Hanoi Easing Stance on Vietnamese Prisoners, Dornan Says

Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) told Vietnamese community leaders Saturday that the Communist government in Hanoi seems to be easing its position on the release of thousands of Vietnamese political prisoners.

Dornan, who returned last week from Hanoi as a part of a congressional delegation in search of POWs, had taken with him the names of about 600 Vietnamese who are suspected prisoners who have relatives in Orange County.

“They would not give me specifics, but they are more willing to do something for humanitarian reasons,” he told the group of about 12 gathered at a Garden Grove restaurant.

Dornan said that he asked Vietnamese officials if it would help if he and others stopped pressuring them at this point.

“I asked them if a diplomatic cease-fire might help, and they said it was worth a try. Maybe, we can get your loved ones out of those re-education camps,” he said.

Dornan said officials in Hanoi told him that 7,000 Vietnamese are held prisoner, although estimates have run as high as 13,000.

The congressman praised the group for working to free their relatives. And, he told them, “I emphasized to them (Vietnamese officials) that you are Americans asking to rejoin with your mothers, fathers and other relatives,” Dornan said.

He said that Vietnamese officials will meet with him and other congressmen at the United Nations in September and that “they’ve asked me to come back anytime I want. I think that’s a breakthrough. We want to keep this dialogue going.”

Dornan also told the Vietnamese leaders that he had not submitted the entire list because he feared repercussions for some of those named.

“I deleted some names because I felt it could be too sensitive,” he said. “There are some things you don’t want prison guards to know.”

Dornan, who faces a reelection bid this year, said: “If I am reelected, I’m going to stay on this issue. I’ve lived with this thing for 20 years.”

The congressman, at times growing red, also painted a bleak picture of Hanoi and general conditions in Vietnam.

“There is abject poverty in Hanoi,” he said. “It is a country that looks like it lost four wars in a row.”

Dornan also was critical of the U.S. government’s role in the fall of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). He said former President Richard Nixon and former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger negotiated a “fraud peace treaty. They left a Communist army in place. They skinned Henry Kissinger alive.”

Dornan told the meeting: “We have to fight to get everybody out. It was a disgrace the way we left Saigon.”