PRISONERS OF WAR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88B00443R001704300009-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 1, 2010
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: April 29, 1985
• Content Type: MEMO

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EXECUTIVE SECRETARIAT
ROUTING SLIP
ACTION
INFO
DATE
INITIAL
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DDCI
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EXDIR
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DDO
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DDS&T
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Chm/NIC
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GC
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D/PAO
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SA/IA
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AO/DCI
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C/IPD/OIS
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STAT
qxscutiw Secretary
2 Apr 85
Date
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SECRET I Executive Registry -1
85- 1738
29 April 1985
MEMORANDUM FOR: Deputy Director for Operations
FROM: Director of Central Intelligence
SUBJECT: Prisoners of War
I'd like a rundown of the present state of our knowledge, leads, and
activities with respect to POWs.
William J. Casey
Attachment:
WALL STREET JOURNAL article,
dtd 24 April 1985, "POWs Won't
Be Found Without Cost"
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ML Y t LL J I RLL I UUUf1i*t L
24 April 1985
POWs Won't Be Found Without Cost
By BILL PAUL
As soon as a White House reception last
December for new Republican congress-
men was thrown open to questions, Califor-
nia Rep. Robert Dornan leaped to his
feet.
Mr. Doman begged President Reagan
to intensify government efforts to ascer-
tain whether U.S. prisoners are still being
held by Vietnam. Mr. Reagan responded,
as Mr. Doman recalls, that every time the
U.S. pursues a lead on POWs, it turns out
to be a dead end.
,, That is what the president has been told
by his advisers-most recently at a brief-
ing he was given by Defense Intelligence
Agency officials just days after Rep. Dor-
nan's outburst.
But critics of the government's efforts
to investigate reports of POWs-notably
Mr. Dornan's fellow conservative Republi-
cans, North Carolina Rep. William Hendon
and former New York Rep. John LeBoutil-
her-have repeatedly charged that the
president is getting bad information and
the U.S. effort to account for its nearly 2,-
500 men still missing in Southeast Asia is
seriously flawed.
'Disclaiming Good Reports'
The critics appear to be right. There is
reason to believe that the Central Intelli-
gence Agency knows for a fact that Ameri-
cans are still being held against their will.
There also is reason to believe that mili-
tary analysts have squandered some prom-
ising leads, leads that, if they had been
properly pursued, might by now have
proved the continued presence of U.S.
POWs in Southeast Asia.
Gen. Eugene Tighe, who worked on the
POW issue at DIA from 1974 until he re-
tired, as director, in September 1981, says,
"It may be time for an independently spon-
sored presidential commission to examine
the U.S. POW effort."
Gen. Tighe, who has remained close to
the issue, adds' "Some people linvolved in
the U.S.'s effort] have been disclaiming
good reports labout remaining American
captivesl for so long that it's become
habit-forming." Moreover, "I continue to
run into civilians lin the U.S. government]
associated with this issue who tend to think
that military personnel are expendable."
A former intelligence analyst who re-
cently retired after working daily on the
POW issue for two years also gives a dis-
turbing view of the U.S. effort to account
for its missing. "There are a lot of pres-
sures not to believe" that Americans are
still held prisoner, he said in an interview.
"If we recover one, it's a travesty because,
for 12 years, we've completely and abso-
lutely ignored these people."
A CIA expert on Laos says the U.S.
government already has a list of 25 or so
missing Americans who are living today in
Laos. This man, who was intimately in-
volved in the U.S.'s "secret war" in Laos,
made the statement four months ago in a
private letter shown to me.
The CIA official states in his letter that
the Americans "are now working for the
enemy, fairly openly, and married to local
women with children in most cases." In
describing one of them, the letter stZes
that he "has some freedom but not much."
Further, the letter states that this individ-
ual "apparently has no desire to return to
the USA because of his 'probably' lbeing]
forced to work for the enemy in order to
stay alive this long."
The CIA official indicates that his infor-
mation comes from "a few reliable" for-
mer South Vietnamese military officers
who now conduct resistance activities
against the Communists. The informers
aren't paid for this information, he says.
Gen. James A. Williams, current head
of the DIA, says he hasn't ever seen or
heard of such a list. A CIA spokeswoman
says there isn't such a CIA list, adding that
the notion is "nonsense."
Those running the Reagan administra-
tioti's effort to account for the missing
think the program is making progress, de-
spite a general lack of cooperation by the
Vietnamese. In testimony before a House
committee last August, Richard Armitage,
assistant secretary of defense, said the
Reagan administration has increased the
intelligence resources devoted to resolving
the POW question.
Many Americans don't believe that the
Indochinese Communists still hold U.S.
prisoners. Vietnam denies it has any U.S.
captives. But in three. wars, Communist
nations have demonstrated a willingness to
keep their prisoners after the shooting
stops.
