
THE NAPA SENTINEL 
March 24, 1992

21 Critical Dates in POW/MIA History 
By Harry Martin 
Third in a Series

"It was an asset of the National Security Agency/Central
Security Services from September 14, 1967 until July 9,
1984.  During this time, I saw not as a result of directed
search, but as a matter of routine, material that states
emphatically Americans were held by both the Vietnamese and
Soviet military forces in Southeast Asia and that some of
these Americans were sent to the Soviet Union." - Testimony
of Terrell Alan Minarcin before the Senate Select Committee
on POW/MIA Affairs - January 22, 1992.

Before an in depth examination of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committees report An Examination of U.S. Policy
Towards POW/MIAs, this series would not be complete without
an analysis of specifically documented events surrounding
American POW/MIAs in Vietnam and Laos.  With the full
understanding of how these men were abandoned, it is easier
then to go back into history and show how our captured or
missing fighting men from World War One, World War Two, and
Korea were also abandoned.

Twenty-one dates adequately sum up the betrayal of the
United States government toward its captured and missing or
missing fighting men in the Vietnam War.  All these items
are a matter of PUBLIC record.

* April 3, 1973 - Pathet Lao (Laotian Communists) forces
admit they are holding in excess of 100 American POWs and
are prepared to give a full accounting of them.  They are
emphatic that Americans captured in Laos by Laotians will be
returned only by Laotians, they will not be released
pursuant to the Paris Peace Accords signed with the
Vietnamese government. The United States government issued a
presumptive finding nine days later that all POWs held by
Laos are dead - without ever talking to the Laotians about
the POWs they admit holding.  To this day, no American POW
has ever been released by the Laotians.

* June 25, 1981 - Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt.
Gen. Eugene Tighe, Jr. (chairman of the Board of Directors
of Defense Systems Review and Military Communications and
Military Advisor - this writer was the publisher and owner
of that magazine.) testifies before the House Subcommittee
on Asian and Pacific Affairs that live American POWs remain
in Southeast Asia.

* 1982 - A French soldier, Mssr. Leget, held prisoner by the
Vietnamese since the fall of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, escapes
after almost 30 years as a POW.

* December 7, 1984 - The Washington Times reports Marine
Private Bobby Garwood, a POW who returned from Vietnam in
1979, told of seeing up to 70 live captive Americans long
after the war ended.

* June 28, 1985 -  The Washington Times reports that Defense
Intelligence Agency Director Lt. General Eugene Tight Jr.,
has testified Hanoi is still holding at least 50-60 live
American POWs.

* October 15, 1985 - The Wall Street Journal reports that
National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane says live
American POWs remain in Southeast Asia.

* September 30, 1986 - The New York Times reports a Pentagon
panel estimates that up to 100 live American POWs are held
in Vietnam alone.

* August 19, 1986 - The Wall Street Journal reports the
White House knew in 1981 Vietnam wanted to sell a number of
live POWs for $4 billion.  The White House decided the offer
was genuine but ignored it.

* October 7, 1986 - CIA Director William Casey, speaking to
a group of Congressmen, stated, "Look, the nation knows they
(the POWs) are there, everybody knows they are there, but
there's no groundswell of support for getting them out.
Certainly you are not suggesting that we pay for them,
surely not saying we could do anything like that with no
public support.

January 1988 - a cable from the Joint Casualty Resolution
Center states that during General Vessey's visit to Hanoi
the previous August, "The Vietnamese people were prepared to
turn over 7 or 8 live American POWs if Vessey told them what
they wanted to hear.   All the prospective returnees were
allegedly held in a location on the Lao side of the border."

* June 10, 1990 -  The Washington Post report a Japanese
monk released after 13 years in a Vietnamese prison spent
that time with a group of American POWs who saved his life
by nursing him back to health."

* September 1990 - a Senate Foreign Relations Committee's
Interim Report on the Southeast Asia POW/MIA Issue states
that despite public assurances in 1973 that no POWs remained
in the region, the Defense Department... in April 1974
concluded beyond a doubt that several hundred American POWs
remained in captivity in Southeast Asia."  The U.S. Senate
report finds that there is a "probability" POWs remain in
prison camps today.

* October 1990 -  Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co
Thach admits his government continues to hold American POWs
and that Vietnam is willing to release "as many as 10 live
POWs".  He also releases the photograph of one of the POWs.
Secretary of State James Baker reportedly ignores the offer.

* April 25, 1992 - Senator Robert Smith, addressed the U.S.
Senate and reveals that, of more than 1400 eyewitnesses
sightings of live American POWs, NOT ONE has ever received
an on-sight investigation by the U.S. government.

* May 1991 - Colonel Millard Pack, Chief of the Pentagon's
Special Office for POW/MIAs, resigns in protest.  He states
that he has been ordered by policy makers in the POW/MIAs
Inter-Agency Group NOT to investigate live sighting reports
of American POWs in Southeast Asia.

* May 23, 1992 - The Senate Foreign Relations Committee
issues its report Examination of U.S. Policy Toward
POW/MIAs.  The report concludes that the U.S. government
abandoned thousands of American POWs to the Soviet slave
labor camps, and North Korean, Laotian, and Vietnamese
prisons.  The report states that the policy of the U.S.
government was that "any evidence that suggest an MIA might
be alive was uniformly and arbitrarily rejected."

* July 1991 - a significant amount of evidence is received,
consisting of photographs, letters, fingerprints,
handprints, hair samples, and other physical proof, to
support the contention that American POWs are still being
held in Southeast Asia.  The names of American POWs
including Albro Lundy, Jr., Larry Stephens, John Robertson;,
Donald Carr, and Daniel Borah.  The families take their
cases to the news media in an effort to prod the U.S.
government into action.  The photo of Donald Carr was
positively identified by a leading forensic scientists, Dr.
Michael Charney, who has also served as an "expert witness"
for the U.S. government on more than 400 occasions.

* August 1991 - The U.S. Senate establishes a bipartisan
Select Committee to investigate the POW/MIA issue.

*August-September 1991 - The Bush Administration, through
National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and the Defense
Department, moves overtly and behind the scenes to "debunk"
the evidence.  Some of the "evidence" used in the attempt to
discredit the evidence are statements by Vietnamese and
Laotian spokespersons who claim the photographs and other
evidence are forgeries. The Vietnamese officials were the
same ones who just the previous year had returned the
"remains" of one of the POWs in the picture; the "remains"
turned out to be dog bones.  Scowcroft held a similar
position in the Nixon Administration, which also declared
all the POWs dead.

* September 13, 1991 - CNN reports that the U.S. government
claims to have located a Laotian man who the government
alleges was paid to pose for a series of photographs
purported to show POW Daniel Borah.  The U.S. government
however, does not publish a photograph of the "impostor" nor
does it name him nor does it permit either the Borah family
nor the American public to view him for comparison purposes.
 Judge Hamilton Gayden, who released the original Borah
photos to the public, stands by his identification and asks
the public to decide; the Borah family is undeterred by the
official U.S. government rejection of the evidence, and
continues to believe that the photograph is an authentic
picture of their family member.

What troubles the American public and what is hard for them
to digest, is why the U.S. government would want to cover up
the POW/MIAs rather than make efforts to support them.  The
record is clear, through public statements of high ranking
military officials, the U.S. Foreign Relations Committee,
and the captors, themselves, that POW/MIAs are still alive
in Southeast Asia. With this known as a fact, why has the
U.S. government deliberately lied to the people about these
betrayed American fighting men?


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