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I want to focus on past military conflicts, and the outstanding issues
concerning POWs and MIAs that still remain from these past wars in which
many of you served. You'll notice my terminology is POWs and MIAs -- those
whose status was either "captured" or truly unknown, that is "missing in
action" when the cease-fires were reached and the rest of our troops came
home. I say that because I'm sure you've heard a lot from one of your
previous speakers this afternoon, General Tucker from our Pacific theatre,
about the fine work his young men and women are doing trying to excavate
crash sites in Southeast Asia and looking for material
evidence -- and I've said this before, and I'll say it again -- they are
indeed a group of very dedicated individuals representing the very
best ideals and principles of our military -- but I'd just ask you to
remember, that a lot of their work deals with recovering remains from
the battlefield of servicemen whom we KNOW died during the Vietnam War -- in
fact, they were listed as "killed in action, body not recovered" by their
Commanders at the time, and now, after all these years, we are finally
getting to these crash sites and battlefields.
But I want to spend more time this afternoon talking about Prisoners of War
and personnel who became Missing in Action in areas controlled by the enemy
whose fates are still unknown, despite all the efforts by General Tucker and
his predecessors. These are the most tormenting cases of all -- these are
the men whose families are still in anguish, suffering from tremendous
uncertainty. These are the cases that keep the POW/MIA issue alive and
burning in the hearts and minds of so many Americans; and well it should be
kept alive.
The topic I'm focusing on this afternoon is the need for more legislative
action with respect to the POW/MIA issue, so we can feel
more confident than many of us do right now, that our Government leaders are
doing the best job they possibly can to address our
concerns; by making sure this issue does not take a back seat to other
issues like trade and the almighty dollar, as so often is the case. As
Senator Smith often likes to say when he speaks to veterans, "You fought to
protect our freedom and our God-given human rights -you didn't fight for the
latest Dow Jones average, or the IMF."
Senator Smith has concluded that it's necessary for him to introduce new and
comprehensive legislation on the POW/MIA issue. He's come to that conclusion
reluctantly because one always hopes that it shouldn't take a new law to
require the best possible effort to account for our missing soldiers. One
would hope that an Administration would develop and implement policies on
their own to absolutely ensure that the job is going to get done. But that
has not been the case with this Administration, and if a new law is what it
takes to get the job done, then that is what Sen. Smith is going to try to
do. With your help, I think we can get the job done.
We are only in the early draft stages right now, and we hope at some point
between the end of the Congressional Easter recess and prior to Memorial
Day, we will have this legislation introduced and the list of cosponsors
will start growing. We expect that the name of the bill is going to be the
POW/MIA Full Disclosure and Accounting Act of 1999. I can tell you that
right now. And if we're lucky, and we work closely on this with others who
share our concerns, maybe we can get this bill passed.
I thought what I'd do is go around the world briefly, since there are
several nations which hold many of the answers we seek -- whether it's the
Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, etc... As I discuss where we are,
from Senator Smith's perspective, with the accounting efforts in these
different regions of the world, I think you'll understand why we need more
legislation, and what the legislation will entail. The last nation I'm
going to talk about is, unfortunately, the United States of America, where
we still have a lot of work to do with respect to declassification of
documents and improving our foreign policy to help us get more answers.
IRAQ:
You may be surprised that this is the first country I wanted to discuss. A
lot of people probably don't recall that the very first U.S. pilot we lost
in the skies over Iraq (southwest of Baghdad) on the first night of the Gulf
War in January 1991 is still unaccounted for. His name is Navy Lt. Cmdr.
Michael Scott Speicher from Jacksonville, Florida, and a native of Kansas
City, Missouri. He was a Navy F-18 pilot stationed on the U.S.S. Saratoga in
the Gulf region when the war started. He has two young children, who are now
11 and 9 years old.
We've been actively looking into this case since 1995, and I wanted to let
you know the latest action we've taken, which was only this past Friday.
