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, [H.N.S.C. No. 104-22] DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE'S COM- PREHENSIVE REVIEW OF INDOCHINA POW/MIA CASES — Y4.SE2/1 A: 995-96/22 Departnent of Defense's Conprehensi. . . ^^q BEFORE THE MILITARY PERSONNEL SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED FOURTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION HEARING HELD DECEMBER 14, 1995 ^cr'b. V»i^| '^''^^. 'Hfrnr^.' U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 3S-210 WASHINGTON : 1996 ForsalebytheU.S.GovernmentPrintingOffice SuperintendentofDocuments,CongressionalSalesOffice,Washington,DC 20402 ISBN 0-16-053814-9 [H.N.S.C. No. 104-22] DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE'S COM- PREHENSIVE REVIEW OF INDOCHINA POW/MIA CASES — Y4.SE2/1 995-96/22 A: Departnent of Defense's Conprehensi. . . ^^q BEFORE THE MILITARY PERSONNEL SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED FOURTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION HEARING HELD DECEMBER 14, 1995 W-i ^^B m? 2 1 "r* U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 3&-210 WASHINGTON : 1996 ForsalebytheU.S.GovernmentPrintingOffice SuperintendentofDocuments,CongressionalSalesOffice,Washington,DC 20402 ISBN 0-16-053814-9 MILITARY PERSONNEL SUBCOMMITTEE ROBERT K. DORNAN, California, Chairman STEVE BUYER, Indiana OWEN PICKETT, Virginia RON LEWIS, Kentucky G.V. (SONNY) MONTGOMERY, Mississippi J.C. WATTS, Jr., Oklahoma IKE SKELTON, Missouri MAC THORNBERRY, Texas JANE HARMAN, California SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut TODD TIAHRT, Kansas MIKE WARD, Kentucky RICHARD 'DOC' HASTINGS, Washington PETE PETERSON, Florida DUNCAN HUNTER, California John D. CHAPLA, Professional StaffMember Michael R. HiggiNS, Professional StaffMember Donna L. Hoffmeier, Professional Sta/7"Member Diane W. Bowman, StaffAssistant (11) CONTENTS STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS Page Doman, Hon. Robert K., a Representative from California, Chairman, Mili- taryPersonnel Subcommittee 1 Rckett, Hon. Owen B., a Representative from Virginia, Ranking Minority Member, MilitaryPersonnel Subconmiittee 7 Smith, Hon. Bob, aU.S. SenatorfromNew Hampshire 9 Pirepared statement 64 PRINCIPAL WITNESSES WHO APPEARED IN PERSON OR SUBMITTED WRITTEN STATEMENTS Bell, Gamett, Former Special Assistant for Negotiations for Commander, Joint Task Force FullAccounting: Statement 135 Prepared statement 144 Duez, Kathy Borah, POW/MIA Family Member, Sister of Lt. Daniel Borah, USN: Statement 230 Preparedstatement 236 Gober, Hershel W., Deputy Secretary of Veterans' Affairs, Department of Veterans'Affairs; Winston Lord, AssistantSecretaryofState forEastAsian andPacificAffairs, DepartmentofState: Statement 83 Prepared statement 89 Hrdlicka, Carol, POW/MIA Family Member, Wife of Capt. David Hrdlicka, USAF: Statement 162 Prepared statement 170 Lord, Winston,AssistantSecretaryofState forEastAsian andPacificAffairs, DepartmentofState: Preparedstatement 105 Marineau, Comdr. Charles R., Jr., Chief of Intelligence, Joint Task Force Full Accounting, Accompaniedby RaymondJ. Spock, Deputy ChiefofIntel- ligence, Joint Task Force FullAccounting: Statement 359 Matejov,Mary, MotherofPrisonerofWar,JosephA. Matejov: Statement 72 Momssey,Robert David,Jr., SonofLt. Col. Robert D. Morrissey: Statement .. 311 Wold, James W., DeputyAssistantSecretaryofDefense forPOW/MIAAffairs, Accompanied by Gary Sydow, Analyst; and Warren Gray, Analyst: State- ment 113, 355 DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD Index andSununaryofInformation inSenatorSmith's Baron 52 Case File 18 F-111 Combat LossesinSoutheastAsia 321 (III) DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE'S COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW OF INDOCHINA POW/MIA CASES House of Representatives, Committee on National Security, Military Personnel Subcommittee, Washington, DC, Thursday, December 14, 1995. The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:35 a.mK., in room 2118, Raybum House Office Building, Hon. Robert Doman (chairman ofthe Military Personnel Subcommittee) presiding. K OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT DORNAN, A REP- RESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, MILITARY PERSONNEL SUBCOMMITTEE Mr. Dornan. The Military Personnel Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives, National Security Committee, will come to order. I have some opening remarks, and then I will defer to my distin- guished colleague from Virginia for any opening remarks. I am sorry for the delay. It took me about 25 minutes to get up the ice in my Virginia driveway, so I will assume that others had problems who reside outside the beltway. — Senator Smith is in the anteroom, will be in ^there he is right now. Senator if you will take the witness chair there, I will begin my opening remarks while you get settled in. Good fight on the Senate floor last night. And I have never lost a vote, and seen people act like it was a victory so much in all my life. But in the House of Representatives, with no leadership support whatsoever, and losing 12 subcommittee chairmen like myself, two major committee chairmen, and half of the leadership to come within four votes of cutting off" a—ll funding to