The Soviet Union finally released nearly
10.000 German prisoners in 1955, 10 years
after the end of World War II, claiming
they had been criminals, not prisoners.
Thousands more German prisoners simply
vanished.
U.S. Gen. Mark Clark, who commanded
United Nations forces in Korea, wrote in
his 1954 autobiography "From the Danube
to the Yalu" that he had "solid evidence"
that the Communists held on to hundreds
of U.S. prisoners after the U.N.-Comm..nist
prisoner exchanges. "How many more
U.N. POWs," Gen. Clark wrote, "may we
expect the Communists to yield, possibly
seven or eight years from now? And how
many may we never see again who will die
in the wastes of Korea-Manchuria-Sibe.
ria?" (A few fliers were released by the
Chinese soon thereafter, but many Ameri-
can prisoners in Korea apparently never
did come home.)
In what is now an obscure footnote to
the Vietnam War, Hanoi nearly succeedea
in holding on to nine U.S. prisoners in 1973.
The men, captured in Laos, were released
after Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
reportedly wouldn't complete the pre-
viously negotiated U.S. troop withdrawal
from Vietnam until several remaining pris-
oners in Laos were accounted for. Only af-
ter some from his list were freed, along
with others the U.S. had listed simply as
missing in action, did the U.S. learn that
the nine had been moved to Vietnam a
year earlier and held there apart from the
other U.S. POWs who were released during
1973's "Operation Homecoming."
According to the Defense Department's
POW-MIA Fact Book, evidence of Amer-
icans still being held against their will
must be "convincing" before the U.S. acts.
By convincing, the Fact Book explains, the
evidence must be recent and specific, and
it must come either from a refugee whose
sighting report "can be strengthened and
supported through technical means," or
from two or more refugees whose reports
match up.
But the former intelligence analyst says
the Fact Book is misleading. He says that
for evidence to be judged convincing by
U.S. experts, it must be developed by the
U.S.'s own technical means; i.e., aerial
photographs from satellites or high-alti-
tude aircraft. "Humint," the acronym for
human intelligence, isn't enough, this ana-
lyst says, because the feeling within the
U.S. intelligence community is that people
can and do lie.
U.S. officials have testified before Con-
gress that the vast majority of their POW
information comes from human sources-
refugees. If refugees' reports aren't
enough, how then can the U.S. ever prove
that POWs are still in Indochina?
Gen. Willivns, the current head of the
DIA, insists that humint can be enough to
act upon. But the fact is that the only
known time the.U.S. made an armed incur-
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sion to try to rescue men it thought W
POWs-the so-called Nhom Marat rp':
in 1981-the intelligence that led ' to
foray came from aerial photographs.
Some DIA analyses of refugee reports
seem aimed to impeach the refugees
rather than lead to investigations.
For example, refugee Nguyen Thi Xuan
told U.S. officials that in November 1977
she saw four Americans working in a field
near Bien Hoa City, about 20 miles from
Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. The
DIA concluded that her report was "suspi-
cious" because "the Communists would be
unlikely to place four detained Americans
in an open field next to a major highway
while at the same time publicly denying
that they hold Americans."
Gen. Tighe, the retired head of the DIA,
says this analysis "shows a mind-set to de-
bunk." (Gen. Tighe is chagrined that poor
analyses were done while he headed the
DIA. He says that, as director, he didn't
review most individual reports.)
Might Be Alive
Another, more recent, account came
last year from a Vietnamese doctor who
gave the U.S. a list of names of Americans
he said he treated in Vietnam who are still
POWs. This report has been written off as
a fabrication by U.S. officials who ascribed
it to the man's self-serving motivations.
But consider:
The DIA acknowledged that "it isn't
precisely known" how the doctor got the
Americans' names. The DIA suggested
that he may have gotten them off a pub-
licly available list of America's missing,
but the analysis also stated that some on
the doctor's list were servicemen believed
to have died in action whose bodies weren't
recovered. Thus, at least some names
wouldn't have appeared on any MIA list,
and those men in particular might still be
alive.
If the continued presence of POWs in
Southeast Asia were ever publicly ac-
cepted, it would provoke a foreign-policy
dilemma. Americans would demand that
Washington act, but what could the U.S.
do? A military operation might get some
prisoners out, but the rest might then be
pub to death, perhaps after show trials. Ne-
gotiations could easily dissolve into a kind
of Iran hostage crisis, with Washington
looking weak.
Yet while a military action seems self-
deleating, entering into talks is a chance
worth taking. Vietnam's economy is a
shambles, offering the makings of a deal.
Getting the men back would demonstrate a
moral commitment few nations possess.
Mr. Paul is a reporter in the Journal
New York bureau.
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