Together with Senator Rod Grams, we have asked the President to intensify
his efforts to gain an accounting from the Government of Iraq for Commander
Speicher because the evidence indicates the Saddam Hussein knows more than
he has revealed to date about this pilot's fate. We have also asked the
Secretary of the Navy to change Commander Speicher's official status from
killed in action back to his original status which was missing in action.
Why have we done this? Because the evidence we have examined from our
Government indicates substantial doubt as to whether Commander Speicher
actually perished in his aircraft, as some had believed back in 1991 when
the war ended, and there was no trace of him. But there is now a significant
question as to his ultimate fate. I say that after having reviewed with
Senator Smith what we've been able to gather to date from our Intelligence
agencies and the Department of Defense.
But what's even more disturbing is that our Government has known all of this
for several years now, yet the President has never instructed his
Administration to use all available options to demand an accounting from the
Government of Iraq. In fact, requests by
Department of Defense officials to have this matter further pursued have
been placed on hold by this Administration for three years now "because of
the state of U.S.-Iraqi bilateral relations." That's the official reason
we're told. That's unacceptable to Senator Smith, and based on the latest
briefing we received on this matter two weeks ago, that is why he's now
contacted the President and the Secretary of the Navy. Let me say that we
are prepared to deal with this further, if necessary, with the forthcoming
legislation I just discussed, both in terms of our policy toward Baghdad,
and the actual accounting effort for Commander Speicher.
RUSSIA:
Now let me turn to Russia, and the areas of the former Soviet Union. As many
of you know, Senator Smith helped establish the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission
on POWs and MIAs back in 1992. He has continued to serve as a member of the
Joint Commission since that time. And in 1997, he was appointed as the US
Chairman of the Commission's Vietnam War Working Group. Incidentally, the
Korean War Working Group is chaired by Congressman Sam Johnson --a fighter
pilot from both the Korean and Vietnam Wars, who spent over 6 years as a POW
in Hanoi. I don't think you can find better people to chair these two
working groups and to be the leaders in the efforts to get answers from the
Russians. However, they can't do it by themselves. In the final analysis,
we need better support from the President all the way down to the lower
levels of the State Department and the Defense Department.
And that's going to be part of the bill Senator Smith will be introducing --
to require better support that is not subject to other foreign policy
considerations. Let's just work to investigate and get the facts about our
POWs and MIAs, and then we can let our foreign
policy be based on what those facts show. Unfortunately, I think many in
this Administration are worried about pursuing what the facts might show
because it may interfere with their foreign policy agenda.
Now, in terms of the Russians, during the last year there have been ups and
downs in terms of getting answers. On the up side, since Senator Smith's
last trip to Moscow this past November, we have been able to obtain more
than 10,000 military records from the Russians that concern the shoot downs
of American aircraft during the Korean War. So far, our staff analysts on
the Commission have made about 40 correlations to still unaccounted for
serviceman from the Korean War based on these Soviet-era records. The work
continues, but we are satisfied that we will bring some answers to the
families of these men who have waited decades not knowing what happened to
their loved ones.
However, on the downside, with regard to the Korean War, we are still at a
standstill with the Russians concerning the transfer of some U.S. POWs from
North Korea either through China, and on into the Soviet Union, or directly
from North Korea into Soviet territory. We believe the evidence we have
gathered to date indicates a strong probability that some US POWs were, in
fact, transferred to the Soviet Union during the Korean War, and never heard
from again. This was a unanimous conclusion of the Commissioners on the U.S.
side back in 1996, and it was presented to President Clinton.
In March of last year, we jointly asked the President to pursue this matter
with President Yeltsin because we felt this was the only way to get past the
current standstill, with the Russians telling us they have no evidence, and
yet we have obtained very substantial evidence from interviews with former
Soviet veterans, and from our own U.S. intelligence holdings.
