1

September 21, 1992

10:15 am

DRAFT

Senate Select Committee on POWs & MIAs

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee:

Twenty three years ago the President of the United States did me the great honor of asking me to be the principal negotiator for ending the war in Vietnam. When the Administration in which I served entered office it found 550,000 soldiers in Vietnam. 31,000 had already died there. We faced a ruthless enemy without any regard for human life or elementary principles of treatment of the captured.

From the day we entered office, we had no more consistent or important goal than the release of the brave Americans held prisoner throughout Indochina and a full accounting of their missing colleagues. The negotiating record makes clear that this matter was repeatedly and insistently raised with the North Vietnamese. Despite Hanoi's protestations, we demanded that Hanoi guarantee the release of American POWs in Laos and Cambodia and assist in accounting for our MIAs. There was no issue on which American officials, from the President on down, were more adamant. For us on the negotiating team it was a painful process because we

1

2

all had many friends on the other side of the national debate. We went through exhausting negotiations, sustained by the hope that our effort would reconcile those who gave priority to peace with those who gave priority to their concept of honor, recognizing the anguish of both sides.

After nearly four years of grueling negotiations, it was my privilege on January 23, 1973, to initial the agreement to end the war that required the return of all prisoners throughout Indochina and an accounting for the missing, together with a ceasefire and other important provisions I shall describe later. I am proud of what my associates and I accomplished.

All of us remember the exaltation on October 8, 1972 after Le Duc Tho accepted President Nixon's public proposal of May 8, 1972, and we knew that the end of the war was in sight. One of our notetakers, Mary Stifflemayer, insisted on working for a twenty-hour negotiating session without relief because she wanted the honor of being present when we culminated four years of often anguishing efforts. Yet here we are, twenty years later, being pilloried in leaks from this inquiry without a shred of evidence, with the unforgiveable libel that we neglected the very group whose suffering was the biggest single incentive for our exertions.

The Paris Accords were a major diplomatic accomplishment for

3

[y]

America. As part of the Accords, we demanded, and finally received, from Hanoi agreements which specifically made the withdrawal of American forces dependent on the release of our prisoners and assurances of Hanoi's assistance in the accounting for our missing throughout Indochina.

Monday morning quarterbacks can argue that the Paris Peace Accords were not perfect. I agree. To me, the ideal outcome would have been an American victory. But, Mr. Chairman, we had to deal with the war in the specific circumstances we faced. Even with the perspective of 20 years, I am convinced that in those circumstances no better agreement was obtainable and much worse ones were urged by our critics. As one example of these circumstances, just as I was as leaving for the final negotiations in January 1973, both the House and Senate Democratic Caucuses passed, by very large margins, resolutions calling for legislation to cut off all funds for the war.

I challenge those flaunting their 20/20 hindsight to say how they could have gotten better terms in that charged political atmosphere. What precisely would they have been willing to do to achieve which particular changes and at what cost? Moreover, since Congress removed both incentives and penalties for Hanoi's compliance, how exactly would any achievable amendments to the text of the Paris Agreement have changed Hanoi's behavior?

4

This is not the first time Congress has examined this issue. Sixteen years ago in 1976, the bipartisan House Select Committee on POWs and MIAs after a 15 month examination concluded that "The provisions of the Paris Peace Agreement relative to POWs and MIAs and the Protocol on Prisoners and Detainees appear, at first glance and after more thoughtful consideration, not only adequate but excellent". The Accords, they stated "constitute an achievement of which the American negotiators and the American people could be proud. Their true success, however, depended on their implementation and their implementation depended on the cooperation of all parties".

That is precisely the point: The problem with the Paris Accords was not their text, but their implementation by North Vietnam. From the very start, Hanoi began violating the Accords. The record shows clearly that while the Executive branch tried strenuously to bring pressure on Hanoi to carry out its commitments under the Paris Accords, in particular those relating to POWs and MIAs, the US Congress even more vigorously, and successfully, undercut our ability to enforce those accords. For our Administration was prepared to use force to resist Hanoi's violations of the Agreement until the Congress prohibited it. The Congress also took away other means of leverage -- such as economic aid. In light of this record, it hardly becomes the present Congress to accuse the 1970s Executive branch of not doing enough.

5

It is therefore amazing to see press stories hinting darkly about prisoners "abandoned" by their own government. There has been talk of a conspiracy extending through five administrations. Leaks that could only have come from this inquiry assert that when President Nixon announced that all prisoners were on the way home, he or his aides knew that many were left behind. The allegation is a flat-out lie, as I shall show later.

What has happened to this country that a Congressional Committee would inquire whether *any* American official of *whatever* administration would fail to move heaven and earth to fight for the release of American POWs and for an accounting of the missing? There is no excuse, two decades after the fact, for anyone to imply that the last five Presidents from both parties, their White House staffs, Secretaries of State and Defense, and career diplomatic and military services either knowingly or negligently failed to do everything they could to recover and identify all of our prisoners and MIAs. Can anyone seriously believe that any honorable public official would neglect America's servicemen and especially those who suffered so much for their country or, even worse, arrange a conspiracy to obscure the fate of prisoners left behind?

Personally, I have no proof whether Americans were kept behind by Hanoi. The Vietnamese are certainly capable of such a cynical act and of lying about it, even though their motive would be obscure. If any prisoners were held back, there can be only one

6

guilty party - the Vietnamese Communists who flagrantly and unforgivably would have violated solemn and clear-cut agreements. If any proof of such a betrayal is found by this Committee, all Americans will unite to demand redress.

The Committee owes it to the country, and above all to the families of the MIAs, to dispel the misapprehension that every unaccounted for missing person was necessarily a Vietnamese or Laotian captive. While I was in office, we did receive some reports alleging that live Americans were still in Indochina. I can assure the Committee that all those reports were taken seriously. But no confirmed report of living American prisoners ever crossed my desk. At the time, returning prisoners stated that they believed all POWs had been released.

The Committee also owes the American people a statement of the simple truth:

-- Some prisoners may - I repeat may - have been kept behind by our adversaries in violation of solemn commitments.

-- No prisoners were left behind by the deliberate act or negligent omission of American officials.

Anyone suggesting otherwise is playing a heartless game with

7

the families of the MIAs, who are entitled to the consolation that
their government kept faith with their suffering. I recognize
that Vietnam evoked deep differences about its purpose and its
strategy by serious people on all sides. But to try to settle
scores at this remove and to tear the scabs of the Vietnam War in
such a manner would be unconscionable.

The Political Background of the Peace Negotiations: Pressures for
Unilateral Withdrawal

When the Administration in which I served came into office,
it found half a million Americans fighting in a region far removed
from the United States. The number was still increasing according
to a schedule established by our predecessors. Casualties had
risen and reached their highest level the year before we entered
office - about 300 a week. Four years later we had withdrawn 95%
of the troops and reduced casualties to an average of less than six
a week.

We began negotiating in 1969, continuing a process begun in
the previous Administration which, however, had never gone beyond
procedural discussions. One of the highest priority demands, which
we consistently declared to be non-negotiable, was the release of
all prisoners throughout Indochina, and a full accounting for the
missing. During four anguishing years we negotiated to find
honorable terms for ending the war, first sporadically on weekends,

8

later in week-long day-and-night sessions. For not withdrawing
more unconditionally, we were harassed by protesters, attacked in
the media, criticized in countless Congressional resolutions and
ridiculed for our concept of national honor. Never once did we
receive any criticism from any source of the kind now emerging from
this inquiry. The pressures we experienced were in the other
direction - that we were not making enough concessions, that we
should withdraw unilaterally in the expectation that then prisoners
would be released by an act of grace of their captors.

By 1972, there was a steady drumfire of public statements and
editorials urging the immediate withdrawal of our forces. I am
making available separately a sample of these (Appendix A). For
example, the Washington Post editorialized April 17, 1972 that "we
ought to fix a date for our total military disengagement, negotiate
as best we can for the return of our prisoners, and get out".

There were also numerous Congressional resolutions. Most were
"sense of the Congress" resolutions which meant they were not
binding. Some resolutions passed; others did not. Whether they
passed or not, they were all known to the Vietnamese and
necessarily weakened our negotiating position. The number of
formal anti-war votes in Congress swelled from 5 in 1969 to 35 in
1972. I am also providing the Committee an illustrative list of
some of the many resolutions or votes in 1972 (Appendix B). For
example, on July 24, 1972 the Senate passed an amendment asking

9

for the withdrawal of US forces in return for the release of US
prisoners. Yet it rejected an amendment requiring a cease-fire
during the withdrawal. Without a ceasefire withdrawals would have
taken place under military attack; our remaining forces would have
been overwhelmed.

During this period, many political leaders, including Senator
George McGovern, the Democratic presidential candidate, and 30 US
Senators were calling for the _unconditional_ unilateral withdrawal
of American forces from Vietnam, without any formal North
Vietnamese commitment for the concurrent or even subsequent return
of our MIAS and POWs or accounting for the missing in action.

At the same time, members of the American peace movement were
spreading the word that they had been told by the North Vietnamese
that setting a deadline for our withdrawal would create "favorable
conditions" for the subsequent release of American prisoners of
war. America 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.

Our Administration knew from its secret talks what Hanoi's
real position was: America should set a deadline for withdrawal
-- unilaterally and independent of all other conditions. Then
while American troops were being withdrawn there could be

[y]

10

negotiations about a cease-fire, the replacement of the Saigon
government and the release of our prisoners. In other words, only
when our leverage was in the process of being dismantled, while the
Saigon government was disintegrating in the absence of a cease-
fire, would we be permitted to talk about our prisoners under
conditions of unspeakable chaos.

We rejected these proposals because we were unwilling to
subject either our prisoners or those serving in Vietnam to such
risks. Key Senators, Congressmen and much of the media loudly
objected to our position.

We rejected as well the consistent North Vietnamese demand to
overthrow the Saigon government, both for reasons of honor and on
practical grounds. There were 700,000 Saigon troops, close to
500,000 Communist troops (including guerrillas). If Saigon
collapsed, the residual American force would become hostage; the
number of our prisoners would increase exponentially.

We made very clear to Hanoi that we were prepared to set a
deadline for withdrawal _provided_ there was a cease-fire and a
simultaneous release of prisoners and full accounting for our MIAs.
Until late in 1972 North Vietnam consistently rejected this
position.

In the end, we achieved the terms which we set out to obtain,

11

and which our critics had repeatedly told us were unattainable and
provocative. In the process, we dramatically improved the
conditions for the return of American forces:

-- We demanded and obtained express North Vietnamese promises to release _all_ American prisoners and to assist in an accounting of our MIAs _throughout_ Indochina despite initial insistence by Hanoi that it would negotiate only about Vietnamese prisoners in Vietnam.

-- We obtained a commitment to return the prisoners in phased installments coordinated with simultaneous withdrawals of our forces from South Vietnam.

-- We demanded and obtained important commitments designed to prevent the reinforcement and supply of North Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam, so that the South Vietnamese would be able to defend themselves after the American forces were withdrawn.

-- We separated the release of our prisoners from being contingent on the release of what the North Vietnamese called "political prisoners" in the South because we thought this would provide endless pretexts for procrastination.

12

- To encourage compliance with these commitments, we held out the inducement, first offered by President Johnson in 1965 and frequently reiterated since, of asking Congress to authorize economic aid to the region after peace had been established.

We achieved all this while refusing, as we were being urged, to 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 America.

Mr. Chairman, this is the record. Yet leaks from this inquiry have been suggesting:

- That those who had refused to abandon America's *Vietnamese* allies, supposedly abandoned *American* prisoners;

- That those who struggled to husband the leverage necessary to bring about the release of American prisoners were insufficiently attentive to the fates of remaining MIAs; and

- That those who were prepared to use force to compel Hanoi's compliance were guilty of not doing enough to

14

The Paris Agreements were signed on January 27. Under Article 8, the parties were committed to exchanging complete POW lists on January 27 and to giving a full accounting of MIAs. All POWs were to be released within 60 days. As I told a press conference on January 24, we had been assured that there were no American POWs held in Cambodia and that those held in Laos would be returned to us in Hanoi.

