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September 8, 1992

1:30 am

DRAFT

SFRC

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee:

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

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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. For 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. Members of the
American negotiating team have been subjected to day-long sworn
depositions concentrating with 20/20 hindsight after twenty years
after the event almost to discover never specified errors of negotiation or follow-up
that supposedly contributed to the alleged abandonment of

09-11-92 03:48PM

TO KAI

P002

TO: HAK
FROM: LPB✓ 9/11
SUBJECT: POW/MIA Testimony

Sept. 11 1992

1. You might enjoy the attached piece on Kerry's activities in 1971.

2. Bellinger reports that the NSC is not aware of any attempt by the committee to interview anybody from the Carter years. However, I understand from Jack Marsh(Ford's lawyer) that the Committee approached all former Presidents including Carter(who has refused to do a deposition).

3. I have reviewed the Report of the House Select Committee on POWs/MIAS (Montgomery committee). You have a copy in this pouch. There is some very good stuff which I think should be worked into your statement. It is remarkable that concerning the period of your tenure, congress has already conducted a 15 month inquiry into the same issues. Curiously, there has been no mention that Kerry's committee has taken that report into account. A few samples from it:

On the adequacy of the negotiations

"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" (pg. 112)

"The provisions of the Paris Peace Agreement were well designed to bring resolution of the POW/MIA problem. (pg 239)

"During the period February 1973 through April 1975 the Department of State made significant efforts to obtain from the Vietnamese and Lao an accounting for the missing and return of the dead" (pg 239)

"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." (pg 130)

"Short of recommencing the war, there were few remaining alternatives on the diplomatic level. North Vietnam was already under a total embargo and when South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia fell to Communist forces in 1975, South Vietnam and Cambodia were soon included in the embargo. Other restrictions were imposed on Laos." (pg 130)

"The Department of State also cooperated with both Houses of Congress to keep them appraised of their efforts (on POWs/MIAS). (pg 129)

09-11-92 03:48PM

TO KAI

P003

## On Laos

The report details (pages 121-125) extensive efforts to get an adequate accounting from the Lao. It notes that congress was regularly briefed by the executive branch on their efforts and on the unsatisfactory nature of Laotian replies.

"Throughout the period 1973-75 the Department of State exerted considerable effort through formal, diplomatic channels to obtain information on Americans missing in Laos." The report also notes that we raised the issue with the Soviets, the Australians and the ICRC. (pg125)

## On Whether there were Live POWS In Indochina

Based on the committee's 15 month review, "those who believed Americans were still held captive in Indochina could produce no evidence to substantiate their belief" (pg 43)

"the results of the investigations and information gathered during its 15 month tenure have led this committee to the belief that no Americans are still being held alive as prisoners in Indochina..." (pg 238)

Some of this should be quoted directly in your testimony, I think.

## Woodcock Commission

We have also heard that Len Woodcock chaired a Presidential Commission which looked into POW/MIA reports in 1977. He reported apparently reached the same conclusion as the Montgomery Committee. Rosemary is trying to find a copy of the Woodcock report this weekend. We may want to quote from it also, especially if it examined diplomatic efforts during the 1973-75 period.

It may also be an idea to contact Len after we know more.

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prisoners.

The men and women who dedicated themselves so indefatigably to extricate America from the Vietnam quagmire under near civil war conditions at home, to bring back our prisoners, and to account for every last one of our missing do not deserve such a label.

What has happened to this country that a Congressional inquiry would raise doubts as to whether *any* American official of whatever administration would fail to move heaven and earth to fight for the release of American POWs for the accounting of the missing? There is no excuse, two decades after the fact, for anyone Congress 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? 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 us start with a few basic facts. The implication that so much for this country.

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prisoners were left behind suggests that senior officials
knowingly or negligently permitted the Vietnamese secretly to
hold prisoners they claimed they did not hold.

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 with such innuendoes it truly
unconscionable.

What exactly *did* the United States government know at the
time? The Committee is well aware that the United States had no
*confirmed* list of 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 + they continued to increase + there were about 80 names of men that we had reason to believe were alive when they reached the ground that did not appear on Hanoi's list. On February 11, I presented those names personally in Hanoi and demanded an explanation. The reply was evasive. After all our prisoners were returned and fuller information was available, the lack of adequate accounting

for Laos became especially glaring. I renewed my protests at meetings with Le Duc Tho in May and June, as did other Administration officials both before and after.

Throughout the subsequent months, every opportunity was taken to present our concern to Hanoi. Indeed, 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 Executive Branch of not doing enough.

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 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). The missing men could have died or been killed before being captured by the security forces. Or, they could have died or been killed after capture under circumstances the North Vietnamese have never been willing

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to admit

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, especially in the light of explicit Congressional prohibitions and restrictions.

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.

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

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

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that their leaders capped a cruel and divisive war by
failing to stand behind its brave fighting men.

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

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%
of the troops and reduced casualties by 98%.

We began negotiating in 1969, while we constantly always 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

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of national honor. Never once did we receive any of the type of
criticisms from any source that we were not tough enough that we
now emerging from this inquiry. All the pressures we experienced
were in the other direction - that we were not making enough
concessions, that we should withdraw unilaterally for then our
prisoners would be released automatically. By an act of grace
of their capture.

By 1972, there was a steady drumfire of Congressional and public statements urging the unilateral withdrawal of our forces; many proposed a unilateral withdrawal including I. I attach a sample at Appendix A. 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.

During 1972 a cascade of resolutions was introduced in the
NOP Congress urging unilateral withdrawal. Most were "sense of the
Congress" resolutions, which meant they were not binding, but
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 entire Senate on the recommendation of this
Committee 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.

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. (These activists
never asked the US government for its views on the subject...
Their conduct made it clear that they considered the US
government less credible than the enemy that was killing
Americans and holding them prisoner.)

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: that 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

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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, we would then be invited to talk about our prisoners under conditions of unspeakable chaos.

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 all indeed正确.

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.

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. This position Hanoi consistently rejected by Hanai.

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:

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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.

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 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 of asking Congress to authorize economic aid to the region after peace had been established.

in 1965 + negotiated
well nine

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

## Paris Peace Agreements

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

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

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The Paris Agreements were signed on January 27th. 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 solemnly assured at a press conference on January 24, we had been told that there were no American POWs held in Cambodia and that those held in Laos 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

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 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.

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.

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list contained only 10 names, whereas our intelligence had listed
a much greater number as missing.

Secretary of State Rogers testified before this Committee on
February 8, (and again on February 21) that we did not regard the
Laos list as complete and noted 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. They were evasive. I covered 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 White House issued a statement
reiterating that under the terms of the Agreement the release of
American prisoners was conditional. The POWs were thereupon

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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. 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 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.

Uncertainty Remains After March POW Releases; US Leverage Erodes

The last known POWs were released on March 28. In his

Insert before first full para on page 16

Much has been made of internal U.S. government documents from this period indicating that U.S. POWs might still be being held in Laos. This was no secret at the time. Every U.S. official was dissatisfied with the lack of information about our missing in action 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 concerns. 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 one who campaigns efforts in 1973 should be twisted twenty years later into "evidence" that we knew POW's had been left behind.

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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...".

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:

- 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

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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, ~~as well as of media comments~~ A couple of examples from the Spring of 1973 illustrate my point:

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.

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

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

On April 20, the US government issued a detailed public statement listing all the North's violations and specifically

¹ LPB: make sure it is included

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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
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. In response to my
presentations, Le Duc Tho disdainfully read me editorials from
the American press and speeches from the Congressional Record.
detailing the domestic US debate over whether our government had
the authority to resume military action. His unstated message
was clear: I understand what you are saying but I also know that
you have no way to back up your threats.

The mood of our Vietnamese opposite numbers is shown in 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".

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On June 29, 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 August 1973 it became clear that Congress would not approve economic aid to North Vietnam.