The response from the Administration has been disappointing, in terms of
helping us in this area. We asked the Director of Central
Intelligence for an assessment of the reporting on transfer, and we were
told no, it's not worth the CIA's time. We asked the President
to raise this with President Yeltsin, and again, we heard nothing back. This
is distressful because we can't to it on our own, with one
Senator and one Congressman. So this will be another focus of our
legislation -- to make it the policy of the United States Government, by law,
to press the Russian Government, in a serious way at the highest levels, on
the transfer issue with respect to the Korean War.
With regard to our Vietnam War inquiries to the Russians, some of you may
recall that in 1993, we managed to obtain from the Russian Government copies
of two Soviet military intelligence reports from the Vietnam War in which
very high-ranking North Vietnamese officials were telling their own leaders,
in secret, that they held a lot more U.S. POWs than the ones that they later
released in 1973. I can tell you that since 1993, every piece of information
the Russians have provided, from the current head of Russian military
intelligence on down through the ranks, confirms that the Soviets judged
these reports to be reliable in the early 1970s -- that is to say, North
Vietnam did, in fact, hold more US POWs than those who came home.
Who were these POWs, and what happened to them? We still don't have answers
from the Vietnamese, and once again, unfortunately, this Administration has
not done nearly enough to press the Communist leadership in Hanoi. In fact,
the Administration prefers instead to discount what the Russians have given
us. The view of the Clinton Administration is that they know more about the
situation in Hanoi during the Vietnam War than the Soviet Union did. I doubt
any of you would accept that kind of view. Senator Smith certainly does not,
and I'll discuss this more when I get to Vietnam in just a bit.
The last major issue Senator Smith is still pursuing with the Russians
concerns whether any Vietnam-era U.S. POWs could have been transferred to
the Soviet Union in the late 1960s. As some of you may know, last year,
there was a Russian general, a close confidant of President Yeltsin, who
died in late 1995. He was the co-chairman of our Commission. After he died,
he donated his personal papers and research to the Library of Congress here
in Washington because he wanted his information to get out to the West, and
the Librarian of Congress, Dr. James Billington, was a close friend of his
and fellow historian.
In January 1998 (over a year ago), Senator Smith reached an agreement with
the Librarian of Congress to allow our Commission's Vietnam War Working
Group analysts to review General Volkogonov's papers. What we found was a
significant notation in these papers by this Russian general which ended up
being published by the General's daughter in a book last year about the
General's work.
According to this notation from General Volkogonov in 1994, he had
discovered in the Soviet archives, a KGB plan at the end of the 1960s to
"transfer knowledgeable Americans to the USSR for intelligence purposes." He
writes that he approached the head of the KGB in the 1990s who showed him an
actual copy of the plan, but claimed it was never implemented. Volkogonov
was skeptical and writes that this remained a secret which he was unable to
penetrate and therefore he did not formally broach this with the American
side. He said he was putting this into his personal notes in the hopes that
it would find its way into his new book, which, as I said, was finally
published last year, three years after his death. Incidentally, the head of
the KGB in the early 1990s that General Volkogonov met with is Yevgeny
Primakov. Primakov is now the Prime Minister of Russia, who was scheduled to
meet with President Clinton and Vice-president Gore later this week.
After this discovery of these notes last year, Senator Smith briefed his
fellow Commissioners on the U.S. side, and together we formally contacted
President Clinton in writing last March -- one year ago this past week --
and we asked President Clinton for his personal assistance in seeking help
directly from President Yeltsin concerning this KGB plan. Unfortunately,
that has yet to happen.
Nonetheless, Senator Smith has continued to pursue this with the Russians,
including this past November in Moscow, when we discussed this matter in
detail with Russian officials, including the former head of the KGB in the
late 1960s. We were told that while there may have been such a mission to
transfer Vietnam-era U.S. POWs from North Vietnam to the Soviet Union as
part of a general KGB plan in the late 1960s, such a plan was never
implemented. In other words, we were told the same thing General Volkogonov
was told by his Russian colleagues. He was skeptical with this response, and
so are we.
