Scowcroft Sees ‘No Credible Evidence’

President Bush’s top national security deputy scoffed Friday at new photographic material purporting to show U.S. servicemen held captive in Vietnam and said he does not believe any Americans remain prisoners in that country.

The unusually blunt statements by National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, a retired Air Force lieutenant general, expressed an abiding private skepticism at the highest levels of the Bush Administration about new suggestions that captives may yet be found alive.

President Bush has insisted that obtaining a full accounting of the 2,273 Americans still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia is a matter of “highest national priority,” and the Administration has dispatched officials to the region to investigate the new round of claims. The Defense Department said last week that its working “assumption” is that “some Americans are still held captive.”

But asked by a reporter Friday whether he believes that Americans are being held against their will in Vietnam, Scowcroft responded simply: “No, I do not.”

The White House official stipulated that his statement reflected “a very personal judgment.” But as a man who has access to intelligence gathered by the United States over nearly two decades of exhaustive investigations, Scowcroft made plain his view that any rekindled hopes of missing Americans being found alive have no foundation in fact.

Indeed, asked how he would “solve” the lingering issue, Scowcroft did not advocate additional investigations into the fate of U.S. servicemen still listed as missing in action. He said instead that he would “make clear” that the reams of material accumulated by the United States offer no reason to believe that Americans are still being held prisoner.

“There is still no credible evidence that would lead one to the kinds of conclusions that a number of people have come to,” Scowcroft said during a White House briefing.

Scowcroft’s comments followed more than a week of intense speculation sparked by publication of what was claimed to be a photograph of three servicemen still held in Vietnam. His assessment came a day after the Defense Intelligence Agency released documents that appeared to undermine the credibility of the photograph and supporting papers.

The controversy has been compounded by the steadfast refusal of the Defense Department to make public its own files about the cases, despite efforts by members of Congress and families of missing servicemen to compel their release.

While suggesting that the contents of those records should check any swell of optimism, Scowcroft defended the Pentagon’s secrecy policy, contending that public access to the records would merely provide more grist for “unscrupulous people” who seek to profit from fraudulent claims about American survivors.

Even as Scowcroft spoke, the half-brother of missing Army Capt. Donald Gene Carr insisted at an emotional news conference that he is certain a recently released photograph shows Carr being held in a Laotian prison camp.

To bolster that contention, Matthew Carr and activist Jack Bailey produced a report in which Michael Charney, a forensic anthropologist who has criticized the Pentagon’s handling of the POW-MIA issue, wrote that he is certain Donald Carr is in the recent photograph.

By using a computer to compare that photo with a 1961 wedding shot of Carr, Charney wrote that he was able to determine that the two images are of the same man.

Although the two pictures were taken almost 30 years apart, many features are unchanged, Charney said. “The underlying bony structure will remain the same and the relationship of the facial features will remain the same and not be duplicated by another.”

Until a week ago, Matthew Carr said, he had accepted the government’s contention that his half-brother died when his plane was shot down over Laos in 1971. But Friday, he broke into tears as he told reporters: “He was my brother. He is my brother, and will be my brother again.”

Meanwhile, in Hanoi, the official Vietnamese news media reported that the contry’s government gave a top State Department official evidence that will prove that Air Force Col. John Leighton Robertson died when his plane crashed in North Vietnam in 1966. It did not describe the evidence.

Robertson’s family claims that he is one of three men pictured in a grainy photograph that they believe proves he is being held captive. Families of Air Force Major Albro Lundy Jr. and Navy Lt. Cmdr. Larry James Stevens have said that they believe their long-missing relatives are the other two men in the photo.