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

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.

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.

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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.

Unfortunately, the Congress, in elimination of our leverage, was 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 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 raising an 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. It is undoubted in my mind that I will be tried by a jury of my choice.

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has poured 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 undetermined length.

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, especially when it is examining events that occurred as long as 20 years ago. No participant in the Vietnam negotiations of 1969 to 1972 can possibly recall exactly how he reacted to a particular memorandum, on 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. Yet this is exactly what your committee has been doing, given the number of years than this committee has had to work with, and the limited availability of

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 collateral explorations. And all of it requires the context of public, diplomatic, and political pressures that are almost impossibly to reconstruct without your committee as made no effort to reconstruct.

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-- 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.

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.

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

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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
America for Vietnamese transgressions. American prisoners may
have been kept in Vietnam. None was left there to 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 owes to our nation,
and
to the families of those who served and suffered there as well.

SEP 08 '92 10:49 KISSINGER ASSOC

September 8, 1992

1:30 am

DRAFT

SFRC

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

SEP 08 '92 10:50 KISSINGER ASSOC

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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, according to the media and have even supplied numbers to that effect. Members of the American negotiating team have been subjected to day-long sworn depositions concentrating with 20/20 hindsight after twenty years to discover never specified errors of negotiation or follow-up that supposedly contributed to the alleged abandonment of

SEP 08 '92 10:51 KISSINGER ASSOC

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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 vocal indeed.

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. This position Hanoi consistently rejected.

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 in

P.3

P.12

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

## Paris Peace Agreements

SEP 08 '92 11:03 KISSINGER ASSOC

SEP 08 '92 13:43

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. In response to my
presentations, Le Duc Tho disdainfully read me editorials from
the American press and speeches from the Congressional Record
detailing the domestic US debate over whether our government had
the authority to resume military action. His unstated message
was clear: I understand what you are saying but I also know that
you have no way to back up your threats.

The mood of our Vietnamese opposite numbers is shown in a
briefing Vietnamese Communist leaders gave to their cadre just
prior to the negotiations. 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".

-- On June 29, a little more than two weeks after the

SEP 08 '92 11:04 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.2

[Y]

21

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

P.3

[Y]

22

to 1972 can possibly recall, exactly how he reacted to a
particular memorandum, ~~of 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. Yet this is exactly
what your Committee has been doing.

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
collateral explorations. And all of it requires the context of
public, diplomatic, and political pressures.

~~Working~~ Bureaucratic documents are not written to be examined by lawyers 20 years later. Diplomatic documents have a different purpose than to be studied for technical flaws 20 years hence by lawyers with perfect 20/20 hindsight, and with no training in diplomacy or high-level government. To examine honorable public servants under penalty of perjury 20 years after an event, not about basic decisions but every bureaucratic detail, makes government service far too risky. Will henceforth every document have to be prepared to see how it appears out of context 20 years later? Or, more likely, will records be kept at all?

For the second time this year, a Senate Committee under your

SEP. 08 '92 11:05 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.4

[4]

23

chairmanship has overwhelmed [me] with documentary requests impossible to fulfil without legal assistance, and unrelated to any specific wrongdoing. In neither case has the fishing expedition produced any evidence; indeed, it was impossible to tell what exactly was being sought. But, to me the cost imposed by this committee has been tens of thousands of dollars.

I hope that in the future this committee will draw a distinction between the investigation of wrongdoing, for which no hold should be barred, and fishing expeditions that are both demeaning and burdensome.

But precisely because I am so confident that all your investigations will support this presentation, I cannot conclude without raising an issue of procedural fairness. Your staff has subjected my associates and myself to what must amount to over hundred hours of sworn depositions under threat of perjury. It has poured 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 undetermined length.

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

SEP-08-1992 11:49

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042 P.02

But this inquiry seems to be focusing rather than on
Vietnamese violations on alleged American failures. Committee
members have charged that the US 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 have even supplied
numbers to that effect. Members of the American negotiating team
have been subjected to day-long sworn depositions concentrating
with 20/20 hindsight after twenty years to discover never
specified errors of negotiation or follow-up that supposedly
contributed to the alleged abandonment of prisoners.

SEP-08-1992 11:50

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042 P.03

The men and women who dedicated themselves so indefatigably to extricate America from the Vietnam quagmire under near civil war conditions at home, to bring back our prisoners and to account for every last one of our missing do not deserve such a label.

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 for the accounting of the missing? There is no excuse, two decades after the fact, for Congress 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.

Let us start with a few basic facts. The implication that prisoners were left behind suggests that senior officials

SEP-08-1992 11:50

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042 P.04

Vietnam evoked deep differences about its purpose and its
strategy by various people on all sides. But to try to settle
scores at this *remove* with such innuendoes it truly
unconscionable.

What exactly *did* the United States government know? The Committee is well aware that the United States had no list of 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.

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 - there were about 80 names of men that we had reason to believe were alive when they reached the ground that did not appear on Hanoi's list. On February 11 I presented those names personally in Hanoi and demanded an explanation. The reply was evasive. After all our prisoners were returned and fuller information was available, the lack of adequate accounting for Laos became especially glaring. I renewed my protests at

SEP-08-1992 11:51

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042 P.05

meetings with the Le Duc Tho in May and June, as did other
Administration officials both before and after.

Throughout the subsequent months, every opportunity was taken
to present our concern to Hanoi. Indeed 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 has already becomes the present Congress to accuse the
Executive Branch of not doing enough.

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 necessarily was a Vietnamese or
Laotian captive. Dissatisfied as the Administrations in which I
served were with the accounting for the MIAs, no confirmed report
of living American prisoners ever crossed my desk. Stronuous
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). The missing men could
have died or been killed before being captured by the security
forces. Or they could have died or been killed after capture
under circumstances the North Vietnamese have never been willing
to admit.

SEP-08-1992 11:51

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042 P.06

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

SEP-08-1992 11:52

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042 P.07

We began negotiating in 1969. The highest priority demand, always declared to be non-negotiable, was the release of all prisoners throughout Indochina and a full accounting for the missing. During the 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 of the type of

SEP-08-1992 11:52

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042

criticisms from any source that we were not tough enough now
emerging from this inquiry. All the pressures we experienced
were in the other direction, that we were not making enough
concessions, that we should withdraw unilaterally for their
prisoners would be released automatically.

By 1972, there was a steady drumfire of Congressional and
public statements urging the unilateral withdrawal of our forces.
I attach a sample at Appendix A. 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.

During 1972 a cascade of resolutions was introduced in the
Congress urging unilateral withdrawal. Most were "sense of the
Congress" resolutions, which meant they were not binding, but
they clearly affected Hanoi's 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 entire Senate on the recommendation of this
Committee 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

SEP-08-1992 11:53

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042 P.09

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. (These activists never asked the US government for its views on the subject.) Their conduct made it clear that they considered the US government less credible than the enemy that was killing Americans and holding them prisoner.)

Our Administration knew from its secret talks what Hanoi's real position was: that 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

SEP-08-1992 11:53

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042

C41

10

We rejected as well the North Vietnamese demand to overthrow the Saigon government, both for reasons of honor and on practical grounds. There where 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.

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. This position Hanoi consistently rejected.

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.

SEP-08-1992 11:54

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042

11

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

-- We obtained a commitment to return the *prisoners* listed 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 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 of asking Congress to authorize economic aid to the region after peace had been established.

SEP-08-1992 11:54

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042

12

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 MTAs. On one day an author will write a play about this bizarre reversal of roles. Mr. Chairman, while if may make great theater, it is lousy and cynical history.

## Paris Peace Agreements

SEP-08-1992 11:55

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042

13

The Paris Agreements were signed on January 23rd. 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 indicated at a press conference on January 24, we had been told that there were no American POWs held in Cambodia and that those held in Laos would be returned to us in Hanoi.