The North Vietnamese, in what would turn into a constant pattern, immediately began to violate the agreement. For example, they did not hand over the POW list for Laos as required on January 27. In response we delayed delivery to them of a confidential Presidential letter on recommending to Congress reconstruction assistance after peace had been established. This letter implemented a proposal first made by President Johnson in 1965. It was repeated in a Presidential report to the Congress in February 1972, which gave a figure of $2.5 billion dollars and repeated yet again in a Presidential television address on May 8, 1972. The Nixon letter of February 1973 noted the Administration's intention to ask Congress for some $3.25 billion for reconstruction in Vietnam, provided the other provisions of the Agreements were implemented and were in conformity with American constitutional procedures. We delayed the delivery of the letter several days in

15

a successful effort to force Hanoi to hand over the list of our POWs in Laos. This they did on February 1, though their list contained the names of only 10 Americans held as prisoners, whereas our intelligence agencies believed a greater number to be missing.

Mr. Chairman, some suggestions have been made that the North Vietnamese may have withheld some American POWs in an effort to get this economic aid. I find this reasoning difficult to understand. First of all, it had been our constant position that we would never give aid as a form of "ransom" for our prisoners. Nor did we want the North to be able to portray any such aid as "reparations", as we repeatedly told them. That is why the question of reconstruction aid was handled separately from the formal Paris Agreements via a private Presidential message.

Moreover, we had so structured the implementation of the Paris Accords that we would not even begin to discuss aid until almost all the POWs had already returned to the United States. The Joint Economic Commission did not hold its first meeting on the matter until March 15. The Vietnamese were required to return all the POWs by March 28.

Finally, it is curious that Americans would make such an argument when the North Vietnamese have not. As the bipartisan House Select Committee reported in 1976, during all the discussions with the North Vietnamese in 1973, 1974 and 1975, not once did they

[y]

16

cite the American failure to provide economic aid as an excuse for
their failure to provide a complete accounting for our MIAs. Why
should Americans now put forward an alibi for Hanoi which even they
did not assert?

We immediately made clear our dissatisfaction with the Laos
list. Secretary of State Rogers testified before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee on February 8, 1973 (and again on
February 21) that we did not regard the Laos list as complete and
noted that we would continue to press for the fullest information
on all American MIAs throughout Indochina. When I visited Hanoi
for negotiations in mid-February, I raised the POW and MIA issues,
presenting the evidence we had with respect to specific
discrepancies including Laos and asking the Vietnamese to follow
up. In particular there were about 60 names of our men who we had
reason to believe were alive when they reached the ground that did
not appear on Hanoi's lists. The Vietnamese insisted that there
were no additional prisoners beyond those on the lists and in the
process of being released over the 60-day period. I covered this
issue in my memoirs over ten years ago, so that I am surprised that
these discrepancies are now being presented as great discoveries.

By the last week of February 1973, the North Vietnamese had
not yet carried out their obligation to hand over the list of men
to be freed on February 27. In violation of the Peace Agreement,
they were hinting at tying their release to the freeing of what

17

they called "political prisoners" in South Vietnam. This was a
linkage we had explicitity rejected in the negotiations leading up
to the Peace Agreement - a concession for which we had struggled
through many night sessions. We reacted to the North's stalling
by suspending troop withdrawals and mine-clearing operations. The
POWs were thereupon released as scheduled.

In the following weeks 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 "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 other
provisions of the Agreement, through massive illegal movement of
troops and materiel across the DMZ and down the Ho Chi Minh trail.
During March, we registered a number of 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 replies, as we
said in a message, as "an insult to our intelligence".

As the March 28 deadline for the last POW release approached,
the White House issued a threat on March 25 that US troops would

18

remain in Vietnam until all POWs in Indochina were released. All remaining prisoners on the lists were thereupon released as scheduled.

Uncertainty Remains After March POW Releases; US Leverage Erodes

The last known POWs were released on March 28. Those who leaked that President Nixon or his advisers, in announcing that all prisoners had been released knew that we were keeping prisoners behind disingenuously neglected to mention President Nixon's statement 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...". That is all we knew and nothing has been produced or can be produced to indicate the contrary.

Every US official was dissatisfied with the lack of information about our MIAs in Laos, and we said so publicly. Our dissatisfaction was based on evidence that many of these men, mostly pilots who had been shot down, had reached the ground alive but they were never returned to us alive or declared to have died. We also noted that, statistically, the percentage of the missing accounted for in Laos was far smaller than in Vietnam. I used these figures in my February talks in Hanoi. But we did not have evidence that any of the missing were actually still alive and being held prisoner. We repeatedly and insistently demanded that

19

North Vietnam provide a better accounting for the missing. We did
so both before and after Secretary Richardson's March 28th
memorandum to me which has been featured in these hearings. Hanoi
ignored our demands. Between February 1973 and June 1975, we
raised our dissatisfaction with accounting for MIAs in Laos more
than 60 times with officials of the Laotian government. It is the
ultimate irony that our Herculean efforts to get an accounting in
1973 should be twisted twenty years later into "evidence" that we
knew POWs had been left behind.

There is, as well, the question of what more we could have
done. During this period, as I have reported in detail in my
memoirs, I favored military retaliation against Hanoi's repeated
violations. The President felt that on balance it was better to
have one more negotiating round. Certainly there was little
political support in the US for stronger measures. Most
commentators, Congressional and media, opposed any effort to stand
up to Hanoi, arguing that the US had no right to retaliate at all
against the North's blatant violations. Again, I am making
available a sample of prevailing opinion (Appendix C). Let me read
just two here:

-- A *New York Times* editorial of April 1, 1973 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 cease-fire terms.

20

Nowhere in the official records of the truce is there
provision for any one nation to deal with violations by
its own bilateral actions."

-- 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."

Nor did Congress offer support needed to resist Hanoi's
violations. At Appendix D is a sample list of Congressional
resolutions debated in 1973.

By the middle of April, Hanoi's violations of the Paris
Accords were overwhelming. In blatant contravention of the January
agreement, they had moved an entire army, some 35,000 fresh troops,
400 tanks, 300 artillery pieces, 7,000 trucks and 27,000 tons of
military supplies into South Vietnam. On April 19, we suspended
meetings of the Joint Economic Commission. The next day, the US
government issued a detailed public statement listing all the
North's violations and specifically criticizing their failure to
provide information on US MIAs. The same day, technical teams
began meeting to review compliance with the Agreement, especially
the fate of our prisoners and missing. Before my scheduled meeting

[4]

21

with Le Duc Tho in the middle of May 1973, President Nixon instructed me to "hit them hard on MIA accounting..."

Much has been made of Deputy Secretary Clement's alleged remark in April 1973 that "They're all dead". You will be hearing from Secretary Clements about what he actually said and meant. But the fact is that in our subsequent negotiations with the North Vietnamese, we never accepted that "They're all dead", and continued to express our dissatisfaction with Hanoi's failure to account for the MIAs. The negotiating record makes this very plain.

Between mid-May and June 1973, I conducted twelve days of talks with the North Vietnamese. I reviewed in detail the North's violations including the failure to account for all the MIAs and pressed the North Vietnamese repeatedly for a better accounting of US personnel missing in Laos. But Hanoi sensed our leverage was rapidly eroding partly as a result of actions taken by the Congress. For example:

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

- Two weeks later, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a similar proposal.

22

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.

In response to my presentations, Le Duc Tho disdainfully read me editorials from the American press and speeches from the Congressional Record. His message was clear: I understand what you are saying but I also know that you have no way to back up your threats. This was vividly reflected in a briefing that Vietnamese Communist leaders gave to their cadre just prior to the negotiations. According to our intelligence reports, they said that President Nixon would "not dare to apply such strong measures as air strikes or bombing attacks in either North or South Vietnam, because the US Congress and the American people will violently object".

## US Continues to Press Hanoi in late 1973

Despite all these obstacles, strenuous negotiations resulted in a joint US-North Vietnamese communique on June 13 which reiterated the existing Vietnamese obligations to release remaining POWs, if any "without delay", to make a full accounting for MIAs throughout Indochina and to facilitate knowledge about the dead.

23

When Hanoi 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, North Vietnam 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.

While we still had no hard evidence that any of the missing
were still alive we emphatically wanted to determine their fate.
In the following months we continued to raise with the North their
violations of the agreement. We made no secret of our outrage
with Hanoi's violations. During 1973, we delivered at least thirty
separate public statements or private messages protesting Hanoi's
violations. In my confirmation hearings for Secretary of State in
September 1973, I told the Senate we considered Hanoi had an
obligation to provide an accounting for the missing throughout
Indochina and that "we are extremely dissatisfied with the results
of that part of the agreement."

Unfortunately, it was also no secret that these efforts to
pin Hanoi down amounted to firing empty cannons. In theory, we
had three sources of leverage available: bombing the North,
offering economic aid to Hanoi, and giving military and economic
aid to Saigon to deprive Hanoi of the hope for military victory.
The Congress took all three levers away, denying us both the carrot
and the stick.

24

On June 29, 1973, a little more than two weeks after the restatement of the Vietnamese obligation regarding prisoners and the missing, the Congress prohibited all military action in, over, and near Indochina, including reconnaissance flights after August 15.

In July 1973 it became clear that Congress would not approve economic aid to North Vietnam.

In each of the remaining years that Saigon was independent, Congress cut aid to it by 50%.

The Congress cut off aid to Cambodia altogether in 1975 and was in the process of debating a "terminal grant", at best 75% of its last inadequate annual grant, when South Vietnam collapsed in 1975.

Unfortunately, when the Congress eliminated our leverage we were trapped in the classic nightmare of every statesman -- we had nothing to back up our tough words but more tough words.

Under such conditions, we had no bargaining position left. I had one final meeting with the North Vietnamese in December 1973. I remember being armed with a long list of violations to raise with them, including the fact that Hanoi had failed utterly to comply

[y]

25

with the agreements on MIAs. As I recall the meeting, Le Duc Tho's
response was even more contemptuous than six months earlier. He
was after all a professional; he would not waste his time on
adversaries incapable of either rewarding or punishing.

During 1974 and 1975, our Administration continued to press
Hanoi publicly, in private messages and in meeting of the Four-
Party Joint Military Team, to perform their treaty commitment to
account for our MIAs. I personally asked the Laotian government
to help. Vietnam ignored us and even suspended meetings of the
Four-Party team in mid-1974 as Watergate finally sapped the
Presidency.

The Paris accords contained clear and binding commitments that all prisoners would be accounted for and returned. If the Vietnamese violated these provisions it was not because of any omission by the responsible US officials but because we had been stripped of the weapons we might have used to enforce that commitment. I am proud of what my colleagues and I accomplished under heartbreakingly difficult circumstances. I challenge critics of the Accords to say precisely how they would have achieved a better outcome under those circumstances.

## Conclusion

Mr. Chairman, like you, I had the great honor of serving this
country. As I did, I was conscious of my responsibility

[y]

26

-- to the servicemen I visited in the infantry divisions on three different trips to Vietnam in 1965-1967;

-- to the wives and families of the MIAs, with whom I met frequently and who, despite great pressures, never broke faith with their government;

-- to those on my staff who stayed with me when so many of their friends were among the demonstrators and to whom I promised that, if they stayed, they would help end our country's divisions by working on an agreement of which they could be proud;

-- to this country which saved me and my family from totalitarianism.

Throughout the difficult period we are discussing, I had regular meetings with the families of our POWs and MIAs. Through them, I came to know the great personal anguish they faced. Over the years, no honor has meant more to me than being invited twice as guest of honor by the returned prisoners at their annual "dining-in" at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio. When I received the Nobel Peace Prize for my part in ending the Vietnamese war, I donated all of the money to a scholarship fund for the education of children of servicemen killed or missing in Indochina.

27

[y]

I presented the agreement to end the war to the press on
January 24, 1973 with the following concluding comments:

"...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."

Healing those wounds preoccupied me then; it has preoccupied
me since. It is still a noble objective.

Mr. Chairman, you have stated that this inquiry was designed
to heal the wounds of Vietnam. This cannot be done by blaming
American officials for Vietnamese transgressions, nor by
innuendos, distortions and outright falsehoods being leaked out of
this inquiry.

Nor did any Administration know that there were live Americans
kept in Indochina. American prisoners may have been kept in
Vietnam by a treacherous enemy in violation of agreements and human

28

decency. But no one was left there by the deliberate act or
negligent omission of any American official.

Let us stop torturing ourselves. The United States government
kept faith with those who served their country. If servicemen were
kept by our enemies, there is one villain and one villain only:
the cold-hearted rulers in Hanoi. That is the conclusion your
report owes to our nation, to the families of those who served and
suffered there and to the public servants who worked their hearts
out to bring an honorable peace, to return prisoners and to account
for the missing. That is the one true way to put this anguishing
issue behind us.