You know, there's an old saying, as President Reagan used to say, "trust but
verify." And that's where we are right now with the
Russians -- we've HTTed for contemporaneous documentation from the late
1960s proving that the plan was never implemented as the Russians claim. We
can't just accept their word at face value. The issue is too important,
especially in view of the fact that there has been some evidence through the
years, picked up by our Intelligence Community, indicating that some US POWs
may have indeed been transferred. This has always been, and it continues to
be, an open issue for us. We are hoping that the White House will finally
and directly corner the Russian Prime Minister with specific questions on
this matter.
EASTERN EUROPE:
With regard to Eastern Europe, some of you may have seen in the news two
weeks ago, that three Eastern Europe - former Soviet Bloc nations -- Poland,
the Czech Republic, and Hungary, have now been formally admitted into NATO
-- the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. When the Senate ratified this
treaty expansion last year, Senator Smith and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
of Texas offered an amendment which passed 97-0 requiring Presidential
certification that these three countries were providing full access to
their former Communist Party archives and letting us interview personnel
with regard to the POW/MIA issue.
It is well known from our research on the U.S.-Russia Commission that
personnel from these countries were all over North Korea, North Vietnam,
and Laos when our troops were fighting there. They even built and ran
hospitals in these countries where we believe, and in some cases, know for
a fact that American POWs were present. Moreover, we believe they could
very well have been privy to Communist party secrets in Pyongyang, Moscow,
and Hanoi with respect to the handling of US POWs. And, I would note, that
Senator Smith had traveled to two of these countries before the Senate took
up NATO last year to pursue the POW issue, so we had laid the groundwork in
passing the message that we were serious about their cooperation.
So there was a perfect opportunity last year, because of the overwhelming
vote in favor of Senator Smith's amendment, for President
Clinton to send a clear message to these three countries that wanted to
join NATO that their full cooperation on POW/MIA issues was an essential
condition. After all, if we're going to pledge to put American military
lives on the line for any of these three countries,
through NATO, then the least they can do is help us account for our
American military personnel whose very lives remain in question.
But you know what happened -- just three weeks after the Senate vote last
April, President Clinton went ahead and simply certified with his signature
that these three countries were providing full access to their archives --
he didn't even ask our Commission, that had been working on this matter,
for our input. And what was amazing was that NONE of these countries had
provided us access to their old Communist Party Central Committee and
Politburo records. But the President certified it anyway -- he didn't want
it to get in the way, even though we had an unanimous Senate vote.
At this point, in the wake of the NATO admission, the best we can do now is
make clear to these three countries that their cooperation is still
essential, in terms of our bilateral relationship and any foreign and
military aid from American taxpayers. So we expect to have language in our
new bill that will make this central to our policies toward Eastern Europe.
This is critically important, because already, we have obtained leads from
this part of the world that we are trying to pursue, and we need to keep
the pressure on our new allies in this area of the world.
NORTH KOREA:
Let me now shift to North Korea and our unaccounted for POWs and MIAs from
the Korean Conflict. Some of you may recall that Senator Smith was the
first United States Senator to set foot in North Korea in 1991 when we
brought back 11 sets of remains of U.S. soldiers. We went there again in
1992, this time to Pyongyang, where we gained access to their war museum --
an experience in communist propaganda that I shall never forget. Our sole
purpose for making the trip was the POW issue - and I still find it amazing
and really heartbreaking for those POW/MIA families, that we were the first
U.S. officials to make such a trip after 40 years.
But even more amazing and disturbing was that the United States had no
clear and workable policy to gain an accounting for POWs and MIAs lost in
North Korea when we made these trips in the early 1990s, and frankly, I
still do not think we have a policy focused on getting the answers we are
entitled to, and I'll give you some examples as to why I say that. And I'll
preface these examples by letting you know that the legislation we are
drafting is going to focus on our policy toward North Korea and the
accounting effort there, which I strongly believe is misdirected and
misguided at the moment.