SEP-08-1992 11:55

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042 P.14

Secretary of State Rogers testified before this Committee on
February 8 (and again on February 21) that we did not regard the
Laos list as complete and noted 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. They were evasive. I covered 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 ~~was delaying~~ 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 White House issued a statement
reiterating that under the terms of the Agreement the release of
American prisoners was unconditional. The POWs were thereupon

SEP-08-1992 11:56 FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042 P.16

P.5

15

Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese were violating the other provisions of the Agreement, in particular 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 disingenuously, responded that they were innocent of all charges. We rejected their replies, as we said in a message, as "an insult to our intelligence".

SEP-08-1992 11:57

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042 P.17

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 against the North's blatant violations by the US had no right to retaliate at all. Let me read just two here:

SEP-08-1992 11:57

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042

17

Nor did Congress offer support needed to resist Hanoi's violations. At Appendix D is a sample list of Congressional resolutions debated in 1973, as well as of media comments. A couple of examples from the Spring of 1973 illustrate my point:

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

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

On 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

TOTAL P. 18

SEP-08-1992 12:18

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042 P.02

18

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 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 ~~missing~~ Personnel in Laos. But Hanoi sensed our leverage was rapidly eroding. In response to my presentations, Le Duc Tho disdainfully read me editorials from the American press and speeches from the Congressional Record detailing the domestic US debate over whether our government had the authority to resume military action. His unstated message was clear: I understand what you are saying but I also know that you have no way to back up your threats.

The mood of our Vietnamese opposition is shown in a
✓ briefing Vietnamese Communist leaders gave to their cadre just
prior to the negotiations. 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

SEP-08-1992 12:18

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042 P.03

19

Despite all these obstacles strenuous negotiations resulted
in a joint US-North Vietnamese communique on June 13 which
specifically reiterated the North's obligation to release any
remaining POWs "without delay" and to make a full accounting for
MIAs. When the North 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.

But Mr. Chairman, I must stress that these efforts to pin
Hanoi down on our MIAs 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, a little more than two weeks after the
restatement of the Vietnamese obligation regarding
prisoners and missing, the Congress prohibited all

SEP-08-1992 12:19

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042 P.04

20

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

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

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

-- 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.

SEP-08-1992 12:19

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042 P.05

But, precisely because I am so confident that all your investigations will support this presentation, I cannot conclude without raising an issue of procedural fairness. Your staff has subjected my associates and myself to what must amount to over a hundred hours of SWAPN depositions under threat of perjury. It has poured over thousands of low and middle-level documents. What started out as an investigation of the fate of 1300 MIA's has turned into an attempt to reconstruct all the bureaucratic

SEP-08-1992 12:20

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042 P.06

22

details of a negotiation extending over four years and a follow-
up of undetermined length.

Congress, of course, has the duty of holding public servants
accountable for the legality and wisdom of their actions. But I
respectfully submit that Congress ought to exercise a decent
restraint in performing this function, especially when it is
examining events that occurred as long as 20 years ago. No
participant in the Vietnam negotiations of 1969 to 1972 can
possibly recall exactly how he reacted to a particular
memorandum, 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. But this is exactly what your
Committee has been doing.

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
collateral explorations. And all of it requires the context of
public diplomatic and political pressures.

Bureaucratic documents are not written to be examined by
lawyers 20 years later. Diplomatic documents have different
purposes than to be studied for technical flaws 20 years later by

SEP-08-1992 12:20

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042 P.07

lawyer with perfect 20/20 hindsight and no training in diplomacy
or high-level government. To examine honorable public servants
under penalty of prying 20 years after an event not about basic
decisions but every bureaucratic detail makes government service
far too risky. Will henceforth every document have to be prepared
to see how it appears out of context 20 years later? Or, more
likely, will records be kept at all?

For the second time this year, a Senate Committee under your
chairmanship has overseen, with documentary requests impossible
to fulfil without legal assistance and unrelated to any specific
wrongdoing. In neither case has the fishing expedition produced
any evidence; indeed, it was impossible to tell what exactly was
being sought. But the cost to me has been tens of thousands of
dollars imposed by this committee.

I hope that in the future this committee will draw a
distinction between the investigation of wrongdoing for which no
hold should be barred and fishing expeditions that are both
demeaning and burdensome.

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

SEP-08-1992 12:21

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042 P.08

24

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

"...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

SEP-08-1992 12:21

FROM KISSINGER CONSULTING

TO

759 0042 P.09

Mr. Chairman, you stated that this inquiry was designed to heal the wound of Vietnam. This cannot be done by blaming America for Vietnamese transgressions. American prisoners may have been kept in Vietnam. None were left there. 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 owes to our nation and to the families of those who served and suffered there.

TOTAL P.09

SEP 08 '92 06:33 KISSINGER ASSOC

P. 1, 1

1

September 2, 1992

11:45 am

DRAFT

SFRC

To achieve the goal described to me by the Chairman, I thought the Committee would investigate all reports of sightings

SEP 08 '92 06:34 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.2

[Y]

to extricate America from the Vietnam quagmire, to bring back our
prisoners and account for every last one of our missing do not
deserve such a libel.

What has happened to this country that for months a Congressional inquiry allows itself to obscure the obvious: that any American official of whatever administration would move heaven and earth to fight for the release of American POWs for an amount that is not enough? There is no excuse, two decades after the fact, for Congress 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 in their power to identify and recover all of our prisoners and MIAs.

Can anyone seriously believe that such a group would neglect America's servicemen? How can it be in America's interest to provide an alibi for Hanoi's offenses if those who play the game are not serious about politics with a national tragedy understanding what they are doing?

Let us start with a few basic facts. The implication that prisoners were left behind suggests that senior officials knowingly or negligently permitted the Vietnamese secretly to hold prisoners which they have never acknowledged.

What exactly did the United States government know about the POWs?

SEP 08 '92 06:35 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.3

[4]

4

Committee is well aware that the United States had no list of prisoners throughout the war because the Vietnamese Communists, playing with the heartstrings of America, refused to furnish information, except a few names permitted to trickle out from time to time via peace activists, visiting Hanoi and through occasional propaganda broadcasts. The Peace Agreement was signed in January 23, 1973. We received the list of our prisoners in Vietnam on January 27 and of prisoners in Laos on February 1. This was the first opportunity to check Communist accounting against our records. Within a week, certain discrepancies appeared - about 80 names of men that we had reason to believe were alive when they reached the ground were not on Hanoi's list. On February 11 I demanded an explanation. The reply was that they appeared to have presented those names personally in Hanoi and received an evasive reply. After all our prisoners were returned and fuller information was available, those numbers were refined. The lack of adequate accounting for Laos became especially glaring. I renewed my请求 at a meeting with the Delegation in May and June. The following are the subsequent months.

Every opportunity was taken to present our concern to Hanoi. We were prepared to use force to resist Hanoi's violations of the agreement until the Congress prohibited it, and took away other means of leverage as well. It does not become the Congress to accuse the Executive Branch of not doing enough.

The Committee owes it to the country, and above all to the families of the MIAs, to dispel the misapprehension that its sources have contributed, by which every unaccounted for missing

a list of the Administration officials who will be before you after.

person is turned into a Vietnamese captive. This cannot be true
Dissatisfied as the Administrations in which I served were with
the accounting for the MIAs, no confirmed report 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 five prisoners ever turned up while
I was in government. The missing men could have died or been
killed before being captured by the security forces, in which
event they would never have been put on the lists. Or they could
have died or been killed after capture under circumstances the
North Vietnamese have never been willing to admit.

But even if the North Vietnamese and their Laotian guerrilla
allies were holding prisoners they have never acknowledged - a
possibility if we are to be told and - even perfect 20-20 hindsight
question on which I am openminded
does not suggest any measure that was not taken by our government
that could have been taken, especially in the light of explicit
Congressional prohibitions and restrictions.