POWs and MIAs in Laos

Q: Why weren't POWs in Laos covered in the main Agreement?

A: The North Vietnamese side insisted that Laos and Cambodia could not be covered in the main agreement because they refused to admit publicly that they controlled the Pathet Lao in Laos and their Communist allies in Cambodia. The US side was equally adamant that the North Vietnamese had to guarantee the release of all POWs in Laos and Cambodia. We compromised with a side understanding that North Vietnam would arrange for a list of POWs in Laos to be furnished upon the signing of the agreement and that all POWs in Laos would be released within 60 days of the signing of the main Agreement.

* A copy of the Laos Understanding is attached.

Q: What about accounting for MIAs in Laos?

A: The Understanding Regarding Laos and Cambodia included a message from the North Vietnamese side that it would do its utmost to find a satisfactory resolution to the issues the U.S. was concerned about in Laos and Cambodia, one of which was accounting for the missing in action, as we had made clear throughout our negotiations in 1972. The Laotian ceasefire agreement signed in February 1973 also obligated the government of Laos and the Pathet Lao to trace all missing persons in Laos. Moreover, Le Duc Tho personally assured me during our meetings in Hanoi on February 10-12, 1973 and in Paris in May-June, 1973 that the North Vietnamese would do everything possible to help us account for the missing in Laos. The Joint Communique signed by the United States and North Vietnam in Paris on June 13, 1973 specifically requires the parties to help each other to get information about those still considered missing in action.

* A copy of the June 13, 1973 Communique is attached

Regarding Laos and Cambodia

The following is understood between the United States and
the Democratic Republic of Vietnam:

Message in the Name of the Prime Minister of the Government
of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, October 21, 1972, in
Reply to the Message of the President of the United States
Dated October 20, 1972:

Once more, in order to show its good will, the Government of
the Democratic Republic of Vietnam wishes to make clear its
viewpoint regarding the unilateral statements mentioned by
the United States in its message of October 20, 1972 as follows:

(a) Concerning the understandings on the part of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as mentioned during the private meetings in September and October of the current year, the DRV side will carry out, without any change, what it has declared to the U.S. side. But it should be made clear that the questions of Laos and Cambodia must be settled in accordance with the sovereignty of these two countries. Both the Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Government of the United States have the obligations to respect the sovereignty of Cambodia and Laos pledged by the two parties in Article 15 of the agreement on Vietnam, which has been agreed upon.

However, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam side will do its
utmost to come to an agreement with its allies, with a view
of finding a satisfactory solution to the questions with which
the United States is concerned. The DRV side is of the view
that certainly the ending of the war in Vietnam will positively
contribute to rapidly restoring peace in Laos and Cambodia.

(b) With respect to Laos, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
and the United States have agreed on the following:

"On the basis of respect for the principles of the 1962 Geneva
Agreement on Laos, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the
United States welcome the current negotiations between the two
concerned Lao parties, and will actively contribute toward
rapidly bringing these negotiations to a successful conclusion,

SENT BY Xerox Telecopier 7820 : 9-1-92 :10:13AM :

2026474802-

202 293 0074:#13

-2-

so as to make possible a ceasefire in Laos within one month after the 'Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam' comes into force.

"After the ceasefire in Laos, the foreign countries in Laos will arrange the modalities of the implementing Article 15 b) (Article 20 b) of the 'Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam.'"

The Lao Patriotic Front has informed the DRV side that it is ready to agree with the other side on a ceasefire in Laos within one month of October 31, 1972 or within a shorter period of time, and that the Americans captured in Laos will be promptly released, before December 30, 1972.

(c) After the war in Vietnam is ended, the DRV side will actively contribute to restoring peace in Cambodia. The DRV side has been clearly informed that there is no American captive in Cambodia.

(d) The DRV side declares that Article 15 b) (Article 20 b) providing that foreign countries shall stop all military activities in Laos and Cambodia, completely withdraw from and refrain from re-introducing into these two countries troops, military advisers and military personnel, armaments, munitions and war material -- is applied to all foreign armed forces, including those of the United States, Thailand and the Vietnamese parties, etc.

Message from the President of the United States to the Prime Minister of the Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam Dated October 22, 1972:

The President notes with appreciation the message from the Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam which satisfies all his points with respect to Laos and Cambodia as well as U.S. prisoners.

Additional Understandings

1. In the private meeting of January 10, 1973, between the U.S. and the DRV, it was agreed, after consultation with the concerned Lao parties, that the period of one month following the signature of the Agreement, specified in the above exchange of messages with respect to a ceasefire in Laos, will be reduced to a period of no more than fifteen days. In the private meeting of January 9, 1973, it was furthermore agreed that all U.S. military and civilian prisoners detained in Laos shall be released no later than sixty days following the signature of the Agreement.

2. Because of the rearrangement and renumbering of the articles of the Agreement, as agreed to between the U.S. and DRV on November 21, 1972, Article 15 referred to in the above-quoted exchange of messages is now Article 20 of the Agreement.

09-15-92 SEP 17 '92 17:45 212-759-0042

TO KAI

JUUS

P. 11

6. Twenty-four hours after the cease-fire referred to in paragraph 3 enters into force, the commanders of the opposing armed forces at those places of direct contact shall meet to carry out the provisions of Article 4 of the Protocol on the Cease-fire in South Vietnam with a view to reaching an agreement on temporary measures to avert conflict and to ensure supply and medical care for these armed forces.

7. In conformity with Article 7 of the Agreement:

(a) The two South Vietnamese parties shall not accept the introduction of troops, military advisers, and military personnel, including technical military personnel, into South Vietnam.

(b) The two South Vietnamese parties shall not accept the introduction of armaments, munitions, and war material into South Vietnam. However, the two South Vietnamese parties are permitted to make periodic replacement of armaments, munitions, and war material, as authorized by Article 7 of the Agreement, through designated points of entry and subject to supervision by the Two-Party Joint Military Commission and the International Commission of Control and Supervision.

In conformity with Article 15(b) of the Agreement regarding the respect of the Demilitarized Zone, military equipment may transit the Demilitarized Zone only if introduced into South Vietnam as replacements pursuant to Article 7 of the Agreement and through a designated point of entry.

(c) Twenty-four hours after the entry into force of the cease-fire referred to in paragraph 3, the Two-Party Joint Military Commission shall discuss the modalities for the supervision of the replacements of armaments, munitions, and war material permitted by Article 7 of the Agreement at the three points of entry already agreed upon for each party. Within fifteen days of the entry into force of the cease-fire referred to in paragraph 3, the two South Vietnamese parties shall also designate by agreement three additional points of entry for each party in the area controlled by that party.

8. In conformity with Article 8 of the Agreement:

(a) Any captured personnel covered by Article 8(a) of the Agreement who have not yet been returned shall be returned without delay, and in any event within no more than thirty days from the date of signature of this Joint Communique.

(b) All the provisions of the Agreement and the Protocol on the Return of Captured Personnel shall be scrupulously implemented. All Vietnamese civilian personnel covered by Article 8(c) of the Agreement and Article 7 of the Protocol on the Return of Captured Personnel shall be returned as soon as possible. The two South Vietnamese parties shall do their utmost to accomplish this within forty-five days from the date of signature of this Joint Communique.

(c) In conformity with Article 8 of the Protocol on the Return of Captured Personnel, all captured and detained personnel covered by that Protocol shall be treated humanely at all times. The two South Vietnamese parties shall immediately implement Article 9 of that Protocol and, within fifteen days from the date of signature of this Joint Communique, allow National Red Cross Societies they have agreed upon to visit all places where these personnel are held.

(d) The two South Vietnamese parties shall cooperate in obtaining information about missing persons and in determining the location of and in taking care of the graves of the dead.

09-18-92 JUN 07 92 17:46 212-759-0042

TO KAI

PO06

P.12

[LC]

(e) In conformity with Article 8(b) of the Agreement, the parties shall help each other to get information about those military personnel and foreign civilians of the parties missing in action, to determine the location and take care of the graves of the dead so as to facilitate the exhumation and repatriation of the remains, and to take any such other measures as may be required to get information about those still considered missing in action. For this purpose, frequent and regular liaison flights shall be made between Saigon and Hanoi.

9. The two South Vietnamese parties shall implement Article 11 of the Agreement, which reads as follows:

"Immediately after the cease-fire, the two South Vietnamese parties will:

--achieve national reconciliation and concord, end hatred and enmity, prohibit all acts of reprisal and discrimination against individuals or organizations that have collaborated with one side or the other;

--ensure the democratic liberties of the people: personal freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of meeting, freedom of organization, freedom of political activities, freedom of belief, freedom of movement, freedom of residence, freedom of work, right to property ownership and right to free enterprise."

10. Consistent with the principles for the exercise of the South Vietnamese people's right to self-determination stated in Chapter IV of the Agreement:

(a) The South Vietnamese people shall decide themselves the political future of South Vietnam through genuinely free and democratic general elections under international supervision

(b) The National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord consisting of three equal segments shall be formed as soon as possible, in conformity with Article 12 of the Agreement.

The two South Vietnamese parties shall sign an agreement on the internal matters of South Vietnam as soon as possible, and shall do their utmost to accomplish this within forty-five days from the date of signature of this Joint Communique.

(c) The two South Vietnamese parties shall agree through consultations on the institutions for which the free and democratic general elections provided for in Article 9(b) of the Agreement will be held.

(d) The two South Vietnamese parties shall implement Article 13 of the Agreement which reads as follows:

"The question of Vietnamese armed forces in South Vietnam shall be settled by the two South Vietnamese parties in a spirit of national reconciliation and concord, equality and mutual respect, without foreign interference, in accordance with the postwar situation. Among the questions to be discussed by the two South Vietnamese parties are steps to reduce their military effects and to demobilize the troops being reduced. The two South Vietnamese parties will accomplish this as soon as possible."

11. In implementation of Article 17 of the Agreement:

211945Z

TOP SECRET SENSITIVE

EXCLUSIVELY EYES ONLY FOR GENERAL HAIG FROM COL. GUAY.

THE FOLLOWING NOTE WAS HANDED TO ME BY CUSTOMER AT 8:05PM
THIS DATE:

BEGIN TEXT

FOLLOWING IS THE MESSAGE IN THE NAME OF THE PRIME
MINISTER OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF
VIET NAM, IN REPLY TO THE MESSAGE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE
UNITED STATES DATED OCTOBER 20, 1972.

1. AS HAS BEEN AFFIRMED IN THE MESSAGE OF OCTOBER 19, 1972 OF THE DRV SIDE, THE GOVERNMENT OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIET NAM ONCE MORE HAS MADE VERY GREAT EFFORTS TO ENSURE THE SIGNING OF THE AGREEMENT ON ENDING THE WAR AND RESTORING PEACE IN VIET NAM IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SCHEDULE AGREED UPON BY THE TWO SIDES DURING THE PRIVATE MEETING ON OCTOBER 11, 1972. THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES ITSELF HAS ACKNOWLEDGED THAT IT IS OWING TO THE GOOD WILL AND SERIOUS ATTITUDE OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIET NAM SIDE THAT THE TEXT OF THE AGREEMENT HAS NOW BEEN COMPLETED. THE U.S. SIDE SHOULD HAVE RESPONDED BY STRICTLY FOLLOWING THE SCHEDULE AGREED UPON FOR THE OFFICIAL SIGNING OF THE AGREEMENT EXACTLY ON OCTOBER 30, 1972. ON THE CONTRARY, IN THE MESSAGE OF OCTOBER 20, WHEN MENTIONING AGAIN THE POINST ON WHICH THERE HAVE BEEN UNDERSTANDINGS BETWEEN THE TWO SIDES, THE U.S. SIDE HAS TAKEN THE UNILATERAL STATEMENTS OF THE DRV SIDE DURING THE PRIVATE MEETINGS IN SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER, 1972 AND WRITTEN THESE STATEMENTS INTO DOCUMENTS SENT TO THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIET NAM SIDE, CREATING NEW COMPLICATIONS HAMPERING THE SIGNING OF THE AGREEMENT ON THE SCHEDULE WHICH HAS BEEN AGREED UPON BY THE TWO SIDES.

IN ITS MESSAGE OF OCTOBER 20, THE U.S. SIDE HAS ACKNOWLEDGED THAT THE TWO SIDES HAVE AGREED ON ALL THE ACTICLES OF THE AGREEMENT. SO THERE IS NO REASON TO DELAY THE OFFICIAL SIGNING OF THIS AGREEMENT.

