U.S. Criticized Over Question of Live MIAs in Asia

U.S. government officials have repeatedly discounted evidence that Americans held prisoner or missing in action from the Vietnam War may remain alive in Southeast Asia, a study by congressional staff members concludes.

In the report released earlier this week, the Republican staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee complained that after the final airlift of 591 POWs in 1974, the government “internally adopted and acted upon the presumption that all other POWs were dead.”

The investigation was begun a year ago at the request of Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), the ranking minority committee member, who is facing a tough race in next week’s election. The emotional issue is particularly resonant with conservatives.

The committee Republican staff did not attempt to weigh the evidence to determine whether American POWs or MIAs may still be alive in Southeast Asia. Rather, it focused on how Washington had handled reports about them.

It concluded that “the information available to the U.S. government does not rule out the probability that U.S. citizens are still being held in Southeast Asia.”

Responding to the report, Vietnam denied Thursday that it is holding any American prisoners from the Vietnam War, Reuters news agency reported from Hanoi. “Vietnam has time and again confirmed that there are not any live Americans in (government-) controlled areas of Vietnam,” a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said.

The Senate committee staff examined thousands of classified and unclassified documents on war prisoners and military personnel missing in action after the war.

Committee investigators said there have been nearly 11,700 reports relating to POWs and MIAs over the years, including 1,400 firsthand, live-sighting reports to the Defense Intelligence Agency, a branch of the Defense Department.

The report did not specify when the last sighting was reported.

The study said that last July, Col. Joseph Schlatter, chief of the DIA’s special office on POWs and MIAs, stated: “If we look at everything we collected during the war and everything we’ve collected since the war, we don’t find any evidence that Americans are captive.”

But the study asserts that in April, 1974, after the final airlift of POWs, the DIA concluded that several hundred American POWs and MIAs were still alive and held captive in Southeast Asia.

Defense Department officials declined to comment, saying they had not seen the report.

Last month, Secretary of State James A. Baker III told Vietnam’s foreign minister that Washington will not restore normal diplomatic relations until Hanoi accounts for missing U.S. personnel.

Many remains of U.S. servicemen have been found in Vietnam and returned to the United States. A U.S. office will be set up there to deal with the question of the missing, Reuters news agency reported Wednesday from Hanoi.