WASHINGTON : Missing In Vietnam
Members of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs begin a trip to Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand this week to assess the cooperation of those governments in ongoing efforts to trace Americans still missing from the Vietnam War.
Committee chairman Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said the senators will look into questions raised, among others, by a former head of the Soviet secret police, Gen. Oleg Kalugin. Kalugin has said that the KGB interviewed a number of American POWs in Vietnam after 1973, when Hanoi says it returned all U.S. prisoners in Operation Homecoming.
Officials said that Kerry had hoped to hold hearings in Vietnam about U.S. prisoners, with Vietnamese officials such as the heads of prisons and labor camps placed under oath. But the Vietnamese declined. Kerry maintains there is substantial evidence that previous investigations of the POWs’ fate were incomplete.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