For instance, for several years now, it's been public knowledge that four
U.S. servicemen who allegedly defected to North Korea in the 1960s are
still alive in North Korea. Our Government has known this for well over a
decade, and they never bothered to let Senator Smith know when we went to
Pyongyang in 1992 and were asking about any American servicemen in any
category living in North Korea.
We were particularly concerned about the so-called "VNR's" - a category you
probably haven't heard before - it stands for voluntary non-repatriates
-- the North also referred to them as "POWs not for direct repatriation"
under the Armistice Agreement. Presumably, these were men who allegedly did
not exercise their right to be repatriated. Who were these POWs, what were
their nationalities? We still don't know.
Anyway, with respect to these four servicemen who "allegedly" defected, I
say "allegedly" because I've just recently seen evidence
in U.S. Army intelligence reports from the 1960s that they may have been
"kidnapped" by North Korean infiltrators across the DMZ to be used for
propaganda purposes. But whether they were kidnapped or whether they truly
defected, North Korea has refused to grant the United States, and even the
families of these four men, access, even just to interview them.
The reason we felt they should be interviewed, frankly, is for what they
might know about any U.S. POWs who were not repatriated by North Korea
during Operation Big Switch in 1953. There is no U.S. policy right now that
makes this failure on North Korea's part to produce these men a guiding
factor in our relations with Pyongyang.
A second example -- right now, as we speak, in that same war museum Senator
Smith and I visited in 1992, there are military I.D. cards of American
servicemen who were listed as "missing in action" during the Korean War. I
don't know how many of you know this, but our Government has known it for
several years now. This is direct evidence that North Korea knows what
happened to these MIAs.
Yet, we wait, and we wait, and we wait for North Korea to respond. I guess
our policy is to wait forever, wait for the families of these men to pass
away, wait for their comrades in arms in organizations like the Legion to
pass on, wait until there's no one left to stand up for these men who
deserve to be fully accounted for. And if the policy is not just to wait
and wait and wait for North Korea to respond, then what is the policy? As
far as I can tell, there is none. North Korea is not being held accountable.
Nor are they being held accountable for live-sighting reports from the late
1960s, through the 1970s, through the 1980s, and through the 1990s, where
defectors, communist bloc personnel, and other intelligence sources claimed
to have seen American POWs from the Korean War still alive in North Korea
-- working on a collective farm, teaching English at military foreign
language institutes in Pyongyang, and so on, and so on -- these are just
examples.
I've read these reports, one of the sources gave testimony to the Senate;
believe me, it's troublesome information. Probably shocking for many of you
to even consider that this could have indeed taken place. But we'll never
know if we don't fully investigate these intelligence reports and hold
North Korea accountable. That's my point.
You may have seen in the news in recent weeks that South Korea is openly
holding North Korea accountable for their POWs -- they maintain that over
200 of their POWs are still being held in North Korea from the Korean War
period, and they are appealing to international humanitarian organizations
for help to get these men repatriated. Why are we silent? Why have we been
more focused on getting an excavation team into North Korea to visit a few
crash sites these last three years?
We haven't even visited the former POW camps in North Korea where some of
our returned POWs buried their camp mates. We know the locations. Why not
insist on retrieving these remains and transferring them to an American
Battlefields Commission cemetery
where their families can visit and put flowers on the grave? How much
longer must the families wait?
Some of you may have heard that Peace Talks are underway between North
Korea, South Korea, China, and the United States to replace the 1953
Armistice with an actual Peace Treaty. One would think that this is a
logical time for the United States to insist that POW/MIA accounting
provisions be part of any such Peace Treaty. But, you know, the silence
from the State Department, the Defense Department, and the White House has
been deafening on what would seem to be a logical thing to do. Senator
Smith is going to consider making this a condition in our comprehensive
legislation for any Peace Talks with North Korea, and we're also going to
consider tying it to any establishment of diplomatic relations or embargo
relations with North Korea. We would welcome your support on this.