2. ONCE MORE, IN ORDER TO SHOW ITS GOOD WILL, THE GOVERNMENT OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIET NAM WISHES TO MAKE CLEAR ITS VIEWPOINT REGARDING THE UNILATERAL STATEMENTS

DECLASSIFIED

E.O. 12356, Sect. 3.4

USC, Van Tassal Authority 9/15/92
E Mkt

NARA, Date 9/15/92

(SA 99)

MENTIONED BY THE UNITED STATES IN ITS MESSAGE OF OCTOBER 20,
1972 AS FOLLOWS:

A) CONCERNING THE UNDERSTANDINGS ON THE PART OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIET NAM AS MENTIONED DURING THE PRIVATE MEETINGS IN SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER OF THE CURRENT YEAR, THE DRV SIDE WILL CARRY OUT, WITHOUT ANY CHANGE, WHAT IT HAS DECLARED TO THE U.S. SIDE. BUT IT SHOULD BE MADE CLEAR THAT THE QUESTIONS OF LAOS AND CAMBODIA MUST BE SETTLED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THESE TWO COUNTRIES. BOTH THE GOVERNMENT OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIET NAM AND THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES HAVE THE OBLIGATIONS TO RESPECT THE SOVEREIGNTY OF CAMBODIA AND LAOS PLEDGED BY THE TWO PARTIES IN ARTICLE 15 OF THE AGREEMENT ON VIET NAM, WHICH HAS BEEN AGREED UPON.

HOWEVER, THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIET NAM SIDE WILL DO ITS UTMOST TO COME TO AN AGREEMENT WITH ITS ALLIES, WITH A VIEW OF FINDING A SATISFACTORY SOLUTION TO THE QUESTIONS WITH WHICH THE UNITED STATES IS CONCERNED. THE DRV SIDE IS OF THE VIEW THAT CERTAINLY THE ENDING OF THE WAR IN VIET NAM WILL POSITIVELY CONTRIBUTE TO RAPIDLY RESTORING PEACE IN LAOS AND CAMBODIA.

B) WITH RESPECT TO LAOS, THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIET NAM AND THE UNITED STATES HAVE AGREED ON THE FOLLOWING:

"ON THE BASIS OF RESPECT FOR THE PRINCIPLES OF THE 1962 GENEVA AGREEMENT ON LAOS, THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIET NAM AND THE UNITED STATES WELCOME THE CURRENT NEGOTIATIONS BETWEEN THE TWO CONCERNED LAO PARTIES, AND WILL ACTIVELY CONTRIBUTE TOWARD RAPIDLY BRINGING THESE NEGOTIATIONS TO A SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION. SO AS TO MAKE POSSIBLE A CEASE-FIRE IN LAOS WITHIN ONE MONTH AFTER THE "AGREEMENT ON ENDING THE WAR AND RESTORING PEACE IN VIET NAM" COMES INTO FORCE.

"AFTER THE CEASE-FIRE IN LAOS, THE FOREIGN COUNTRIES IN LAOS WILL ARRANGE THE MODALITIES OF IMPLEMENTING ARTICLE 15(B) OF THE "AGREEMENT ON ENDING THE WAR AND RESTORING PEACE IN VIET NAM."

[L]

PAGE 3

THE LAO PATRIOTIC FRONT HAS INFORMED THE DRV SIDE THAT IT IS READY TO AGREE WITH THE OTHER SIDE ON A CEASE-FIRE IN LAOS WITHIN ONE MONTH OF OCTOBER 31, 1972 OR WITHIN A SHORTER PERIOD OF TIME, AND THAT THE AMERICANS CAPTURED IN LAOS WILL BE PROMPTLY RELEASED, BEFORE DECEMBER 30, 1972.

C) AFTER THE WAR IN VIET NAM IS ENDED, THE DRV SIDE WILL ACTIVELY CONTRIBUTE TO RESTORING PEACE IN CAMBODIA. THE DRV SIDE HAS BEEN CLEARLY INFORMED THAT THERE IS NO AMERICAN CAPTIVE IN CAMBODIA.

D) THE DRV SIDE DECLARES THAT ARTICLE 15(B) -- PROVIDING THAT FOREIGN COUNTRIES SHALL STOP ALL MILITARY ACTIVITIES IN LAOS AND CAMBODIA, COMPLETELY WITHDRAW FROM AND REFRAIN FROM RE-INTRODUCING INTO THESE TWO COUNTRIES TROOPS, MILITARY ADVISERS AND MILITARY PERSONNEL, ARMAMENTS, MUNITIONS AND WAR MATERIAL -- IS APPLIED TO ALL FOREIGN ARMED FORCES, INCLUDING THOSE OF THE UNITED STATES, THAILAND AND THE VIETNAMESE PARTIES, ETC.

3. THE DRV SIDE AGREES WITH THE U.S. SIDE ON ARTICLE 7 AS MENTIONED IN THE MESSAGE OF OCTOBER 20.

4. THE DRV SIDE AGREES WITH THE U.S. SIDE ON THE ARRANGEMENTS FOR AND THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF DR. KISSINGER'S VISIT TO HANOI AS MENTIONED IN THE PAPER HANDED OVER TO MINISTER XUAN THUY BY DR. KISSINGER ON OCTOBER 17, 1972.

5. THE DRV SIDE FULLY AGREES TO THE NEW TIME SCHEDULES PROPOSED BY THE U.S. SIDE IN THE MESSAGE OF OCTOBER 20, 1972 SO AS TO PUT AN END TO THE WAR AND TO ENSURE THE OFFICIAL SIGNING OF THE AGREEMENT BY THE FOREIGN MINISTERS OF THE TWO SIDES IN PARIS EXACTLY ON OCTOBER 31, 1972. THE GOVERNMENT OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIET NAM WILL KEEP TO THESE TIME SCHEDULES. AFTER MANY CHANGES OF THE AGREED SCHEDULES BY THE U.S. SIDE, THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES SHOULD NOW KEEP TO THE TIME SCHEDULES IT PROPOSED ON OCTOBER 20, 1972. THE DRV SIDE WILL NOT ACCEPT ANY CHANGE IN THE SUBSTANCE OF THE AGREEMENT

OR IN THE TIME SCHEDULES WHICH THE TWO SIDES HAVE AGREED UPON.

6. THE DRV SIDE HAS SHOWN ITS GOOD WILL BY ELABORATING ITS VIEWS ON THE ABOVE-MENTIONED UNILATERAL STATEMENTS. IF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES REALLY HAS SERIOUS INTENT AND GOOD WILL TO RAPIDLY PUT AN END TO THE WAR IN VIET NAM, IT HAS NO REASON TO RAISE ANY NEW QUESTIONS TO CHANGE THE TIME SCHEDULES AGREED UPON THIS TIME.

IF THE U.S. SIDE CONTINUES TO RAISE NEW COMPLICATED QUESTIONS, THE SIGNING OF THE AGREEMENT ON ENDING THE WAR WILL BE DELAYED. THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIET NAM SIDE DECIDEDLY CANNOT GO FURTHER THAN THE POINTS AGREED UPON IN THE AGREEMENT, AND FURTHER THAN ITS UNILATERAL STATEMENTS MENTIONED ABOVE.

IF THE NEGOTIATIONS ON VIET NAM ARE FURTHER PROLONGED, IF THE WAR IN VIET NAM IS NOT RAPIDLY PUT TO AN END, THE U.S. SIDE MUST BEAR FULL RESPONSIBILITY.

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIET NAM ONCE MORE REAFFIRMS ITS SERIOUS ATTITUDE AND GOOD WILL WITH A VIEW TO RAPIDLY BRINGING THE WAR TO AN END AND RESTORING PEACE IN VIET NAM, IN RESPONSE TO THE ASPIRATIONS OF THE VIETNAMESE PEOPLE, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND THE WORLD PEOPLE.

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIET NAM BELIEVES THAT THE PROMPT SIGNING OF THE AGREEMENT ON ENDING THE WAR AND RESTORING PEACE IN VIET NAM WILL CREATE FAVOURABLE CONDITIONS FOR DURING ABOUT A NEW RELATIONSHIP BASED ON EQUALITY AND MUTUAL INTEREST BETWEEN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIET NAM AND THE UNITED STATES.

END TEXT.

CUSTOMER CALLED ME AT EMBASSY AT 8/35PM AND SAID HE WISHED
TO ADD FOLLOWING:

"WE HOPE TO HAVE AN ANSWER FROM YOU ON 22 OCTOBER." HE THEN
ADDED, "I WILL AWAIT YOUR CALL," THANKED ME, AND BID ME A
COURTEOUS GOOD EVENING.

COMMENT: NOTHING UNSUAL OCCURRED AT THE MEETING. HE DID SEEM
SLIGHTLY UPSET WHEN HE MADE HIS CALL. I DO NOT THINK
HIS VERBAL ADDITION WAS AN OVERSIGHT BUT RATHER THAT IT OCCURRED
AS THE RESULT OF SUBSEQUENT INSTRUCTIONS.

QUESTION: PLEASE ADVISE IF YOU DESIRE ORIGINAL TEXTS
POUCHED, DELEVERED OR HELD. WARM REGARDS.

1

From the day we entered office, we had no more consistent or important goal than the release of the brave Americans held prisoner throughout Indochina and a full accounting of their missing colleagues. The negotiating record makes clear that this matter was repeatedly raised with the North Vietnamese. Despite Hanoi's protestations, we demanded that Hanoi guarantee the release of American POWs in Laos and Cambodia and assist in accounting for our MIAs. There was no issue on which American officials, from the President on down, were more adamant. It was an irreducible goal of our government.

2

[y]

For us on the negotiating team is this a
It was a painful process because we all had many friends on
the other side of the national debate. We went through
exhausting negotiations, ~~sustained~~ by the hope that our effort
would reconcile those who gave priority to peace with those who
gave priority to their concept of honor, recognizing the anguish
of both sides.

All of us remember the exaltation on October 8, 1972 after Le Duc Tho accepted President Nixon's public proposal of May 8, 1972, and we knew that the end of the war was in sight. One of our notetakers, Mary Stifflemayer, insisted on working for a twenty-hour negotiating session without relief because she wanted the honor of being present when we culminated four years of often anguishing efforts. Yet here we are twenty years later being ~~piloted in leads with firm resolve, with the~~ asked to justify ourselves about the incredible libel that we neglected the very group whose suffering was the biggest single incentive for our actions ~~exertions~~.

without a shred
of evidence

[y]

4

That is precisely the point: The problem with the Paris Accords was not their text, but their implementation by North Vietnam. From the very start, Hanoi began violating the Accords. The record shows clearly that while the Executive branch tried strenuously to bring pressure on Hanoi to obey its commitments under the Paris Accords, in particular those relating to POWs and MIAs, the US Congress even more vigorously, and successfully, undercut our ability to enforce those accords. For our Administration was prepared to use force to resist Hanoi's violations of the Agreement until the Congress prohibited it. The Congress also took away other means of leverage -- such as economic aid. In light of this record, it would hardly become the present Congress to accuse the 1970s Executive branch of not

doing enough.

What has happened to this country that a Congressional Committee would inquire whether any American official of whatever administration would fail to move heaven and earth to fight for the release of American POWs and for an accounting of the missing? There is no excuse, two decades after the fact, for anyone to imply that the last five Presidents from both parties, their White House staffs, Secretaries of State and Defense, and career diplomatic and military services either knowingly or negligently failed to do everything they could to recover and identify all of our prisoners and MIAs. Can anyone seriously believe that any honorable public official would neglect America's servicemen and especially those who suffered so much for their country or, even worse, arrange a conspiracy to obscure the fate of prisoners left behind?

Personally, I have no proof whether Americans were kept behind by Hanoi. The Vietnamese are certainly capable of such a cynical act and of lying about it, even though their motive would be obscure. If any prisoners were held back, there can be only one guilty party - the Vietnamese Communists who flagrantly and

[y]

6

The Committee owes it to the country, and above all to the
families of the MIAs, to dispel the misapprehension that every
unaccounted for missing person was necessarily a Vietnamese or
Laotian captive. While I was in office, we did receive some
reports alleging that live Americans were still in Indochina. I
can assure the Committee that all those reports were taken
seriously and investigated vigorously with all available US
government resources. But no confirmed report of living American
prisoners ever crossed my desk. At the time, returning prisoners
stated that they believed all POWs had been released.