- No prisoners were left behind by the delinquent act
  or any of American officers
  and at the time returning prisoners stated that
  they believed all POW's had been released (Alvin A. Levenson)
  (Vietnam)

SEP 08 '92 06:37 KISSINGER ASSOC

P. 6'

[y]

For not withdrawing more quickly + many unilaterally at once
sporadically on weekends, later in week-long day-and-night
sessions, 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
of the criticisms that we were not making enough concessions.
All the pressures we experienced were in the other direction, that we
were not making enough concessions - even that if we withdrew
to unilaterally for a short time.
our prisoners would be released automatically.

### Pressure for unilateral withdrawal

The intense pressure was fuelled by the clamor for
unilateral American withdrawals. By 1972, there was a steady
drumfire of Congressional and public statements urging the
unilateral withdrawal of our forces. I attach a sample at
Appendix A. 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
even any enforceable North Vietnamese commitment for the concurrent or
subsequent return of our POWs.
follow automatically

SEP 02 '92 11:58 212-7739-960-4

introduced in 1972. As one of many flagrant examples, on July 24, 1972 the entire Senate on the recommendation of this Committee 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 pressure; our remaining forces would have become hostages.

Some resolutions passed; others did not. Whether they were all affected our negotiating passed or not, they necessarily made position as is illustrated by the following exchange with the chief North Vietnamese negotiator, Le Duc Tho, on May 2, 1972:

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

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

LE DUC THO: I would like to give you the evidence. It is an American source, not our source. Senator Fulbright said on April 8 that the acts of the liberation forces in South Vietnam are in direct response to your sabotage of the Paris

SEP 08 '92 06:38 KISSINGER ASSOC

P. 9

[4]

10

We rejected these proposals because we did not think it was possible to end the war without further bloodshed and without benefit to the North. This was rejected to loud protests from key Senators, Members of Congress and the media. It was also rejected by the North.

We rejected as well the overthrow of 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.

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.

Despite initial resistance by Hanoi, the North would not accept only about 1/3 of Saigon as prisoner.

We demanded and obtained express North Vietnamese promises to furnish lists of all Americans held in Indochina and to return the listed prisoners in phased installments coordinated with

["SEP 08 '92 06:39 KISSINGER ASSOC", "P. 10", "[4]", "11", "simultaneous withdrawals of our forces from South Vietnam. We also 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 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 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.", "Something else: This is the record of a hearing that Mr. Chairman, the measure of which this inquiry is leading to, has failed to show that those who had refused to abandon America's Vietnamese", "allies are now being asked to explain why they supposedly abandoned their American prisoners and those who struggled to husband the leverage necessary to bring about the release of American prisoners are being allowed to have been insufficiently attentive to their fates. Some stay an author will write a play about this before it may make great theater. Mr. Chairman, while it may make great theater, it is lousy & yawnful & yawnful & yawn

SEP 08 '92 06:46 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.1 F.3

[y]

13

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 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 leads and follow-up.

SEP 08 '92 06:47 KISSINGER ASSOC
SEP 02 '92 13:06 212-759-0042

FF.2

Secretary of State Rogers testified before this Committee on
February 8 (and again on February 21) that we did not regard the
Laos list as complete and noted we would continue to press for
the fullest information on the some 1300 American MIAs 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. They were evasive. I covered this
in my memoirs ten years ago, so that I am surprised that these
discrepancies are now being presented as great discoveries.

carried out their obligation to hand over the list of men to be freed on February 27, and in violation of the Peace Agreement, was hinting at tying their release to the freeing of what they called "political prisoners" in South Vietnam. This was a linkage the Peace Agreement 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 White House issued a tough statement reiterating that under the terms of the Agreement the release of American prisoners was unconditional. The POWs were thereupon released as scheduled.

SEP 08 '92 06:52 KISSINGER ASSOC

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15

Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese were violating the other provisions of the Agreement, in particular through massive illegal movement of troops and materiel south 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".

Uncertainty Remains After March POW Releases: US Leverage Erodes

SEP 08 '92 06:53 KISSINGER ASSOC

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17

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 as well as of media comment. A couple of examples from the
Spring of 1973 illustrate my point:

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

18

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 Johnson instructed me to "hit them hard on MIA 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, including specifically the MIAs. But Hanoi sensed our leverage was rapidly eroding. In response to my presentations, Le Duc Tho disdainfully read me editorials from the American press and speeches from the Congressional Record detailing the domestic US debate over whether our government had the authority to resume military action. His unstated message was clear: I understand what you are saying but I also know that you have no way to back up your threats.

Nevertheless, strenuous negotiations resulted in a joint US-North Vietnamese communique on June 13 which specifically reiterated the North's obligation to release any remaining POWs "without delay" and to make a full accounting for MIAs. When the North 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

SEP 08 '92 06:54 KISSINGER ASSOC

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19

But Mr. Chairman, I must stress that these efforts to pin Hanoi down on our MIAs amounted to firing empty cannons. We had no means to force compliance with the Paris Agreement. The Congress had denied us both the carrot and the stick.

No P

In theory we had three sources of leverage available: bombing the North, aid to Hanoi, and aid to Saigon to provide an incentive to seek a peaceful resolution by depriving Hanoi of the hope for military victory. The Congress took all three levers away denying us both the carrot and the stick.

On June 29, a little more than two weeks after the conclusion of the most recent Vietnamese obligation to release our prisoners, the Congress prohibited all military action in, over and near Indochina, including reconnaissance flights.

SEP 08 '92 06:55 KISSINGER ASSOC

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20

It/they 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.

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 implement 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.

WC&P

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[4]

September 4, 1992

Insert for Dr. Kissinger's statement
Page 12

Mr. Chairman, the Committee's inquiry also raises an important issue of procedural fairness to the public-spirited citizens who served the government in key foreign policy and national security positions for part or all of their professional careers. They have to make tough decisions every day, based on the information and bargaining tools they have available at the time. Their task is to influence the future behavior of other nations -- to make history, rather than review history after it has happened.

Congress of course has the duty of holding these public servants accountable for the legality and wisdom of their actions. But I respectfully submit that Congress ought to exercise a decent restraint in performing this function, especially when it is examining events that occurred as long as 20 years ago. No participant in the Vietnam negotiations of 1969 to 1972 can possibly recall exactly how he reacted to a particular memorandum, 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 1972-1975 as they appeared to the participants at the time. After all, documents as old as 1975 may be misleading, but since the documents show that this clearly shows your committee as being wrong.

SEP 08 '92 06:51 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.7

-- to the wives and families of the MIAs with whom I met on a number of occasions and who 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 with the NSC they would help end our country's divisions by working on an agreement of which they could be proud;

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

1

September 2, 1992

11:45 am

DRAFT

SFRC

[y]

2

There is less justification for the turn this inquiry seems to be taking, focusing not on Vietnamese violations but on alleged American failures. Committee members have expressed their surprise that the government did not follow through on the peace accord with respect to the missing. Committee sources have mentioned numbers of prisoners left behind. Members of the American negotiating team have been subjected to day-long depositions concentrating with 20/20 hindsight after twenty years on alleged errors that contributed to the abandonment of prisoners.

[y]

3

What has happened to this country that for months a
Congressional inquiry allows itself to obscure the obvious: that
any American official of whatever administration would move
heaven and earth to fight for the release of American POWs.
There is no excuse, two decades after the fact, for Congress 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 in their power to identify and recover
all of our prisoners and MIAs.

Can anyone seriously believe that such a group would neglect
America's servicemen? How can it be in America's interest to
provide an alibi for Hanoi's offenses? Do those who play
politics with a national tragedy understand what they are doing?