this very peculiar op- erati—on on the ground in Bosnia I support everything else, and it's a lot ^was, I guess, a victory ofsome sort. I don't know if you know. Senator, but I got 70 out of 73 fresh- men to vote in my 210, and 20 Democrats, including those who are most concerned about blue collar families, who give us those handsome young men and women who wear the uniform. So it was a fascinating fight last night. The media doesn't know what to make ofit. This hearing is a continuation of the congressional oversight process to account for our servicemen still missing in Southeast Asia that I have initiated as chairman of this subcommittee. And I restate that I always believed the portfolio for our missing should have stayed in this room, in the National Security Committee, where all these great battle streamers are, where all the plaques (1) are of the four military services and the Coast Guard, which in wartime serves under the Department of Defense. I always believed it should have been with this Armed Services Committee, now renamed the National Security Committee. And certainly, in a peacetime situation, the portfolio for this tragic missing and pris- oner problem should be in Military Personnel. How it ever worked its way over to the geographical subcommittee, I'll never know. This hearing follows a long night of debate on the administra- tion's decision to send ground forces into what is turning out to be a weather hell of sorts in Northern Bosnia. We have already had one MIA there, mercifully for only 6 days, Capt. Scott O'Grady. In addition, two U.S. servicemen were wounded on a mission to rescue the two Fren—ch POW's, who as oflast night were home with their families, kept and I am the only Congressman or Senator who kept their names alive in Washington, DC, or actually in the whole United States, couldn't even get People magazine to do a story, Capt. Frederic Chiffot and Lt. Jose Sov. During the ordeal of the French POWs, while they were MIA, like O'Grady and so many other POWs in Southeast Asia, they were pretty much written off as dead, probably dead, by American intelligence. This was told to me in the intelligence cell, the new one set up in the basement ofthe Pentagon,just last week. I could not help but compare the agony of the French families to the ordeal that has been experienced over the last 31 years. Ifyou used Ev Alvarez' shoot-down date of August 5, 1964, not knowing that Floyd Thompson had gone missing March 26, 1964 and was a POW for precisely 1 week shy of 9 years. And his wife waited for him all of those years. And he still suffers intestinal problems from 9 years ofvery brutal Communists captivity. We had men missing in 1963 and their names are legion now to those that have worked on this issue for over 31 years, David Hrdlicka who went missing in 1964, others like Eugene DeBruin, missing in 1963, photographed in captivity, and escaped, full career with Eastern Airlines, tranferred to other airlines and is retired now. It has been a long struggle. The families, like the Hrdlickas who are with us today, an Amer- ican airline pilot, David, Jr., with a Navy career as a fighter and an attack pilot behind him, his mom Carol, who is my Sally's best friend, at—George Air Force Base, Kathy Borah Duez who will tes- tify today sacrificed the wounded American Special Ops troops in Bosnia, is hauntingly like the covert actions ofAmerican pilots and troops during the secret war. One of the bullets hit their legs; if it had hit the rotor of the big Sea Stallions going in on the Marine trap operation, could have had a whole chopper down. That happened over and over and over with our unbelievably heroic rescue and SAR forces that operated deep into southern North Vietnam and all over Laos. These men, the two men that were wounded in the Marine Corps, are already back on active duty and, I believe, still in the Adriatic area. The American pilots and troops during the secret war, so-called, for freedom, against the North Viet—namese in Laos, when I visited with them in Laos in January 1970 shortly after I almost crossed paths with a 23-year-old graduate, mature Oxford student named Bill Clinton, who was at a dinner pulling hard for a Vietnamese Communists victory, along with a United States Senator, Eugene McCarthy, the big dinner, the peace dinner at the National Hotel, January 2, we were locked up at the airport outside, within that week, with Sharon Nicivow, Carol Hanson, first head ofthe League of Families, and two other Air Force wives, and a Marine wife whose husband was alive on the ground with a Special Forces man they had just rescued; Steve Hanson shot down June 3, 1967, the Special Ops sergeants at Aboabinitio. He was rescued again the second time. Steve and his crew, who were all alive, disappeared; one of them, his corporal door gunner turned up to be released in 1973, no word on Steve and the rest ofthe crew. Those stories are also legion. But Carol Hanson was with me in Laos, in Sot Patrosi's office when he said I have tens of tens of prisoners. That sounded like 100 to all of us. We met with some of the pilots. One of them is a classmate ofArt Herns. I said, what do you do? He said, I'm a civilian. I said, well, I am wearing a pilot training ring and it sure looks like yours. What is your class 