For anyone to suggest that American officials were at fault
would be to play a heartless game with the families of the MIAs,

[y]

7

When the Administration in which I served came into office,
it found half a million Americans fighting in a region far
removed from the United States. The number was still increasing
according to a schedule established by our predecessors.

Casualties had risen and reached their highest level the year
before we entered office. ~about 300 a week,~
Four years later we had withdrawn 95%
of the troops and reduced casualties by ~~98%~~ <u>than an average of six</u>
<u>ten days</u>,
a week.

We began negotiating in 1969, continuing a process begun in
the previous Administration which, however, had never gone beyond
procedural discussions. One of the highest priority demands,
which we consistently declared to be non-negotiable, was the
release of all prisoners throughout Indochina, and a full
accounting for the missing. During four anguishing years we
negotiated to find honorable terms for ending the war, first
sporadically on weekends, later in week-long day-and-night

8

sessions. For not withdrawing more quickly and unconditionally, we were harassed by protesters, attacked in the media, criticized in countless Congressional resolutions and ridiculed for our concept of national honor. Never once did we receive any criticism from any source of the kind now emerging from this inquiry. The pressures we experienced were in the other direction - that we were not making enough concessions, that we should withdraw unilaterally in the expectation that then prisoners would be released by an act of grace of their captors.

By 1972, there was a steady drumfire of public statements and editorials urging the immediate withdrawal of our forces. I am making available separately a sample of these (Appendix A). For example, the *Washington Post* editorialized April 17, 1972 that "we ought to fix a date for our total military disengagement, negotiate as best we can for the return of our prisoners, and get out".

[y]

9

example, on July 24, 1972 the Senate passed an amendment asking for the withdrawal of US forces in return for the release of US prisoners. Yet it rejected an amendment requiring a cease-fire during the withdrawal. Without a ceasefire withdrawals would have taken place under military attack; our remaining forces would have been overwhelmed.

10

real position was: America should set a deadline for withdrawal
-- unilaterally and independent of all other conditions. Then
while American troops were being withdrawn there could be
negotiations about a cease-fire, the replacement of the Saigon
government and the release of our prisoners. In other words,
only when our leverage was in the process of being dismantled,
while the Saigon government was disintegrating in the absence of
a cease-fire, would we be permitted to talk about our prisoners
under conditions of unspeakable chaos.

11

this position.

In the end, we achieved the terms which we set out to
obtain, and which our critics had repeatedly told us were
unattainable and provocative. In the process, we dramatically
improved the conditions for the return of American forces:

-- We demanded and obtained express North Vietnamese promises to release <u><all</u> American prisoners and to assist in an accounting of our MIAs <u><throughout</u> Indochina despite initial insistence by Hanoi that it would negotiate only about Vietnamese prisoners in Vietnam.

12

-- To encourage compliance with these commitments, we held
out the inducement, first offered by President Johnson
in 1965 and frequently reiterated since, of asking
Congress to authorize economic aid to the region after
peace had been established.

[y]

13

remaining MIAs; and

- That those who were prepared to use force to compel Hanoi's compliance were guilty of not doing enough to enforce the agreements.

One day an author will write a play about this bizarre reversal of roles drawn straight from Kafka. Mr. Chairman, while it may make good theater, it is bad and cynical history.

## Paris Peace Agreements

Let me now turn to the implementation of the peace agreements.¹

¹ Before turning to implementation of the agreement, let me explain the way we went about the negotiations. Until 1972, I conducted private talks, together with a small team from the NSC, all whom have been deposed by the Committee staff. The typical procedure was to leave on a Saturday morning for a French military base from which a French military plane took us to a private airfield near Paris, where we would arrive around midnight. After spending the night in the apartment of our then military attache, General Walters, who acted as interpreter and advisor, we met the North Vietnamese negotiators, usually Hanoi Politburo member Le Duc Tho. After negotiating all day - and sometimes briefing the French President Pompidou - we returned to Washington by the reverse procedure of the day before.

At this stage we discussed only basic principles - usually no more than two pages.

The return of POWs and accounting of the MIAs was an integral part of every American proposal and was always declared as non-negotiable by us.

After the breakthrough of October 8, 1972 I asked Ambassador Bill Sullivan and George Aldrich, the State Department's Deputy

14

[y]

The North Vietnamese, in what would turn into a constant pattern, immediately began to violate the agreement. For example, they did not hand over the POW list for Laos as required on January 27. In response we delayed delivery to them of a confidential Presidential letter on recommending to Congress reconstruction assistance after peace had been established. This letter, which was repeated 21 times and reiterated in a Presidential report to the Johnson in 1965 and reiterated in a Presidential report to the Congress in February 1972 (noted the Administration's intention to ask Congress for some $3.25 billion for reconstruction in Vietnam provided the other provisions of the Agreements were

Legal Advisor, to join the team. They, together with other experts and members of my staff, negotiated the protocols of implementation with Vietnamese technical teams.

After the agreement went into effect, the POW/MIA issue was handled by the NSC process with the Defense Department as the lead agency. As a general procedure, the Defense Department dealt with the Four Party Military Commission, the State Department with embassies abroad, the White House with heads of government.

[y]

and in conformity with American constitutional principles. We delayed the delivery of the letter several days in a successful effort to force Hanoi to hand over the list of our POWs in Laos. This they did on February 1, though their list contained the names of only 10 Americans held as prisoners, whereas our intelligence agencies believed a greater number to be missing.

16

House Select Committee reported in 1976, during all the
discussions with the North Vietnamese in 1973, 1974 and 1975, not
once did they cite the American failure to provide economic aid
as an excuse for their failure to provide a complete accounting
for our MIAs. Why should Americans now put forward an alibi for
Hanoi which even they did not assert?

17

had not yet carried out their obligation to hand over the list of
men to be freed on February 27. In violation of the Peace
Agreement, they were hinting at tying their release to the
freeing of what they called "political prisoners" in South
Vietnam. This was a linkage we had explicitly rejected in the
negotiations leading up to the Peace Agreement - a concession for
which we had struggled through many night sessions. We reacted
to the North's stalling by suspending troop withdrawals and mine-
clearing operations. The POWs were thereupon released as
scheduled.

Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese were violating other
provisions of the Agreement, through massive illegal movement of
troops and materiel across the DMZ and down the Ho Chi Minh
trail. During March, we registered a number of 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

[y]

19

February talks in Hanoi. But we did not have evidence that any of the missing were actually still alive and being held prisoner. We repeatedly and insistently demanded that North Vietnam provide a better accounting for the missing. We did so both before and after Secretary Richardson's March 28th memorandum to me which has been featured in these hearings. Hanoi ignored our demands. Between February 1973 and June 1975, we raised our dissatisfaction with accounting for MIAs in Laos more than 60 times with officials of the Laotian government. It is the ultimate irony that our Herculean efforts to get an accounting in 1973 should be twisted twenty years later into "evidence" that we knew POWs had been left behind.

20

[y]

A New York Times editorial of April 1, 1973 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 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."

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."

[y]

next day, the US government issued a detailed public statement listing all the North's violations and specifically criticizing their failure to provide information on US MIAs. The same day, technical teams began meeting to review compliance with the Agreement, especially the fate of our prisoners and missing. Before my scheduled meeting with Le Duc Tho in the middle of May 1973, President Nixon instructed me to "hit them hard on MIA accounting..."

22

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

-- Two weeks later, the Senate Foreign Relations 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.

23

[y]

Despite all these obstacles, strenuous negotiations resulted
in a joint US-North Vietnamese communique on June 13 which
reiterated the existing Vietnamese obligations to release
remaining POWs, if any "without delay", to make a full accounting
for MIAs throughout Indochina and to facilitate knowledge about
the dead. When Hanoi 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, North Vietnam 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.

24

-- On June 29, 1973, a little more than two weeks after the restatement of the Vietnamese obligation regarding prisoners and the missing, the Congress prohibited all military action in, over, and near Indochina, including reconnaissance flights after August 15.

-- In August 1973 it became clear that Congress would not approve economic aid to North Vietnam.

-- In each of the remaining years that Saigon was independent, Congress cut aid to it by 50%.

-- The Congress cut off aid to Cambodia altogether in 1975 and was in the process of debating a "terminal grant", at best 75% of its last inadequate annual grant, when South Vietnam collapsed in 1975.

[y]

25

Under such conditions, we had no bargaining position left. I had one final meeting with the North Vietnamese in December 1973. 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 even more contemptuous than six months earlier. He was after all a professional; he would not waste his time on adversaries incapable of either rewarding or punishing.

During 1974 and 1975, our Administration continued to press Hanoi publicly, in private messages and in meeting of the Four-Party Joint Military Team, to perform their treaty commitment to account for our MIAs. I personally asked the Laotian government to help. Vietnam ignored us and even suspended meetings of the Four-Party team in mid-1974 as Watergate finally sapped the Presidency.

26

[y]

Conclusion

[y]

27

the years, no honor has meant more to me than being invited twice
as guest of honor by the returned prisoners at their annual
"dining-in" at Randolph Airforce Base in San Antonio. When I
received the Nobel Peace Prize for my part in ending the
Vietnamese war, I donated all of the money to a scholarship fund
for the education of children of servicemen killed or missing in
Indochina.

"...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."

28

American prisoners may have been kept in Vietnam by a
treacherous enemy in violation of agreements and human decency.
But no one was left there by the deliberate act or negligent
omission of any American official.

Let us stop torturing ourselves. The United States
government kept faith with those who served their country. If
servicemen were kept by our enemies in violation of solemn
agreements, there is one villain and one villain only: the cold-
hearted rulers in Hanoi. That is the conclusion your report owes
to our nation, to the families of those who served and suffered
there and to the public servants who worked their hearts out to
bring an honorable peace, to return prisoners and to account for
the missing. That is the one true way to put this anguishing
issue behind us.

1

September 18, 1992

9:00 am

DRAFT

Twenty three years ago the President of the United States did me the great honor of asking me to be the principal negotiator for ending the war in Vietnam. When the Administration in which I served entered office it found 550,000 soldiers in Vietnam. 34,000 had already died there. We faced a ruthless enemy without any regard for human life or elementary principles of treatment of the captured.

From the day we entered office, we had no more consistent or important goal than the release of the brave Americans held prisoner throughout Indochina and a full accounting of their missing colleagues. The negotiating record makes clear that this matter was repeatedly raised with the North Vietnamese. Despite Hanoi's protestations, we demanded that Hanoi guarantee the release of American POWs in Laos and Cambodia and assist in accounting for our MIAs. There was no issue on which American officials, from the President on down, were more insistent or more adamant. It was an irreducible goal of our government.

2

It was a painful process because we all had many friends on the other side of the national debate. We went through exhausting negotiations, impelled by the hope that our effort would reconcile those who gave priority to peace with those who gave priority to their concept of honor, recognizing the anguish of both sides.

All of us remember the exaltation on October 8, 1972 after Le Duc Tho accepted President Nixon's public proposal of May 8, 1972, and we knew that the end of the war was in sight. One of our notetakers, Mary Stifflemayer, insisted on working for a twenty-hour negotiating session without relief because she wanted the honor of being present when we culminated four years of often anguishing efforts. Yet here we are twenty years later being asked to justify ourselves about the incredible libel that we neglected the very group whose suffering was the biggest single incentive for our actions.

3

The Paris Accords were a major diplomatic accomplishment for America. As part of the Accords, we demanded, and finally received, from Hanoi agreements which specifically made the withdrawal of American forces dependent on the release of our prisoners and assurances of Hanoi's assistance in the accounting for our missing throughout Indochina.

Some may argue that the Paris Peace Accords were not perfect. To me, the ideal outcome would have been an American victory in Vietnam. This would surely have produced a better peace. But, Mr. Chairman, we had to deal with the war in the specific circumstances we faced. Even with the perspective of 20 years, I am convinced that in those circumstances no better agreement was obtainable. As one example of these circumstances, just as I was leaving for the final negotiations in January 1973, both the House and Senate Democratic Caucuses passed, by very large margins, resolutions calling for legislation to cut off all funds for the war.

I challenge anyone to say how they could have gotten better terms in that charged political atmosphere. What precisely would they have been willing to do to achieve which particular changes and at what cost? Moreover, since Congress removed our incentives and disincentives to induce or compel Hanoi's compliance, how exactly would any achievable amendments to the text of the Paris Agreement have changed Hanoi's behavior?