Yet what exactly _did_ the United States government know? The

4

Committee is well aware that the United States had no list of
prisoners throughout the war because the Vietnamese Communists,
playing with the heartstrings of America, refused to furnish
information, except a few names permitted to trickle out from
time to time via peace activists visiting Hanoi and through
occasional propaganda broadcasts. The Peace Agreement was signed
in January 23, 1973. We received the list of our prisoners in
Vietnam on January 27 and of prisoners in Laos on February 1. It
was the first opportunity to check Communist accounting against
ours. Within a week, certain discrepancies appeared - about 80
names of men that we had reason to believe were alive when they
reached the ground were not on Hanoi's list. On February 11 I
presented those names personally in Hanoi and received an evasive
reply. After all our prisoners were returned and fuller
information was available, these numbers were refined. The lack
of adequate accounting for Laos became especially glaring.

Every opportunity was taken to present our concern to Hanoi.
We were prepared to use force to resist Hanoi's violations of the
agreement until the Congress prohibited it and took away other
means of leverage as well. It does not become the Congress to
accuse the Executive Branch of not doing enough.

The Committee owes it to the country, and above all to the
families of the MIAs, to dispel the misapprehension, to which its
sources have contributed, by which every unaccounted for missing

[y]

5

person is turned into a Vietnamese captive. This cannot be true.
Dissatisfied as the Administrations in which I served were with
the accounting for the MIAs, no confirmed report 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 live prisoners ever turned up while
I was in government. The missing men could have died or been
killed before being captured by the security forces, in which
event they would never have been put on the lists. Or they could
have died or been killed after capture under circumstances the
North Vietnamese have never been willing to admit.

But even if the North Vietnamese and their Laotian guerrilla
allies were holding prisoners they have never acknowledged - a
question on which I am openminded - even perfect 20-20 hindsight
does not suggest any measure that was not taken by our government
that could have been taken, especially in the light of explicit
Congressional prohibitions and restrictions.

- Some prisoners may - I repeat may - have been kept
behind.

- No prisoners were left behind.

6

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

- 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.

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

## The Political Backdrop of the Peace Negotiations

During those four anguishing years we negotiated, first

sporadically on weekends, later in week-long day-and-night
sessions, 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 now emerging from Committee sources and leaks. All
the pressures we experienced were in the other direction, that we
were not making enough concessions - even that if we withdrew
unilaterally, our prisoners would be released automatically.

Pressure for Unilateral Withdrawal

The intense pressure was fuelled by the clamor for
unilateral American withdrawals. By 1972, there was a steady
drumfire of Congressional and public statements urging the
unilateral withdrawal of our forces. I attach a sample at
**Appendix A.** 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 enforceable North Vietnamese commitment for the concurrent or
subsequent return of our MIAS and POWs.

During 1972 a cascade of resolutions was introduced in the
Congress urging unilateral withdrawal. Most were "sense of the
Congress" resolutions, which meant they were not binding, but
they clearly affected Hanoi's calculations. I am attaching at
**appendix B** an illustrative list of [put here number] resolutions

8

Some resolutions passed; others did not. Whether they passed or not, they necessarily affected our negotiating position, as is illustrated by the following exchange with the chief North Vietnamese negotiator, Le Duc Tho, on May 2, 1972:

[y]

9

Conference -

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

LE DUC THO: I would like to quote -

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

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. (They never asked the US government, nor would they have believed it.)

Our Administration knew from its secret talks what Hanoi's real position was: that America 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

10

This we rejected to loud protests.

We rejected as well the overthrow of the Saigon government
both for reasons of honor and on practical grounds. There where
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.

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.

[y]

11

simultaneous withdrawals of our forces from South Vietnam. We also 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 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 of asking Congress to authorize economic aid to the region after peace had been established.

Mr. Chairman, the measure of where this inquiry is leading is that those who had refused to abandon America's Vietnamese allies are now being asked to explain why they supposedly abandoned their own American prisoners and those who struggled to husband the leverage necessary to bring about the release of American prisoners [are being accused] of having been insufficiently attentive to their fates?

12

These individual injustices aside, let me raise a point of
national concern. Has this Committee considered what its
procedures, if they become established, are doing the
governability of this country? Is it really wise to examine high
policy by criminal procedures? Lawyers who were in grade school
when the events they are investigating occurred, men and women
with no knowledge of diplomacy or history or high-level
government experience are rummaging through thousands of
documents produced over many years and ask questions about them
twenty years after the event of people who cannot possibly
remember the documents. They do not seem to understand that
bureaucratic documents are not legal briefs; they have a specific
purpose for a limited time. As you know, I raised no objections
to access to any documents, despite any misgivings about this
procedure. Who will keep records after this experience? Who will
want to serve in a government where twenty years after the event
he is subjected to such innuendos?

## 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 secret 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

13

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.

14

By the last week of February 1972, the North was delaying
to hand over the list of men to be freed on February 27, and in
violation of the Peace Agreement, was hinting at tying their
release to the freeing of what they called "political prisoners"
in South Vietnam. This was a linkage the Peace Agreement
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 White House issued a tough statement reiterating that under
the terms of the Agreement the release of American prisoners was
unconditional. The POWs were thereupon released as scheduled.

15

Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese were violating the other
provisions of the Agreement, in particular through massive
illegal movement of troops and materiel South 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".

16

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.

Senators and pundits publicly debated not whether we should retaliate for the North's blatant violations but whether we had the right to retaliate at all. Let me read just two here:

— The *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

[y]

17

Nor did Congress offer support needed to resist Hanoi's
violations. At Appendix D is a sample list of Congressional
resolutions debated in 1973. A couple of examples from the
Spring of 1973 illustrate my point:

18

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, the
President instructed me to "hit them hard on MIA accounting..."

Nevertheless, strenuous negotiations resulted in a joint US-
North Vietnamese communique on June 13 which specifically
reiterated the North's obligation to release any remaining POWs
"without delay" and to make a full accounting for MIAs.
When the North 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

19

In theory we had three sources of leverage available:
bombing the North, aid to Hanoi, and aid to Saigon to provide an
incentive to seek a peaceful resolution by depriving Hanoi of the
hope for military victory. The Congress took all three levers
away.

-- On June 29, a little more than two weeks after the
conclusion of the most recent Vietnamese obligation to
release our prisoners, the Congress prohibited all
military action in, over and near Indochina, including
reconnaissance flights.

20

[y]

-- It 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.

21

- 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 with the NSC they would help end our country's divisions by working on an agreement of which they could be proud;

22

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."

I repeat, American prisoners may have been kept in Vietnam. None were left there. Let us stop torturing ourselves. Your government kept faith with those who served their country. If servicemen were left behind, there is one villain and one villain only: the cold-hearted rulers in Hanoi. That is the theme your report owes to our nation and to the families of those who served and suffered there.

SEP 02 '92 06:58 KISSINGER ASSOC

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Edits after page 12

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When the Chairman called me several months ago to ask for my cooperation in this Committee's investigation, I told him that I support a call for a clear and complete investigation. The Committee would perform an important service if it clarified once and for all the fate of our 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 the fundamental human rights and基本Human rights and Human rights. If any proof of such a betrayal is found by this Committee, all Americans will unite to demand redress.

SEP 02 '92 06:25 KISSINGER ASSOC. : CONSULTING

TO

1 200 527 0000

P.1

SEP-01-1992 1:15

1

September 1, 1992

3:45 pm

LVB rewrite of pages 1-12

Edits after page 12

DRAFT

BY:BC

When the Chairman called me ~~months~~ ago to ask for my cooperation in this Committee's investigation, I told him that the Committee would perform an ~~important service if it clarified~~ once and for all the fate of ~~our~~ 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 detained them in violation of the prisoners' fundamental human rights and Hanoi's most solemn and clear-cut agreements. If any proof of such a betrayal is found by this Committee, all Americans will unite to demand redress.