CHINA:
Now let me turn to China, especially since we're talking about the Korean
War. Frankly, China, in my judgment, holds more of the answers about the
majority of our 8,000 unaccounted for personnel than North Korea or even
Russia. We've been told that by the North Koreans and the Russians in the
course of our meetings with them, and we think it's probably true. The
Chinese ran the U.S. POW camps on both sides of the Yalu River. We've heard
enough evidence, and have seen enough evidence to indicate this. Moreover,
there are reams and reams of CIA and Air Force special intelligence reports
from the 1950s indicating that US POWs were being held in China. There is
also evidence that the Defense Department has had for several years now
which indicates that, like North Korea, there are military ID cards of
unaccounted for American servicemen on display in the Chinese military
museum in Dandong (Antung) China -a museum that is closed to the general public.
When Senator Smith helped write the Final Report of the Senate Select
Committee on POW/MIA Affairs in 1993, we had an unanimous recommendation in
there that the Administration set up a China POW/MIA Task Force similar to
the Task Force Russia we had set up to staff our work on the Joint
U.S.-Russia POW/MIA Commission. The recommendation was ignored. The State
Department kept saying they didn't want to "overload the circuit" with
China. Imagine that, we're talking about American POWs, and the State
Department thinks it's too much to put on the table with the Chinese.
Well, as some of you may recall, Senator Smith successfully passed an
amendment to the annual Defense Authorization bill for 1995 requiring the
Secretary of Defense this time to raise Korean War POW/MIA Accounting with
the Chinese Minister of Defense. Three weeks after the bill was signed into
law, the Secretary of Defense went to China
to meet with the Chinese Minister of Defense who is a General who fought
against us in the Korean War, so he knows something about this from his
personal experience as well. Now that there was a law, do you think the
subject came up? You guessed it, no.
But we pressed on, and contacted the new Secretary of Defense in January
1997, former Senator William Cohen from Maine -- a good friend and colleague
of Senator Smith's. To his credit, he did bring the issue up with the
Chinese, in the context of making this a subject for military to military
discussions. The only problem has been that the Chinese military is not
interested in discussing Korean War POWs.
So where are we? This past February, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense for POW/MIA Affairs, Robert Jones, went to China. The purpose of
the trip was Korean War POW/MIA Accounting. The Communist Chinese military,
which holds the records on US POWs from the Korean War, didn't even see him
while he was there to talk about this issue. Instead, he met with a
Ministry of Foreign Affairs official, and no significant progress was made.
The trip was a failure.
You would think Deputy Assistant Secretary Jones would have come back to
Washington, and made it known that the Chinese military was not cooperating
with requests for assistance on Korean War US POWs. Instead, he came back
and approved a press release praising the Chinese for their cooperation,
and blurring the fact that they had turned him down cold. The actual quote
from the press release read "The Chinese have pledged continued
cooperation. We are grateful for their continued assistance in this
humanitarian mission."
Now why was that written that way? Why would someone mislead the American
people, our veterans, and the MIA families this way? I don't know, but I do
know that we should not allow that kind of behavior to continue.. not just
by the Chinese, but by our own Government. And that is why we are
considering, with Senator Smith's forthcoming legislation, making full
disclosure by China about our POWs and missing soldiers from the Korean War
a condition for aid Coanormal relations, like MFN [Most Favored Nation],
with Beijing.
We hear a lot of talk about human rights in China. Let's make sure this
Administration does not forget about the human rights of American soldiers
who sacrificed their freedom and their lives under Communist Chinese
control.