55 watt? I have 55 H. He smiles. He was fijdng combat in a T-28. We all know that. A lot of guys thought they were following the lead of John F. Kennedy to end the chaos in Laos and that they were part of the struggle against communism, the major set fighting piece of the whole halfcentury that Kennedy called the twilight struggle, decid- ing whether the world would remain half slave or half free, para- phrasing Lincoln. And they thought they were serving their coun- try. But I noticed when Clinton made his speech 2 weeks ago Mon- day, he mentioned Northern Ireland. He mentioned every conflict around the world, but he left out Vietnam. That is pouring raw salt right into the wounds of every single person who to this day, like myself, feels that Vietnam was an honorable struggle fought poorly and never with a strategic plan for a MacArthur-type victory, but that the cause itself, as Reagan said over and over, was a noble cause, absolutely perfectly coequal with Korea or any of the strug- gles since Vietnam, or with the liberation of France itself, and my father's three wound chevrons in World War I in Northern France. I am still not going to get over that Clinton has this blind spot about Vietnam because he was giving succor and aid in Moscow and in London as a leader ofthe Fall Offensive, so named the Fall Offensive by Hanoi and some of the Communists who are still alive, and treated as war heroes by the likes of a war criminal named Robert Strange McNamara who pours salt regularly in the wounds of every person who sacrificed during this one set piece in the cold war called the Vietnam war. The sacrifice of our wounded again reminds me of that period. The fate of those captured by Communists forces is known in most cases, many cases, not most, known only to God and, of course, to the Vietnamese Communists and their Pathet Lao surrogates who always resisted being called the puppet nation because they had a seat in the United Nations, as did Cambodia, as does Bosnia today; and Vietnam did not have a seat in the United Nations. I don't believe we should give any further economic aid or politi- cal recognition, certainly not most-favored-nation status, to criminal regimes until they unilaterally and truthfully resolve the cases of heroes, such as my best friend in the Air Force, Dave Hrdlicka. This long overdue accountability effort has been strengthened by a provision that I cosponsored in the 1996 appropriations bill that de- nies funding for expanded United States diplomatic presence in Vietnam until that Communists regime, criminal in, I believe, its handling ofthis issue, truly fully cooperates in providing the fullest possible accounting ofour missing heroes. The 1996 Defense authorization bill, which just yesterday was agreed to by House and Senate conferees, it's closed, as we say here, it includes a revised and strengthened Missing Service Per- sonnel Act, which underscores the definition of fullest possible accounting as, one, the return of a missing person; two, the return of remains; or three, and that's what we will be discussing today, a valid and documented explanation of why neither ofthe first two options is possible. A new criteria has been established for negotiating with the Viet- namese Communists in a Defense Department Comprehensive Re- view, which was mandated by Congress under the sponsorship of Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire. The review is a concise summary. In addition, my staff has found a heavily redacted U.S. intelligence document, this one right here, which I will give later to my friend Secretary Winston Lord and to my new friend Gen. Jim Wold. This is a new document from 1977, that confirms that the Viet- namese and the Pathet Lao Communist governments maintained and shared extensive archives on Americans captured in Laos, including those known and unknown to United States intelligence who were held in the caves ofSam Neua. And I might footnote here that I had an hour long discussion with a great legendary general, a tank is named after him, the world's best battle drain. Gen. Creighton Abrams. I was with him in his backyard with soon-to-be president of the League of Fami- lies, Carol Hanson, Connie Hestle, African-American Heritage, whose great, handsome, colonel husband was the commander of academics at Nellis, training our F-105 pilots, in his late thirties, did not have to go to Vietnam and insisted on going, in F-4 Phan- toms, and joined the young men that he had sent over there after many, many classes oftraining at Nellis. Art Mearns, legendary F-105 Thud pilot who went right over Hanoi, his rema—ins are back. I went to his grave at Arlington ceme- tery. One night I forgot to tell some ofmy adversaries on the floor last night, when they questioned my support of the troops, which is ludicrous, I just commented you won't goad me into that. These were people who have never worn the uniform. And I forgot to mention that they ought to come with me to some of these ceremonies at Arlington, like Tucker Guggleman, who was tortured to death in a Saigon prison in 1976. When some people, honorable people, were saying there was nobody left alive, his screams, a former Marine and an ex-CIA man who had only gone back into Hanoi and been captured in April 1975, had only gone