SEP 02 '92 06:20 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.22 P.4

prisoners throughout the war because the Vietnamese Communists, playing with the heartstrings of America, refused to furnish information, except a few names, permitted to come out from time to time via peace activists visiting Hanoi and occasional propaganda broadcasts. The peace agreement was signed in January 23, 1973. We received the list of Vietnamese prisoners in Vietnam on January 27 and of prisoners in Laos on February 1. It was the first opportunity to check Vietnamese accounting against ours. Within a week, certain discrepancies appeared - about 80 names of men that we had reason to believe were alive when they reached the ground were not on Hanoi's list. On February 11 I presented those names personally to Hanoi and received an evasive reply. After all our prisoners were returned and fuller information was available, these numbers were refined. Every opportunity was taken to present our concern to Hanoi. We were prepared to use force to resist Hanoi's violations of the agreement until the Congress prohibited it and took away all our other leverage as well. It does not become the longer it amuse the Comintern to see the snare we entice.

The Committee owes it to the country, and above all to the families of the MIAs, to dispel the misapprehension that has been created according to which every unaccounted for missing person is bound with a Vietnamized capture. This cannot be true. Dissatisfied as the Administrations in which I served were with the accounting for the MIAs, no confirmed report 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

SEP 02 '92 06:21 KISSINGER ASSOC

-- P.24

6

-- 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.

When the Administration in which I served sought to end a war it had inherited from its predecessors. When we came into office we found half a million Americans fighting in a region far removed from the United States. The number of soldiers 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 we found there and reduced casualties by 98%.

During those four anguishing years we negotiated, first secretly on weekends, later in full view in day-and-night sessions, harassed by protesters, attacked in the media, criticized in countless Congressional resolutions and ridiculed

SEP 02 '92 06:09 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.3

P.7

for our concept of national honor. Never once did we receive any
criticisms of the kind implied by this Committee's ~~questions~~
leaks. All the pressures we experienced were in the other
direction, that we were not making enough concessions - even that
we ~~should withdraw~~ unilaterally and our prisoners would be
released automatically.

Yet in the end we achieved the terms which we set out to
obtain and which our critics had repeatedly told us were
unattainable.

## Pressure for Unilateral Withdrawal

The most intense debate, taking place in the US, was generated by the clamor for unilateral American withdrawals. By 1972, there was a steady drumfire of Congressional and public statements urging the unilateral withdrawal of our forces. I attach, at Appendix A, a sample of statements 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 enforceable North Vietnamese commitment for the concurrent or subsequent return of our MIAS and POWs.

SEP 02 '92 06:10 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.4

P.8

[M]

8.

Congress" resolutions, which meant they were not binding, but 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 entire Senate on the recommendation of this Committee 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 premise, are remaining forces should be secondarily.

P.5

P.9

[Y]

9

the liberation forces in South Vietnam are in direct response to your sabotage of the Paris Conference -

At the same time, members of the American peace movement spread 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. 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 with Hanoi's real position. Its demand was that America 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

SEP 02 '92 06:11 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.6 P.10

only when 10 in the present, while other words, ~~our leverage was being dismantled, the Saigon government disintegrated and~~ in the absence of a cease-fire, we ~~wouldn't be able to mincate~~ were to talk about our prisoners under conditions of unspeakable chaos.

This we rejected to be land profits

We rejected as well the overthrow of the Saigon government both for reasons of honor and on practical grounds. There where 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.

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*. This position Hanoi consistently rejected.

Despite all these difficulties, we demanded and obtained express North Vietnamese promises to furnish lists of all Americans held in Indochina and to return the listed prisoners in phased installments coordinated with simultaneous withdrawals of our forces from South Vietnam. We also demanded and obtained important commitments designed to prevent the reinforcement and supply of North Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam, so that the

P.25

11

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 us, America.

Mr. Chairman, it is not shouldered that those who refused to abandon America's Vietnamese allies should now be asked to explain why they supposedly abandoned their own American prisoners, and those who struggled to husband the leverage necessary to bring about the release of American prisoners of having been insufficiently attentive to their fate.

[footnote]

SEP 02 '92 06:13 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.9

P.13

Paris Peace Agreements

13

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

The Paris Agreements were signed on January 23rd. 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 indicated at a press conference on January 24, we had been told that there were no American POWs held in Cambodia and that those held in Laos and Vietnam would be returned to us in Hanoi.

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

P. 10 -

P. 14

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 until February 1 and then only after we had threatened to withhold a message relating to post-war reconstruction. Moreover, their list contained only 10 names, whereas our intelligence had listed a much greater number as missing.

Secretary of State Rogers testified before this Committee on February 8 (and again on February 21) that we did not regard the Laos list as complete and noted we would continue to press for the fullest information on the some 1300 American MIAs 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. They were evasive. I covered this in my memoirs ten years ago, so that I am accustomed to the leaks of these discrepancies as great discoveries.

By the last week of February 1972, our government became deeply concerned about the POW release schedule. The North was refusing to hand over the list of men to be freed on February 27, and in violation of the Peace Agreement, was hinting at tying their release to the freeing of what they called "political prisoners" in South Vietnam. This was a linkage the Peace

SEP 02 '92 06:14 KISSINGER ASSOC

P. 11

P. 15

In the following week, we kept up the pressure at the Vietnam Peace Conference in Paris. Representing the US there, Secretary Rogers told the press that President Nixon would take "appropriate action" if there were any delays in POW releases. In a March 2nd press conference, the President repeated publicly that POW releases could not be linked to anything other than the rate of US withdrawal.

Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese were violating the other provisions of the Agreement, in particular ~~with~~ massive illegal movement of troops and materiel South across the DMZ. During ~~regarded~~ March, we made 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 ~~we rescinded~~ were innocent of all charges. Rejecting ~~all~~ of their replies, ~~as then~~ we called it "an insult to our intelligence".

During this period, as I have reported in detail in my memoirs, I was in favor of ~resuming military action against~~ military

P. 12
P. 16

[y]

16

North to retaliates 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 pressure Hanoi. To give the flavor of contemporary press commentary, I attach a list from exhaustive list as Appendix

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 the known prisoners were released as scheduled.

Uncertainty Remains After March POW Releases; US Leverage Frodes

The last known POWs were released on March 28. However, we were extremely dissatisfied with the handling of the matter. 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."

However, Congressional support for standing up to the North's continued violations evaporated. During this period, political figures and pundits publicly debated not whether we should retaliates for the North's blatant violations but whether

SEP 02 '92 06:15 KISSINGER ASSOC

17

we had the right to retaliate at all. Let me read just two [~~17~~] here:

-- The *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."

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

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

-- Several days later the *Atlanta Journal* wrote that "the Paris peace settlement makes no provision for one of

P. 14

P. 18

[Y]

18

the former belligerents to have recourse to military
action if any part of it should break down."

Nor did Congress offer ~~us~~ support for resisting Hanoi's violations. At Appendix D is a sample list of Congressional resolutions debated in 1973. A couple of examples from the Spring of 1973 illustrate my point:

- 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.

And so, despite the United States government's continued concern with Vietnamese non-compliance, including those provisions involving a full accounting for our MIAs, the Congress effectively denied us both carrot and stick.

SEP 02 '92 06:16 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.15

On April 20, we 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. The President scheduled a meeting with North Vietnamese leaders in the month of July, and to "hit them hard on MIA 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, including specifically the MIAs. But Hanoi sensed our leverage was rapidly eroding. In response to my presentation, Le Duc Tho disdainfully read back to me editorials from the American press and speeches from the Congressional Record detailing the domestic US debate over whether our government had the authority to resume military action. His unstated message was clear: I understand what you are saying but I also know that you have no way to back up your threats.

### US Continues to Press Hanoi in Summer 1973

[Y]

20

But Mr. Chairman, I must stress that these efforts to pin Hanoi down on our MIAs amounted to firing empty cannons. We had no means to force compliance with the Paris Agreement. The Congress had denied us with the carrot + the stick.