LAOS:
Let me now turn to that tiny landlocked country that shares its northern
border with China -- Laos. Laos also wants normal trade
relations with the United States right now, and the State Department has
been poised to try to push it through the Congress, and some in Congress
want to move ahead and give them that MFN status. I'm not convinced that
this should be done this way, with no strings attached, nor is Senator
Smith. And we made our position known to the our Ambassador to Laos last
summer, and I want to commend The American Legion for taking a similar view.
I spent a lot of time when I spoke to your national convention in Salt Lake
City in September 1996, focusing on the POW question as it pertains to
Laos, so I'm not going to dwell on it now. But let's remember the central
question here -- What happened to the American POWs who were captured in
northern Laos and held by North Vietnamese and/or Pathet Lao communist
forces? None of the American POWs captured and held in northern Laos
starting in the mid-1960s have ever been returned or even accounted for.
None. The evidence was convincing during the war.
How could the Vietnamese and the Lao not know what happened to these
Americans? They were held in the caves in the backyard of the Pathet Lao,
and several of them, according to CIA and DIA wartime intelligence reports,
were subsequently moved into North Vietnam's backyard? So how could they
not know what happened to these POWs under their direct control?
Remember, in 1973, President Nixon said, in a secret cable to the Communist
side, that it was "inconceivable" that there were not more POWs from Laos
being returned, other than the nine U.S. personnel on the list turned over
in Paris. (And those 9 people had all been immediately moved to North
Vietnam following their capture, and none of them had been held in northern
Laos in the Pathet Lao strongholds -- specifically the Sam Neua area.) So
President Nixon said it was inconceivable that there were not more POWs --
that's a quote.
Retired General Richard Secord, who knew this issue inside and out -- since
he was in Laos during the war running the air war and tracking POWs -- he
told our Senate Select Committee in 1992 that it was "absurd" to think that
all the American POWs captured in Laos had been returned. That was his
quote. "Absurd."
Admiral DePoix, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1973,
said that the list of the nine U.S. personnel from Laos on the POW list was
"ridiculously low." That was his quote -- "ridiculously low."
And all of this led the Secretary of Defense to recommend in 1973 that the
State Department tell the Communist side "unequivocally," and I'm quoting
here, "that we still hold them responsible for the release of U.S.
prisoners being held in Laos... the U.S. will no longer play games with the
POW issue in Laos. The Pathet Lao should be told that we know they hold
U.S. prisoners, and we demand their immediate release." End quote.
So we had words like absurd, inconceivable, ridiculous, no longer going to
play games -- that's what our government told the communists after the
acknowledged POWs were released in 1973. But my point here is the same
that I made to your convention in 1996 -- we still haven't seen words like
absurd, inconceivable, ridiculous, used by our government in recent years
concerning the continued claim by Communist officials in Vietnam and Laos
that all the POWs were released in 1973 and they can't account for any
other POWs.
The Communist government in Laos, and even in Hanoi, has to be held
accountable for these American POWs, and that is why we will incorporate
this problem into Senator Smith's forthcoming legislation -- it will be a
condition in the development of our economic relations with Laos, as it
should be.
VIETNAM:
Here again, I'm glad the American Legion's view of Hanoi's cooperation is
the same as Senator Smith's. Simply put, there has not been full disclosure
by Hanoi about unaccounted for American POWs and MIAs. The facts speak for
themselves. We have not had access to relevant POW information in the
Communist Party Central Committee, Politburo, or Secretariat level records
from the war. We have not had access to prison records where our U.S. POWs
were known to have been held, and even suspected to have been held, during
the war. We have not had full access to Vietnamese wartime reporting on
American POWs captured along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos, and at other
locations in Laos, such as Lima Site 85, where several U.S. personnel
remain unaccounted for. And we have not had a convincing or satisfactory
response from the Vietnamese Government about the documents we found in
Russian archives that I mentioned earlier which indicate Hanoi held more U.S.
POWs than they repatriated.