4

5

doing enough.

6

- Some prisoners may - I repeat *may* - have been *kept* behind by our adversaries.

- No prisoners were *left* behind by the deliberate act or negligent omission of *American* officials.

7

When the Administration in which I served came into office,
it found half a million Americans fighting in a region far
removed from the United States. The number was still increasing
according to a schedule established by our predecessors.
Casualties had risen and reached their highest level the year
before we entered office. Four years later we had withdrawn 95%
of the troops and reduced casualties by 98%.

8

sessions. For not withdrawing more quickly and unconditionally, we were harassed by protesters, attacked in the media, criticized in countless Congressional resolutions and ridiculed for our concept of national honor. Never once did we receive any criticism from *any* source of the kind now emerging from this inquiry. The pressures we experienced were in the other direction - that we were not making enough concessions, that we should withdraw unilaterally in the expectation that then prisoners would be released by an act of grace of their captors.

By 1972, there was a steady drumfire of public statements and editorials urging the immediate withdrawal of our forces. I am making available separately a sample of these (*Appendix A*). For example, the *Washington Post* editorialized April 17, 1972 that "we ought to fix a date for our total military disengagement, negotiate *as best we can* for the return of our prisoners, and get out".

There were also numerous Congressional resolutions. Most were "sense of the Congress" resolutions which meant they were not binding. Some resolutions passed; others did not. Whether they passed or not, they were all known to the Vietnamese and necessarily weakened our negotiating position. The number of formal anti-war votes in Congress swelled from 5 in 1969 to 35 in 1972. I am also providing the Committee an illustrative list of some of the many resolutions or votes in 1972 (*Appendix B*). For

9

At the same time, members of the American peace movement, were spreading the word that they had been told by the North Vietnamese that setting a deadline for our withdrawal would create "favorable conditions" for the subsequent release of American prisoners of war. America 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.

10

We made very clear to Hanoi that we were prepared to set a
deadline for withdrawal provided there was a cease-fire and a
simultaneous release of prisoners and full accounting for our
MIAs. Until late in 1972 North Vietnam consistently rejected

11

this position.

12

13

remaining MIAs; and

## Paris Peace Agreements

14

The North Vietnamese, in what would turn into a constant pattern, immediately began to violate the agreement. For example, they did not hand over the POW list for Laos as required on January 27. In response we delayed delivery to them of a confidential Presidential letter on recommending to Congress reconstruction assistance after peace had been established. This letter, which implemented a proposal first made by President Johnson in 1965 and reiterated in a Presidential report to the Congress in February 1972, noted the Administration's intention to ask Congress for some $3.25 billion for reconstruction in Vietnam provided the other provisions of the Agreements were

15

implemented. We delayed the delivery of the letter several days
in a successful effort to force Hanoi to hand over the list of
our POWs in Laos. This they did on February 1, though their list
contained the names of only 10 Americans held as prisoners,
whereas our intelligence agencies believed a greater number to be
missing.

16

17

18

As the March 28 deadline for the last POW release
approached, the White House issued a threat on March 25 that US
troops would remain in Vietnam until all POWs in Indochina were
released. All remaining prisoners on the lists were thereupon
released as scheduled.

The last known POWs were released on March 28. But 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...".

Much has been made of internal US government documents from
this period with respect to prisoners in Laos. Every US official
was dissatisfied with the lack of information about our MIAs in
Laos, and we said so publicly. Our dissatisfaction was based on
evidence that many of these men, mostly pilots who had been shot
down, had reached the ground alive but they were never returned
to us alive or declared to have died. We also noted that,
statistically, the percentage of the missing accounted for in
Laos was far smaller than in Vietnam. I used these figures in my

19

20

Nor did Congress offer support needed to resist Hanoi's .. violations. At Appendix D is a sample list of Congressional resolutions debated in 1973.

21

[Y]

22

23

24

- In each of the remaining years that Saigon was independent, Congress cut aid to it by 50%.

- The Congress cut off aid to Cambodia altogether in 1975 and was in the process of debating a "terminal grant", at best 75% of its last inadequate annual grant, when South Vietnam collapsed in 1975.

25

26

## Conclusion

27

[Y]

as guest of honor by the returned prisoners at their annual "dining-in" at Randolf Airforce Base in San Antonio. When I received the Nobel Peace Prize for my part in ending the Vietnamese war, I donated all of the money to a scholarship fund for the education of children of servicemen killed or missing in Indochina.

28

American prisoners may have been kept in Vietnam by a
treacherous enemy in violation of agreements and human decency.
But no one was _left_ there by the deliberate act or negligent
omission of _any_ American official.

27

For all these reasons, the innuendos, distortions and
outright falsehoods being leaked out of this inquiry, are truly
unforgivable.

28

Mr. Chairman, you have stated that this inquiry was designed to heal the wounds of Vietnam. This cannot be done by blaming American officials for Vietnamese transgressions, nor by ~~smearing~~ those who served their country with grotesque and untrue accusations.

American prisoners may have been kept in Vietnam by a treacherous enemy in violation of agreements and human decency. But no one was **left** there by the deliberate act or negligent omission of **any** American official.

Let us stop torturing ourselves. The United States government kept faith with those who served their country. If servicemen were kept by our enemies in violation of solemn agreements, there is one villain and one villain only: the cold-hearted rulers in Hanoi. That is the conclusion your report owes to our nation, to the families of those who served and suffered there and to the public servants who worked their hearts out to bring an honorable peace, to return prisoners and to account for the missing. That is the one true way to put this anguishing issue behind us.

19

February talks in Hanoi. But we did not have evidence that any
of the missing were actually still alive and being held prisoner.
Moreover, it is flatly wrong to suggest that we did not act on
those concerns. We repeatedly and insistently demanded that
North Vietnam provide a better accounting for the missing. We
did so both before and after Secretary Richardson's March 28th
memorandum to me which has been featured in these hearings.
Hanoi ignored our demands. Between February 1973 and June 1975,
we raised our dissatisfaction with accounting for MIAs in Laos
more than 60 times with officials of the Laotian government. It
is the ultimate irony that our Herculean efforts to get an
accounting in 1973 should be twisted twenty years later into
"evidence" that we knew POWs had been left behind.

1

September 17, 1992

5:05 pm

DRAFT

2

[y]

Some may argue that the Paris Peace Accords were not perfect. To me, the ideal outcome would have been an American victory in Vietnam. This would surely have produced a better peace. But, Mr. Chairman, we had to deal with the war in the specific circumstances we faced. Even with the perspective of 20 years, I am convinced that in those circumstances no better agreement was obtainable. For example, just as I was leaving for my final negotiations in January 1973, both the House and Senate Democratic Caucuses passed, by very large margins, resolutions calling for legislation to cut off all funds for the war.

[y]

4

That is precisely the point: The problem with the Paris Accords was not their text, but their implementation by North Vietnam. From the very start, Hanoi began violating the Accords. The record shows clearly that while the Executive branch tried strenuously to bring pressure on Hanoi to obey its commitments under the Paris Accords, in particular those relating to POWs and MIAs, the US Congress even more vigorously, and successfully, took away our ability to enforce those accords. For our Administration was prepared to use force to resist Hanoi's violations of the Agreement until the Congress prohibited it. The Congress also took away other means of leverage -- such as economic aid. In light of this record, it would hardly become the present Congress to accuse the 1970s Executive branch of not doing enough.

It is therefore amazing to see press stories suggesting that better terms might have been achieved with respect to our POWs and MIAs. Some have hinted darkly about prisoners "abandoned" by their own government. There has been talk of a conspiracy extending through five administrations.

What has happened to this country that a Congressional Committee would be asked to inquire whether any American official of whatever administration would fail to move heaven and earth to fight for the release of American POWs and for an accounting of the missing? There is no excuse, two decades after the fact, for anyone to imply that the last five Presidents from both parties, their White House staffs, Secretaries of State and Defense, and career diplomatic and military services either knowingly or negligently failed to do everything they could to recover and identify all of our prisoners and MIAs. Can anyone seriously believe that any honorable public official would neglect America's servicemen and especially those who suffered so much for their country

Personally, I have no proof whether some Americans were kept behind by Hanoi. The Vietnamese are certainly capable of such a cynical act and of lying about it, even though their motive would be obscure. If any prisoners were held back, there can be only one guilty party - the Vietnamese Communists who flagrantly and

6

- Some prisoners *may* - I repeat *may* - have been *kept* behind by our adversaries.

7

[4]

8

sessions. For not withdrawing more quickly and unconditionally, we were harassed by protesters, attacked in the media, criticized in countless Congressional resolutions and ridiculed for our concept of national honor. Never once did we receive any criticism from *any* source of the kind now emerging from this inquiry, that we were not tough enough, about insisting on the return of our prisoners. The pressures we experienced were in the other direction - that we were not making enough concessions, that we should withdraw unilaterally in the expectation that then prisoners would be released by an act of grace of their captors.

9

[v]

some of the many resolutions or votes in 1972 (Appendix B). For example, on July 24, 1972 the Senate passed an amendment asking for the withdrawal of US forces in return for the release of US prisoners. Yet it rejected an amendment requiring a cease-fire during the withdrawal. Without a ceasefire withdrawals would have taken place under military attack; our remaining forces would have been overwhelmed.

During this period, many political leaders, including Senator George McGovern, the Democratic presidential candidate, and 30 US Senators were calling for the unconditional unilateral withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam, without any formal North Vietnamese commitment for the concurrent or even subsequent return of our MIAS and POWs or accounting for the missing in action.

10

Our Administration knew from its secret talks what Hanoi's
real position was: America should set a deadline for withdrawal
-- unilaterally and independent of all other conditions. Then
while American troops were being withdrawn there could be
negotiations about a cease-fire, the replacement of the Saigon
government and the release of our prisoners. In other words,
only when our leverage was in the process of being dismantled,
while the Saigon government was disintegrating in the absence of
a cease-fire, would we be permitted to talk about our prisoners
under conditions of unspeakable chaos.

[y]

11

12

[y]

13

One day an author will write a play about this bizarre
reversal of roles [Mr. Chairman, while it may make good theater, &c.]
it is bad history.

Paris Peace Agreements

Let me now turn to the implementation of the peace
agreements. ¹

The return of POWs and accounting of the MIAs was an integral
part of every American proposal and was always declared as non-
negotiable by us.

[y]

14

The North Vietnamese, in what would turn into a constant pattern, immediately began to violate the agreement. For example, they did not hand over the POW list for Laos as required on January 27. To show our displeasure with Hanoi's failure to give us the list, we decided to delay delivery to them of a confidential Presidential letter on recommending to Congress reconstruction assistance after peace had been established. This letter, which implemented a proposal first made by President Johnson in 1965, noted the Administration's intention to ask Congress for some $3.25 billion for reconstruction in Vietnam.

After the breakthrough of October 8, 1972 I asked Ambassador Bill Sullivan and George Aldrich, the State Department's Deputy Legal Advisor, to join the team. They, together with other experts and members of my staff, negotiated the protocols of implementation with Vietnamese technical teams.

provided the other provisions of the Agreements were implemented.
We delayed the delivery of the letter several days in a
successful effort to force Hanoi to hand over the list of our
POWs in Laos. This they did on February 1, though their list
contained only 10 names, whereas our intelligence agencies
believed a greater number to be missing.

Mr. Chairman, some suggestions have been made that the North
Vietnamese may have withheld some American POWs in an effort to
get this economic aid. I find this reasoning difficult to
understand. First of all, it had been our constant position that
we would never give aid as a form of "ransom" for our prisoners.
Nor did we want the North to be able to portray any such aid as
"reparations" ~~as we repeatedly told them~~ So during the negotiations, the American side had
taken great pains to assure that the two were not linked. That
is why the question of reconstruction aid was handled separately
from the formal Paris Agreements via a private Presidential
message. So Hanoi knew well that we would refuse any linkage of
aid to the return of our POWs..

[y]

Finally, it is curious that Americans would make such an argument when the North Vietnamese have not. As the bipartisan House Select Committee reported in 1976, during all the discussions with the North Vietnamese in 1973, 1974 and 1975, not once did they cite the American failure to provide economic aid as an excuse for their failure to provide a complete accounting for our MIAs. Why should Americans now put forward an alibi for Hanoi which even they did not assert?

[y]

17

great discoveries.