In theory we had three sources of leverage available: bombing the North, aid to Hanoi, and aid to Saigon to provide an incentive to seek a peaceful resolution by depriving Hanoi of the hope for military victory. Congress took all three levers away.

- On June 29, a little more than two weeks after the conclusion of the latest peace agreement and the most recent obligation to release our prisoners, the Congress prohibited all military action in, over and near Indochina, including reconnaissance flights.

SEP 02 '92 06:17 KISSINGER ASSOC

P.17
A.21

[Y]

21
approve economic aid to North Vietnam.

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 a professional; he did not waste 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 implement their treaty commitment to account for our MIAs. We 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.

SEP 02 '92 06:18 KISSINGER ASSOC

P. 18
P. 22

22

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

-- to the wives and families of MIAs with whom I met on a number of occasions and who never broke faith with their government;

-- to those on my staff who stayed with me when so many of their friends were with the demonstrators as I promised them that if they joined the protest they would march with a placard, but if they stayed with the NSC they would help end our country's divisions by working on an agreement of which they could be proud;

When I received the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the Vietnamese War, I donated all the money to a scholarship fund for

1

September 1, 1992

3:45 pm

LPB rewrite of pages 1-12

Edits after page 12

DRAFT

SFRC

When the Chairman called me months ago to ask for my cooperation in this Committee's investigation, I told him that the Committee would perform an important service if it clarified once and for all the fate of our 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 detained them in violation of the prisoners' fundamental human rights and Hanoi's most solemn and clear-cut agreements. If any proof of such a betrayal is found by this Committee, all Americans will unite to demand redress.

2

of prisoners and their follow-up and would focus in particular on Hanoi's violations of the Paris Peace Agreements. 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. For 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 failed for twenty years to provide an adequate accounting.

Yet lately the investigation by the Committee staff has taken a different turn. It has focused not on Vietnamese violations but on alleged American actions which may have caused these transgressions. In sworn depositions from members of the American negotiating team, questions have been asked strongly implying that the American government made mistakes which led to Americans being "left behind". Committee sources are darkly hinting at specific numbers of prisoners left behind.

Accusations of deliberate deception have been left uncontradicted.

The men and women who worked so tirelessly and ably to end a

3

divisive war on honorable terms, to bring back our prisoners and
to achieve an accounting for the MIAs do not deserve such a
libel.

What has happened to this country if for months a
Congressional inquiry be allowed to obscure the obvious: that
any American official of whatever administration would move
heaven and earth to fight for the release of American POWs.
There is no excuse, two decades after the fact, for Congress to
imply that the last five Presidents from both Parties, their
White House staffs, their Secretaries of State and Defense, and
our career diplomatic and military services knowingly or
negligently failed to do everything in their power to identify
and recover all of our prisoners and MIAs. Can anyone seriously
believe that such a group would neglect our servicemen?
How can it be in America's interest to provide an alibi for
Hanoi's offenses? Do those who play politics with a national
tragedy understand what they are saying?

Let us start with a few facts. The implication that
prisoners were left behind suggests that senior officials
knowingly or negligently colluded with the Vietnamese secretly
holding prisoners they have never acknowledged.

But what exactly did the United States government know? The
Committee is well aware that the United States had no list of

4

prisoners throughout the war because the Vietnamese Communists, playing with the heartstrings of America, refused to furnish information, except a few names trickled out from time to time via peace activists visiting Hanoi and occasional propaganda broadcasts. The peace agreement was signed in January 23, 1973. We received the list of Vietnamese prisoners on January 27 and of prisoners in Laos on February 1. It was the first opportunity to check Vietnamese accounting against ours. Within a week, certain discrepancies appeared - about 80 names of men that we had reason to believe were alive when they reached the ground were not on Hanoi's list. On February 11 I presented those names personally in Hanoi and received an evasive reply. After all our prisoners were returned and fuller information was available, these numbers were refined. Every opportunity was taken to present our concern to Hanoi. We were prepared to use force to resist Hanoi's violations of the agreement until the Congress prohibited it and took away all our other leverage as well.

The Committee owes it to the country, and above all to the families of the MIAs, dispell the misapprehension that has been created according to which every unaccounted for missing person is a prisoner. This cannot be true. Dissatisfied as the Administrations in which I served were with the accounting for the MIAs, no confirmed report 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

[4]

5

[Y]

session. No live prisoners ever turned up while I was in
government. The missing men could have died or been killed
before being captured, in which event they would never have been
put on the lists. Or they could have died or been killed after
capture under circumstances the North Vietnamese have never been
willing to admit.

But assuming that the North Vietnamese and their Laotian
guerrilla allies were holding prisoners they have never
acknowledged, even perfect 20-20 hindsight does not suggest to me
any measure that was not taken by our government that could have
been taken with the support of American public opinion and, above
all, the Congress.

The committee owes our people a statement of the simple
truth:

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

-- No prisoners were *left* behind.

-- with the families of the MIAs, who are entitled to the

6

## Political Backdrop for Peace Negotiations

For four years the Administration in which I served sought
to end a war it had inherited from its predecessors. When we
came into office we found half a million Americans fighting in a
region far removed from the United States. The number of
soldiers 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 we found there and
reduced casualties by 98%.

7

[Y]

for our concept of national honor. Never once did we receive any
criticisms of the kind implied by this Committee's questions and
leaks. All the pressures we experienced were in the other
direction, that we were not making enough concessions - even that
we should withdraw unilaterally and our prisoners would be
released automatically.

The most intense debate taking place in the US was generated
by the clamor for unilateral American withdrawals. By 1972,
there was a steady drumfire of Congressional and public
statements urging the unilateral withdrawal of our forces. I
attach at Appendix A a sample. 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 enforceable North Vietnamese
commitment for the concurrent or subsequent return of our MIAS
and POWs.

8

[Y]

Congress" resolutions, which meant they were not binding, but 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 entire Senate on the recommendation of this Committee passed an amendment asking for the withdrawal of US forces in return for the release of US prisoners. But it rejected an amendment requiring a cease-fire during the withdrawal.

[y]

9

At the same time, members of the American peace movement
spread 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. 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 Hanoi's real
position. Its demand was that America 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

[y]

10

other words, while our leverage was being dismantled, the Saigon
government disintegrated and, in the absence of a cease-fire, we
were to talk about our prisoners under conditions of unspeakable
chaos.

This we rejected.

[Y]

11

South Vietnamese would be able to defend themselves after the American forces were withdrawn. 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 ¹. To encourage compliance with these commitments, we held out the inducement 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 us.

Mr. Chairman, is it not absurd that those who refused to abandon America's Vietnamese allies should now be asked to explain why they supposedly abandoned their own American prisoners? Is it not indecent to accuse those who struggled to husband the leverage necessary to bring about the release of American prisoners of having been insufficiently attentive to their fate?

1 Before turning to implementation of the agreement, let me

¹ [footnote]

[y]

12

explain the way we went about the negotiations. Until 1972, I
conducted secret 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

1

September 1, 1992

1:00 pm

DRAFT

SFRC

Personally I have no proof either way with respect to this heartrending question. The Vietnamese are certainly capable of such a cynical act as keeping Americans back and lying about it, even though their motive for holding hostages they do not acknowledge is obscure. But if any prisoners were held back, there can be only one guilty party: the Vietnamese Communists who flagrantly and unforgivably would have detained them in violation of the prisoners' fundamental human rights and Hanoi's most solemn and clear-cut agreements. If any proof of this is found by this Committee, all Americans will unite to demand redress.

[y]

2

thought the Committee would investigate all reports of sightings of prisoners and their follow-up. Yet lately the investigation by the Committee staff has taken a different turn.

It has focused not on Vietnamese violations but on what American actions may have caused these transgressions. Committee sources are darkly hinting at specific numbers of prisoners left behind. Accusations of deliberate deception have been left uncontradicted. In sworn depositions from members of the American negotiating team, questions have been asked strongly implying that mistakes were made that led to Americans being left behind.

