The Secret Only Moscow Knows : Are there, or are there not, POWs over there?

With just a few words, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin has raised the hopes--while simultaneously confirming the worst fears--of families of Americans missing in action since the Vietnam War.

On the plane carrying him to Washington for talks with President Bush, Yeltsin was asked by NBC News about “rumors . . . that American POWs from the Vietnam War were transferred from Vietnam to the Soviet Union. Do you know this to be true?” Yeltsin’s response was: “Our archives have shown that it is true--some of them were transferred to the territory of the former U.S.S.R. and were kept in labor camps. We don’t have complete data and can only surmise that some of them may still be alive.”

Later, the Russian Embassy in Washington suggested that Yeltsin may have misunderstood the question, taking it to refer to his recent acknowledgment that hundreds of American servicemen were held in captivity in the Soviet Union after World War II, and that others were secretly interned during the Cold War. But in his meeting with Bush Tuesday Yeltsin echoed his own earlier comments.

TANTALIZING WORD: The frustrating incompleteness of the Russian president’s assertions needs no underlining. For the last three months a joint U.S.-Russian commission has been seeking to determine the fate of American military personnel missing since World War II and believed to have disappeared in the Soviet Union. A White House spokesman says the issue of Vietnam MIAs “has never been brought up in the commission.” The Pentagon, after Yeltsin’s comments, said it has no evidence that American MIAs from Vietnam were held in Soviet labor camps. Yet, here is authoritative word from the pinnacle of Russian power, seemingly the result of a new policy to disclose at least some information long sealed in secret government and Communist Party files: Despite all previous official denials from Moscow, some Americans captured in Vietnam were interned in the Soviet Union and some may still be alive.

AGONIZING SILENCE: Thousands of directly affected Americans now await word about who these captives were, how and when they may have died, whether any remain alive to be repatriated. It is an unspeakable cruelty to prolong the anguish and uncertainty that shroud this question for even one unnecessary day. If Soviet archives show that missing Americans were moved from Vietnam to the Soviet Union, as Yeltsin says, then almost certainly those same files identify the Americans and what happened to them. Full information about all Americans held in the Soviet Union at any time since World War II must be dug out and promptly made available.

What’s also needed is an explanation why it has taken this long for Moscow to provide an honest answer to a question that has been asked repeatedly over many years. The chilling and probable reason is that most if not all of the Americans held in the Soviet Union died in captivity. Better to learn that now, though, however embarrassing it may be for Moscow, than to have the decades-long pain of not knowing prolonged.