By the last week of February 1973, the North Vietnamese had not yet carried out their obligation to hand over the list of men to be freed on February 27. In violation of the Peace Agreement, they were hinting at tying their release to the freeing of what they called "political prisoners" in South Vietnam. This was a linkage we had explicitly rejected in the negotiations leading up to the Peace Agreement - a concession for which we had struggled through many night sessions. We reacted to the North's stalling by suspending troop withdrawals and mine-clearing operations. The POWs were thereupon released as scheduled.

Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese were violating other provisions of the Agreement, through massive illegal movement of troops and materiel across the DMZ (During March, we registered a number of protests to the North about these violations and

Ho Chi Minh track

Shouldn't this be
"trail"?

18

Much has been made of internal US government documents from this period indicating that US POWs might still be being held in Laos. This was no secret at the time. Every US official was dissatisfied with the lack of information about our MIAs in Laos, and we said so publicly. Our dissatisfaction was based on evidence that many of these men, mostly pilots who had been shot down, had reached the ground alive but they were never returned

19

[y]

to us alive or declared to have died. We also noted that,
statistically, the percentage of the missing accounted for in
Laos was far smaller than in Vietnam. I used these figures in my
February talks in Hanoi. But we did not have evidence that any
of the missing were actually still alive and being held prisoner.
Moreover, it is flatly wrong to suggest that we did not act on
these concerns. We repeatedly and insistently demanded that
North Vietnam provide a better accounting for the missing. We
did so both before and after Secretary Richardson's March 28th
memorandum to me which has been featured in these hearings.
Hanoi ignored our demands. It is the ultimate irony that our
Herculean efforts in 1973 should be twisted twenty years later
into "evidence" that we knew POWs had been left behind.

20

[v]

— A _New York Times_ editorial of April 1, 1973 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 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."

— 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."

Nor did Congress offer support needed to resist Hanoi's violations. At _Appendix D_ is a sample list of Congressional resolutions debated in 1973.

[y]

21

listing all the North's violations and specifically criticizing their failure to provide information on US MIAs. The same day, technical teams began meeting to review compliance with the Agreement, especially the fate of our prisoners, scheduled meeting with Le Duc Tho in the middle of May 1973, President Nixon instructed me to "hit them hard on MIA accounting..."

22

23

Despite all these obstacles, strenuous negotiations resulted
in a joint US-North Vietnamese communique on June 13 which
*accelerated* these existing Vietnamese obligations to release remaining POWs, if any "without delay", to make a full accounting for MIAs throughout Indochina and to facilitate knowledge about the dead. When Hanoi 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, North Vietnam 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.

While we still had no hard evidence that any of the missing
were still alive we emphatically wanted to determine their fate.
In the following months we continued to raise with the North
their violations of the agreement. We made no secret of our
outrage with Hanoi's violations. During 1973, we delivered at
least thirty separate public statements or private messages
protesting Hanoi's violations. In my confirmation hearings for
Secretary of State I told the Senate we considered Hanoi had an
obligation to provide an accounting for the missing throughout
Indochina and that "we are extremely dissatisfied with the
results of that part of the agreement."

24

25

were trapped in the classic nightmare of every statesman -- we
had nothing to back up our tough words but more words.

26

## Conclusion

27

[y]

them, I came to know the great personal anguish they faced. Over the years, no honor has meant more to me than being invited twice as guest of honor by the returned prisoners at their annual "dining-in" at Randolf Airforce Base in San Antonio. When I received the Nobel Peace Prize for my part in ending the Vietnamese war, I donated all of the money to a scholarship fund for the education of children of servicemen killed or missing in Indochina.

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."

[y]

American officials for Vietnamese transgressions. American
prisoners may have been kept in Vietnam. But no-one was left
there by the deliberate or negligent omission of any American

official. For months now his injury has been worsening, and his injury is now almost terminal.

Let us stop torturing ourselves. The United States
government kept faith with those who served their country. If
servicemen were kept by our enemies in violation of solemn
agreements, there is one villain and one villain, only: the cold-
hearted rulers in Hanoi. That is the conclusion your report owes
to our nation, and to the families of those who served and
suffered there. That is the one true way to put this anguishing
issue behind us.

1

September 14, 1992

1:30 pm

DRAFT

SFRC

When the Chairman called me several months ago to ask for my cooperation with this Committee's investigation, I pledged full support. I told him that the Committee would perform an important service if it clarified, once and for all, the fate of America's missing-in-action in Indochina.

Personally, I have no proof either way with respect to this heartrending question. The Vietnamese are certainly capable of a cynical act such as keeping Americans back and lying about it, even though their motive would be obscure. But, if any prisoners were held back, there can be only one guilty party - the Vietnamese Communists who flagrantly and unforgivably would have violated solemn and clear-cut agreements. If any proof of such a betrayal is found by this Committee, all Americans will unite to demand redress.

To achieve the goal described to me by the Chairman, I thought the Committee would focus its primary attention on

2

investigating all reports of sightings of prisoners and their
follow-up and would focus in particular on Hanoi's violations of
the Paris Peace Agreements.

There is nothing unclear or ambiguous about the terms of the
Peace Agreement. Hanoi's obligations on POWs and MIAs were
spelled out for all to see. No one has questioned the obligation
for twenty years. The Vietnamese Communists have never denied
their obligation to return our prisoners and account for the
MIAs. They have simply denied that they had any prisoners and
they have for twenty years failed to provide an adequate
accounting. There is every reason for Congress to condemn the
leaders of North Vietnam for breaching the Paris Peace Accords in
so many ways, including their failure to account for the
discrepancies between their prisoner lists and our own MIA
reports.

But this inquiry seems to be focusing on alleged American
failures rather than on Vietnamese violations. Committee members
have charged that the United States government failed to do all
it could to follow through on the peace accord with respect to
the missing. Committee sources have conveyed the impression that
prisoners were allegedly left behind and according to the media
have even supplied numbers to that effect. There has been talk
of a conspiracy of silence extending through five
administrations.

3

What has happened to this country that a Congressional inquiry would raise doubts as to whether <u>any</u> American official of <u>whatever</u> administration would fail to move heaven and earth to fight for the release of American POWs and for an accounting of the missing? There is no excuse, two decades after the fact, for anyone to imply that the last five Presidents from both Parties, their White House staffs, Secretaries of State and Defense, and career diplomatic and military services either knowingly or negligently failed to do everything they could to identify and recover all of our prisoners and MIAs.

Can anyone seriously believe that any honorable public official would neglect America's servicemen and especially those who suffered so much for their country? How can it be in America's interest to provide an alibi for Hanoi's offenses by devoting most of this investigation to whether we should blame ourselves?

Let me now turn to this Committee's inquiry into the actions of the Administration in which I served. When this inquiry started, I agreed at the Chairman's request to meet with your staff and to set aside a day for that purpose. That meeting was cancelled without explanation. Instead, I received a written request for thousands of documents, again without explanation. As you know, I raised no objection with respect to any document

4

relevant to this POW/MIA inquiry. Next I learned, not from the
Committee but from former associates, that they were summoned to
give day-long sworn depositions, concentrating with 20/20
hindsight twenty years after the event, about never-specified
errors of negotiation or follow-up that supposedly contributed to
the alleged abandonment of prisoners. Their impression was that
they were being encouraged to find and elaborate differences with
the principal negotiator, which was I.

What justifies such grand jury-type adversary procedure?
How can we explain the Committee staff's refusal to give us a
list of the twenty-year old documents they intended to question
me about so that I could prepare for my deposition and my public
testimony here today? Why the refusal to furnish a list of other
witnesses already deposed whose testimony might be relent to my
own deposition?

My associates and I had no more solemn objective than to end
the war that had divided our country on honorable terms, to bring
back our prisoners and to account for our missing. The process
was all the more painful because all of us had many friends on
the other side of the national debate. We went through
exhausting negotiations, impelled by the hope that our effort
would reconcile those who gave priority to peace with those who
gave priority to their concept of honor, recognizing the anguish
of both sides.

5

All of us remember the exaltation on October 8, 1972 after
Le Duc Tho accepted President Nixon's public proposal of January
25 and May 8 [check], 1972, and we knew that the end of the war
was in sight. One of our notetakers, Mary Stifflemayer, insisted
on working for a twenty-hour negotiating session without relief
because she wanted the honor of being present when we culminated
four years of often anguishing efforts.

We would have thought demented anyone who told us that
twenty years later we would be asked to justify ourselves before
a Senate Committee in nitpicking examinations of middle-level
documents, most of which we had forgotten, about the unthinkable
libel that we neglected the very group whose fate was the single
greatest incentive for our efforts. After all, I knew the
anguish of the prisoner and MIA families from personal
experience, having frequently met with them, as Sybil Stockdale
describes in her book. It is all the more remarkable since for
twenty years the POW and MIA provisions of the agreement had
never been contested. For example, the House Select Committee on
Missing Persons in Southeast Asia concluded a fifteen-month study
on Americans missing in action in December 1976, nine years after
the events with some of the following conclusions:

- "The provisions of the Paris Peace Agreement relative to POWs and MIAs and the Protocol on Prisoners and

6

Detainees appear, at first glance and after more
thoughtful consideration, not only adequate but
excellent."

-- "The provisions of the Paris Peace Agreement were well
designed to bring resolution of the POW/MIA problem."

-- "That the Department of State took seriously its
responsibilities to protect the rights of missing,
American citizens, military and civilian, and pursued
its responsibilities seriously is evident in the record
of its efforts."

-- "Short of recommencing the war, there were few
remaining alternatives on the diplomatic level.
North Vietnam was already under total embargo and when
South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia fell to Communist
forces in 1975, South Vietnam and Cambodia where soon
included in the embargo. Other restrictions were
imposed on Laos."

(I am attaching a list of the members)

So what is the smoking gun your staff is pursuing?

Let us start with a few basic facts.

7

What exactly did the United States government know at the time? The Committee is well aware that the United States had no list of confirmed prisoners throughout the war because the Vietnamese Communists, playing with the heartstrings of America, refused to furnish information, except for those few names which trickled out from time to time via peace activists or occasional propaganda broadcasts.

The Peace Agreement was signed in January 23, 1973. According to its provisions, the US government received the first official list of prisoners in Vietnam on January 27, and of prisoners in Laos on February 1. Within a week, certain discrepancies appeared and they continued to increase. On February 11, I presented those discrepancies personally in Hanoi and demanded an explanation. Secretary Rogers made __[#] public statements, President Nixon made __[#] public protests, and I renewed my requests at meetings with Le Duc Tho in May and June, as did other Administration officials with other Vietnamese officials both before and after.

The Committee owes it to the country, and above all to the families of the MIAs, to dispel the misapprehension that every unaccounted for missing person was necessarily a Vietnamese or Laotian captive. Dissatisfied as the Administrations in which I served were with the accounting for the MIAs, no confirmed report

8

of living American prisoners ever crossed my desk. Strenuous
efforts were made to clarify our knowledge, some of which you
will want to review in closed session. No confirmed reports of
live prisoners ever turned up while I was in government and, at
the time, returning prisoners stated that they believed all POWs
had been released (at least in Vietnam).

But if the North Vietnamese and their Laotian guerrilla
allies were holding prisoners they have never acknowledged - a
possibility I have never ruled out - even perfect 20-20 hindsight
does not suggest any measure that was not taken by our government
that could have been taken. The record shows that our
Administration was prepared to use force to resist Hanoi's
violations of the Agreement until the Congress prohibited it.
The Congress then took away other means of leverage - such as
economic aid - as well. It hardly becomes the present Congress
to accuse the 1970's Executive Branch of not doing enough.

The Committee owes the American people a statement of the
simple truth:

- Some prisoners may - I repeat may - have been kept
behind by our adversaries.

9

To suggest otherwise, to pretend that there exists a smoking gun of *American* transgressions, is to play a heartless game.

- with the families of the MIAs, who are entitled 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 failing to stand behind its brave fighting men.

I recognize that Vietnam evoked deep differences about its purpose and its strategy by serious people on all sides. But to try to settle scores at this remove and to tear the scabs of the Vietnam War in such a manner is unconscionable.