Despite all of this, the President continues to certify to Congress that
Hanoi is fully cooperating in good faith. As you may recall,
this Presidential certification is necessary in order for funds to be spent
for diplomatic relations. So, we're really not surprised that
the President keeps making this inaccurate certification in order to
advance his normalization agenda with Vietnam. But it really is a sad
commentary on our foreign policy toward Vietnam, and our commitment to the
POW/MIA issue. Remember this when you hear the rhetoric about how this is
our highest national priority with respect to Vietnam.
Some of you will remember the last time Senator Smith spoke to your
mid-winter convention was two years ago when the Senate was considering
whether to confirm a U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam. As a condition for letting
that nomination go through the Senate, a deal was reached with the White
House in which they agreed to do what's called a national intelligence
estimate on the Vietnam POW/MIA issue, with special emphasis on those
documents from Soviet archives. That formal assessment, led by the CIA, was
completed last year, and the full results of that assessment, which have
not been declassified, raise very serious and troubling questions about the
thoroughness and objectivity of the collection and analysis done by our
U.S. Intelligence Community.
Senator Smith wrote a classified 200-page assessment of what the Director
of Central Intelligence came out with. We believe their research was either
shoddy or reflected a predetermined effort to discredit relevant
information. I'm pleased to announce this afternoon that the Chairman and
Vice-Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard Shelby
of Alabama and Senator Robert Kerrey of Nebraska, have now formally called
on the Inspectors General of the Central Intelligence Agency and the
Department of Defense to conduct an independent investigation and to
respond to the charges contained in our classified 200-page report, which I
wish I could speak about in more detail, but, unfortunately, I cannot at
this time.
We asked last November for all of this to be declassified, but so far, we
haven't received a response to that request. So this may end up being
another part of our comprehensive legislation as well, which frankly brings
me to my final subject this afternoon -- declassification and disclosure of
U.S. Government POW/MIA reports -this is under the country -United States
of America -the last nation on our world tour.
PUBLIC DISCLOSURE AND ACCESS TO U.S. POW/MIA RECORDS:
Many of you know that Senator Smith has made extensive efforts through the
years, both when he was a Congressman, and since coming to the Senate,
concerning release of POW/MIA reports. We passed an amendment to the
Intelligence bill for 1989 requiring the release of POW/MIA reports to the
families of our unaccounted for servicemen. During the Senate Select
Committee investigation in 1992, we succeeded in getting an Executive Order
issued mandating the review and release of POW/MIA reports that didn't
involve our national security. In 1996, Senator Smith amended the so-called
McCain bill to make it applicable to Korean War records as well, and to
clarify how that process should work.
Despite all of these efforts, as many of you know, many POW/MIA reports
collected by our intelligence agencies have yet to be
processed for declassification. Over the last few years, Senator Smith and
I have seen several such reports in classified form, and we
are aware of several hundred other such reports that have not been
released, including records held by the CIA, and records that we uncovered
or obtained during our Senate investigation in 1992.
The reasons cited are multifold -- we've been told it's a question of
resources; we've been told there are sensitive sources or methods which
preclude even putting out a redacted report; we've been told the reports
could adversely affect our foreign policy, and they even specifically
referenced normalization of relations with Vietnam at one point. Can you
believe that? But what's even more amazing, is that we are told none of
these still-classified reports are credible and convincing. So why are they
afraid to let you see them?
Regardless of their reasons or motives, we are now convinced that the laws
governing release of POW/MIA intelligence reports need to be revised, and
this is going to be a major feature of our forthcoming legislation. As I
said, we hope to name our bill the POW/MIA Full Disclosure and Accounting
Act of 1999 -- not just full disclosure by communist governments abroad,
but by our own Government as well. And this should be done in such a way
that it's made easier than it is now for a family member, fellow veteran,
or researcher to go to an office, and pull up a POW/MIA database on a
computer, and then search it for information. The Library of Congress and
the National Archives have made some efforts in this area, but we think we
can do an even better job, and that legislation will help set the
guidelines and the organizational structure for getting this done.
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