I demonstrat-ed. We gave the President extraordi-nary leeway to put this secret plan in place."

It soon frustrated him to know that
"friends were being killed because of
the vanity with which the President
pursued his peace process."

"Half the names on the Vietnam

A social divide
lurks beneath the
issue of the
missing.

Wall were put there after 1968," he
said.

Mr. Kerry's research has taken
him to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia
as well as to Russia, where the col-
lapse of the Soviet Union suddenly
opened new areas of investigation
into what former Soviet officials
knew, or how they were involved in
dealing with Americans.

Racing to beat a year-end deadline,
on its work, the committee has creat-
ed a data base of all that is known
about Vietnam-era servicemen.

"Finally, we're dealing with what
is myth and what is reality," Mr.
Kerry said. "I want a process and a
record that is not subject to guessing,
or further fantasy but rather subject\ only to analysis of the truth. There
may be some questions that still re-
main, but they won't be questions
about conspiracy, but rather ques-
tions about the weight of evidence. At
least the evidence will be there."

"You can't create a prisoner out of
somebody who didn't serve in Viet-
nam," he said. "You can't create a
prisoner out of somebody who came
home. You can't create a prisoner out
of somebody whose name is on the
Wall."

The Senator insists that he can
keep the discovery process out of
partisan politics in an election year.
The committee hearings draw spec-
tators from all over the United States,
reflecting a solid Middle American
constituency that believes it has nev-
er been dealt all the facts. Ross Perot,
the former undeclared Presidential
contender, who since the late 1960's
has made many trips to Vietnam in
the belief that he could negotiate a
deal to free prisoners, is to testify
before the panel on Tuesday.

Social Divide Is Seen

Mr. Kerry said he is aware of a
social divide lurking under the
P.O.W.-M.I.A. debate, something he
learned when he became active in
veterans affairs two decades ago.

"It was an eye-opener for me, be-
cause I came from a privileged back-
ground," he said. "I came into con-
tact with a awful lot of vets from
Main Street and minority vets — Na-
tive Americans, blacks, Hispanics
who had carried the brunt of the war.
I saw the way they were treated."

"A lot of people see this issue as an
extension of their disenfranchise-
ment, of their separation from main-
stream power and its ability to affect
their lives," he said.

"We can show them that the gov-
ernment can work," he said. "I see
this as one of the things that intrigued
me: to get concrete results in a way
that reconnects us to those legitimate
concerns of the people."