## The Political Background of the Peace Negotiations: Pressures for Unilateral Withdrawal

When the Administration in which I served came into office, it found half a million Americans fighting in a region far removed from the United States. The number was still increasing according to a schedule established by our predecessors. Casualties had risen and reached their highest level the year before we entered office. Four years later we had withdrawn 95%

10

We began negotiating in 1969, continuing a process begun in the previous Administration which, however, had never gone beyond procedural discussions. One of the highest priority demands, which we consistently declared to be non-negotiable, was the release of all prisoners *throughout* Indochina, and a full accounting for the missing. During four anguishing years we negotiated to find honorable terms for ending the war, first sporadically on weekends, later in week-long day-and-night sessions. For not withdrawing more quickly and more unconditionally, we were harassed by protesters, attacked in the media, criticized in countless Congressional resolutions and ridiculed for our concept of national honor. Never once did we receive any criticisms from *any* source of the kind now emerging from this inquiry, that we were not tough enough. All the pressures we experienced were in the other direction - that we were not making enough concessions, that we should withdraw unilaterally in the expectation that then prisoners would be released by an act of grace of their captors.

By 1972, there was a steady drumfire of Congressional and public statements urging the immediate withdrawal of our forces; many resolutions proposed a unilateral cut off of funds including to Saigon. I attach a sample at Appendix A. Most were "sense of the Congress" resolutions, which meant they were not binding, but

11

they clearly affected Hanoi's calculations. I am attaching at
**Appendix B** an illustrative list of [put here number] resolutions
introduced in 1972. As one of many flagrant examples, on July
24, 1972 the Senate passed an amendment asking for the withdrawal
of US forces in return for the release of US prisoners. Yet it
rejected an amendment requiring a cease-fire during the
withdrawal. Withdrawals would have taken place under military
pressure; our remaining forces would have become hostages.

During this period, many political leaders, including
Senator George McGovern, the Democratic presidential candidate,
and 30 US Senators were calling for the **unconditional** unilateral
withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam, without any formal
North Vietnamese commitment for the concurrent or even subsequent
return of our MIAS and POWs or accounting for the missing in
action.

Some resolutions passed; others did not. Whether they
passed or not, they were all known to the Vietnamese and
necessarily weakened our negotiating position. At the same time,
members of the American peace movement were spreading the word
that they had been told by the North Vietnamese that setting a
deadline for our withdrawal would create "favorable conditions"
for the release of American prisoners of war.

12

We rejected these proposals because we did not propose to
subject either our prisoners or those serving in Vietnam to such
risks. And the objections from key Senators, Congressmen and
much of the media were vigorous indeed.

We rejected as well the North Vietnamese demand to overthrow
the Saigon government, both for reasons of honor and on practical
grounds. There were 700,000 Saigon troops, close to 500,000
Communist troops (including guerrillas). If Saigon collapsed,
the residual American force would become hostage; the number of
our prisoners would increase exponentially.

13

Hanoi knew very well that we were prepared to set a deadline for withdrawal *provided* there was a cease-fire and a *simultaneous* release of prisoners. Until late in 1972 this position was consistently rejected by Hanoi.

But, in the end, we achieved the terms which we set out to obtain, and which our critics had repeatedly told us were unattainable and provocative, and in the process, improved the conditions for the return of American forces:

- We demanded and obtained express North Vietnamese promises to furnish lists of *all* Americans held *throughout* Indochina, despite initial insistence by Hanoi that it would negotiate only about Vietnamese prisoners in Vietnam.

14

-- We separated the release of our prisoners from the release of what the North Vietnamese called "political prisoners" in the South because we thought this would provide endless pretexts for procrastination.

-- To encourage compliance with these commitments, we held out the inducement, first offered by President Johnson in 1965 and reiterated ever since, of asking Congress to authorize economic aid to the region after peace had been established.

Mr. Chairman, this is the record and your diligent staff will find nothing to contradict it. Yet leaks from this inquiry have been suggesting that those who had refused to abandon America's *Vietnamese* allies supposedly abandoned *American* prisoners and that those who struggled to husband the leverage necessary to bring about the release of American prisoners were allegedly insufficiently attentive to the fates of remaining MIAs. One day an author will write a play about this bizarre

15

reversal of roles. Mr. Chairman, while it may make great
theater, it is poor and cynical history.

Paris Peace Agreements

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

The North Vietnamese, in what would turn into a constant
pattern, 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 Lao
list contained only 10 names, whereas our intelligence believed a

1 Before turning to implementation of the agreement, let me explain the way we went about the negotiations. Until 1972, I conducted private talks, together with a small team from the NSC, all whom have been deposed by the Committee staff. The typical procedure was to leave on a Saturday morning for a French military base from which a French military plane took us to a

[y]

16

much greater number to be missing.

Secretary of State Rogers testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 8, 1973 (and again on February 21) that we did not regard the Laos list as complete and noted that we would continue to press for the fullest information on the some 1300 American MIAs throughout Indochina. When I visited Hanoi for negotiations in mid-February, I raised the POW and MIA issues, presenting the evidence we had with respect to specific discrepancies and asking the Vietnamese to follow up. In particular there were about 80 names that we had reason to 70

private airfield near Paris, where we would arrive around midnight. After spending the night in the apartment of our then military attaché, General Walters, who acted as interpreter and advisor, we met the North Vietnamese negotiators, usually Hanoi Politburo member Le Duc Tho. After negotiating all day - and sometimes briefing the French President Pompidou - we returned to Washington by the reverse procedure of the day before.

After the breakthrough of October 8, 1972 I asked Ambassador Sullivan and George Aldrich, the State Department's Deputy Legal Advisor, to join the team. They, together with other experts and members of my staff, negotiated the protocols of implementation with Vietnamese technical teams.

17

believe were alive when they reached the ground that did not
appear on Hanoi's list. The Vietnamese insisted that all the
prisoners had been released. I covered all this in my memoirs
ten years ago, so that I am surprised that these discrepancies
are now being presented as great discoveries.

By the last week of February 1972, the North Vietnamese
had not yet carried out their obligation to hand over the list of
men to be freed on February 27. In violation of the Peace
Agreement, they were hinting at tying their release to the
freeing of what they called "political prisoners" in South
Vietnam. This was a linkage the negotiations leading up to the
Peace Agreement had explicitly rejected - a concession for which
we had struggled through many night sessions. We reacted to the
North's stalling by suspending troop withdrawals and mine-
clearing operations. The POWs were thereupon released as
scheduled.

18

Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese were violating other provisions of the Agreement, through massive illegal movement of troops and materiel across the DMZ. During March, we registered a number of 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 replies, as we said in a message, as "an insult to our intelligence".

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

The last known POWs were released on March 28. 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...".

19

dissatisfied with the lack of information about our MIAs in Laos, and we said so publicly. But our dissatisfaction was based on evidence that many of these men, mostly pilots who had been shot down, had reached the ground alive but they were never returned to us alive or declared to have died. We also noted that, statistically, the percentage of the missing accounted for in Laos was far, far less than in Vietnam. But we had no evidence at all that any of the missing were actually still alive and being held prisoner. Moreover, it is flatly wrong to suggest that we did not act on these concern. We repeatedly and insistently demanded that North Vietnam provide a better accounting for the missing, but Hanoi ignored our demands. It is the ultimate irony that our Herculean efforts in 1973 should be twisted twenty years later into "evidence" that we knew POWs had been left behind.

During this period, as I have reported in detail in my memoirs, I favored military retaliations against Hanoi's repeated violations. The President felt that on balance it was better to have one more negotiating round. Certainly there was little political support in the US for stronger measures. Most commentators, Congressional and media, opposed any effort to stand up to Hanoi, arguing that the US had no right to retaliate at all against the North's blatant violations. Let me read just two here:

20

— A *New York Times* editorial of April 1, 1973 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 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."

— 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."

Nor did Congress offer support needed to resist Hanoi's violations. At *Appendix D* is a sample list of Congressional resolutions debated in 1973.

On April 20, the US government issued a detailed public statement listing all the North's violations and specifically criticizing their failure to provide information on US MIAs. The same day, technical teams began meeting to review compliance with the Agreement, especially the fate of our prisoners. Before my scheduled meeting with Le Duc Tho in the middle of May 1973, President Nixon instructed me to "hit them hard on MIA

21

accounting..."

Between mid-May and June 1973, I conducted twelve days of talks with the North Vietnamese. I reviewed in detail the North's violations, and pressed the North Vietnamese repeatedly for a better accounting of US personnel missing in Laos. But Hanoi sensed our leverage was rapidly eroding partly as a result of actions taken by the Congress. For example:

- 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.

22

your threats. This reflected a briefing Vietnamese Communist leaders gave to their cadre just prior to the negotiations quoted in my memoirs. They said that President Nixon would "not dare to apply such strong measures as air strikes or bombing attacks in either North or South Vietnam, because the US Congress and the American people will violently object".

Despite all these obstacles, strenuous negotiations resulted in a joint US-North Vietnamese communique on June 13 which accelerated these existing Vietnamese obligations to release any remaining POWs "without delay", to make a full accounting for MIAs and to facilitate knowledge about the dead. When Hanoi 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 violations on September 10 and October 26. We still had no evidence that any of the missing were still alive but we emphatically wanted to determine their fate. It was no secret that the US government was unhappy with Hanoi's violations.

23

Unfortunately, it was also no secret that these efforts to pin Hanoi down amounted to firing empty cannons. In theory, we had three sources of leverage available: bombing the North, offering economic aid to Hanoi, and military and economic aid to Saigon to provide an incentive to seek a peaceful resolution by depriving Hanoi of the hope for military victory. The Congress took all three levers away, denying us both the carrot and the stick.

- On June 29, 1973, a little more than two weeks after the restatement of the Vietnamese obligation regarding prisoners and the missing, the Congress prohibited all military action in, over, and near Indochina, including reconnaissance flights.

- In each of the years that Saigon remained independent, Congress cut aid to it by 50%.

24

Unfortunately, when the Congress eliminated our leverage we were trapped in the classic nightmare of every statesman -- we had nothing to back up our tough words but more words.

In short, the Paris accords contained clear and binding commitments that all prisoners would be accounted for and returned. If the Vietnamese violated these provisions - and on this I have no affirmative evidence - then it was not because of

25

any omission by the US representatives but, if at all, because
we had been stripped of the weapons we might have used to enforce
that commitment. I am proud of what my colleagues and I
accomplished under heartbreakingly difficult circumstances.

Precisely because I am so confident that all your
investigations will support this presentation, I cannot conclude
without returning to the issue of procedural fairness. Your staff
has subjected my associates and myself to what must amount to
over a hundred hours of sworn depositions under threat of perjury
conducted in grand jury-style. It has pored over thousands of low
and middle-level documents. What started out as an investigation
into the fate of 1300 MIA's has turned into an attempt to
reconstruct all the bureaucratic details of a negotiation
extending over four years and a follow-up of even longer
duration.

The Congress, of course, has the duty of holding public
servants accountable for the legality and wisdom of their
actions. But I respectfully submit that the Congress ought to
exercise a decent restraint in performing this function, when it
is examining events that occurred as long as 20 years ago.

There must have been hundreds of hours of negotiation with
the Vietnamese. Each negotiation required an equal amount of time
in preparation. Each preparation was embedded in hours of

26

collateral explorations. And all of it occurred in the context of
public, diplomatic, and political pressures that are almost
impossible to reconstruct today and that your committee has made
no effort to reconstruct.

No participant in the Vietnam negotiations of 1969 to 1972
can possibly recall exactly how he reacted to a particular
memorandum, or the memorandum itself or the many factors involved
at the time in deciding on one course of action instead of
another. No Congressional committee functioning in 1992 can
possibly put its mind back 20 years to reconstruct the events of
1972-75 as they appeared to the participants at the time. No
serious historian would attempt this in less than the number of
years than this Committee has had months available.

To examine honorable public servants under penalty of
perjury 20 years after an event, not about basic decisions but
almost every bureaucratic detail, makes government service far
too risky to attract citizens of the necessary quality. Will
henceforth every document have to be prepared with an eye to how
it may appear out of context 20 years later? Or will records be
kept at all? Will every negotiator have to worry which staff
member may be pitted against him?

I hope that in the future the Congress will draw a
distinction between the investigation of wrongdoing, for which no

27

hold should be barred, and fishing expeditions into alleged
errors of judgment two decades earlier.

When I received the Nobel Peace Prize for my part in 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.

28

Mr. Chairman, you have stated that this inquiry was designed to heal the wounds of Vietnam. This cannot be done by blaming Americans for Vietnamese transgressions. American prisoners may have been kept in Vietnam. None was left there by any American official. Let us stop torturing ourselves. The United States government kept faith with those who served their country. If servicemen were kept by our enemies in violation of solemn agreements, there is one villain and one villain only: the cold-hearted rulers in Hanoi. That is the acknowledgement your report