The men and women who worked so tirelessly and ably to end a divisive war on honorable terms and to bring back our prisoners and achieve an accounting for the MIAs do not deserve such a label.

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. There is no excuse, two decades after the fact, for Congress to accuse the last five Presidents, their White House staffs, their Secretaries of State and Defense, and our career diplomatic and military services for knowingly or negligently failing to do everything in

3

Mr. Chairman, 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 and they
have failed for twenty years to provide an adequate accounting.

So what exactly is the Committee inquiry driving at? How
can it be in America's interest as much as to hint that there may
be conditions by the United States which account for what would
be if proved, a gross treaty violation if they failed to return
our prisoners? Why can it be in the American interest to provide
an alibi for Hanoi's offenses?

One of the most shameful charges I have heard in my decades
of public life are the dark hints that Americans were left
behind, which are found in many media and must come from
Committee sources. Even the sanctimonious musings that they only
"may" have been left behind are unforgivable.

Do those who play such politics with a national tragedy

[y]

4

What has happened to this country if for months a Congressional inquiry fosters a perception which common sense would tell any reasonable person can not possibly be true: that any American official of whatever administration would fail to move heaven and earth to fight for the release of American POWs. Since the agreement, there have been five Presidents; seven Secretaries of State; several Secretaries of Defense and various Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Can anyone seriously believe such a group would neglect our servicemen?

While I was in government I was never shown any evidence of live prisoners being kept behind.

Elementary fairness would require the presentation of a number of key facts. The charge that prisoners were left behind implies that senior officials knowingly or negligently colluded with the Vietnamese secretly holding prisoners they have never acknowledged.

But what exactly did the United States government know? The Committee is well aware that the United States had no list of prisoners throughout the war because the Vietnamese Communists, playing with the heartstrings of America, refused to furnish information, except a few names from time to time to peace

5

activists visiting Hanoi and occasional propaganda broadcasts. The peace agreement was signed in January 23. We received the list of Vietnamese prisoners on January 27 and of prisoners in Laos on February 1. It was the first opportunity to check Vietnamese accounting against ours. Within a week, certain discrepancies appeared - about 80 names that we had reason to believe were alive when they reached the ground. On February 11 I presented those names personally in Hanoi and received an evasive reply. After all our prisoners were returned and fuller information was available, these numbers were refined. Every opportunity was taken to present our concern to Hanoi. We were prepared to use force to resist violations of the agreement until the Congress prohibited it and took away all our other leverage as well.

The Committee owes to the country, and above all to the families of the MIAs, clarification of the misapprehension that has been created according to which every unaccounted for missing person is believed to be a prisoner. This cannot be true. Dissatisfied as the Administrations in which I served were with the accounting for the MIAs, no confirmed report about sightings of 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 live prisoners ever turned up while I was in government. The missing men could have died or been killed before being captured, in which event they would never have been

6

But assuming that the North Vietnamese and their Laotian
guerrilla allies were holding prisoners they have never
acknowledged, even perfect 20-20 hindsight does not suggest to me
any measure that was not taken that could have been taken with
the support of American public opinion and, above all, the
Congress.

- No prisoners in any administration were left behind.

[y]

7

For four years the Administration in which I served sought to end a war it had inherited from its predecessors. When we came into office we found half a million Americans fighting in a region far removed from the United States. The number of soldiers 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 all but 25,000 of the 550,000 troops we found there and reduced casualties by 98%.

During those four anguishing years we negotiated, first secretly on weekends, later in full view in day-and-night sessions, 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 of the kind implied by this Committee's questions and leaks. All the pressures we experienced were in the other direction, that we were not making enough concessions - even that we should withdraw unilaterally and our prisoners would be

8

released automatically.

When the Paris Peace Accords were being negotiated in the
winter of 1972-73, 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 enforceable North
Vietnamese commitment for the concurrent or subsequent return of
our MIAS and POWs. In our negotiations, however, we demanded and
obtained express North Vietnamese promises to furnish lists of
all Americans held in Indochina and to return the listed
prisoners in phased installments coordinated with simultaneous
withdrawals of our forces from South Vietnam. We also 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. To
encourage compliance with these commitments, we held out the
inducement of asking Congress to authorize economic aid to the
region after peace had been established.

9

Throughout the period, members of the American peace
movement spread 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. 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.

[y]

10

This we rejected.

Mr. Chairman, is it not absurd that those who refused to
abandon America's Vietnamese allies should now be asked to
explain why they supposedly abandoned their own American
prisoners? Is it not indecent to accuse those who struggled for
the necessary leverage to bring about the release of American
prisoners of having been insufficiently attentive to their fate?

Nevertheless, during 1972 a cascade of resolutions was

11

introduced in the Congress urging unilateral withdrawal. Most
were "sense of the Congress" resolutions, which meant they were
not binding, but they clearly affected Hanoi's 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 entire Senate on the
recommendation of this Committee passed an amendment asking for
the withdrawal of US forces in return for the release of US
prisoners. But it rejected an amendment requiring a cease-fire
during the withdrawal.

12

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

Despite all these difficulties, we negotiated an agreement
which provided for the release of our POWs and an accounting for
the MIAs. Associated protocols established precise procedures
for accomplishing these objectives. In exhausting negotiations,
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. 1

1. Before turning to implementation of the agreement, let me explain the way we went about the negotiations. Until 1972, I conducted secret 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

[y]

13

## Paris Peace Agreements

14

Secretary of State Rogers testified before this Committee on February 8 (and again on February 21) that we did not regard the Laos list as complete and noted we would continue to press for the fullest information on the some 1300 American MIAs 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. They were evasive. I covered this in my memoirs ten years ago, so that I am astonished about the leaks of these discrepancies as great discoveries.

15

Agreement explicitly rejected. We reacted to the North's stalling by suspending troop withdrawals and mine-clearing operations. The White House issued a tough statement reiterating that under the terms of the Agreement the release of American prisoners was unconditional. The Vietnamese got the message and the POWs were released as scheduled.

In the following week we kept up the pressure at the Vietnam Peace Conference in Paris. Representing the US there, Secretary Rogers told the press that President Nixon would take "appropriate action" if there were any delays in POW releases. In a March 2nd press conference, the President repeated publicly that POW releases could not be linked to anything other than the rate of US withdrawal.

Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese were violating the other provisions of the Agreement, in particular with massive illegal movement of troops and materiel South across the DMZ. During March, we made a number of 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. Rejecting all[?] of their replies, we called it "an insult to our intelligence".

During this period, as I have reported in detail in my memoirs, I was in favor of resuming military action against the

16

Most commentators, Congressional and media, opposed any
effort to pressure Hanoi. To give the flavor of contemporary
press commentary, I attach a far from exhaustive list as Appendix
C.

The last known POWs were released to us on March 28.
However, we were extremely dissatisfied with the handling of the
MIAs. 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...".

17

we had the right to retaliat at all. Let me read just two [4?]
here:

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

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

-- Several days later the _Atlanta Journal_ wrote that "the
Paris peace settlement makes no provision for one of

19

On April 20, we 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. The President instructed me to meet again with the North Vietnamese in mid-May and to "hit them hard on MIA accounting..."

In mid-May and June 1973, I conducted twelve days of talks with the North Vietnamese. I reviewed in detail the North's violations, including specifically the MIAs. But Hanoi sensed our leverage was rapidly eroding. In response to my presentation, Le Duc Tho disdainfully read back to me editorials from the American press and speeches from the Congressional Record detailing the domestic US debate over whether our government had the authority to resume military action. His unstated message was clear: I understand what you are saying but I also know that you have no way to back up your threats.

20

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

In theory we had three courses of leverage available: bombing the North, aid to Hanoi, and aid to Saigon to provide an incentive to seek a peaceful resolution by depriving Hanoi of the hope for military victory. Congress took all three levers away.

21

22

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

23