Bush Grants Senate’s Request, Opens Secret MIA Documents
President Bush acceded Wednesday to a Senate demand and ordered the release of secret documents dating back to the Vietnam War on Americans missing in action.
The President issued an order to all executive departments and agencies to make available all documents and files except for those that would invade the personal privacy of people involved.
Earlier this month, the Senate unanimously demanded the release of the secret documents “expeditiously.” At the time, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said the Senate believes Americans “have a right to read and evaluate the reports that Americans have been seen alive in Southeast Asia, and a right to read the official evaluations of those reports.”
Kerry is chairman of the Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs.
The documents the committee seeks to make public include: papers of Henry A. Kissinger stemming from his Paris peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese two decades ago; papers of Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Bush relating to MIAs; reports of live sightings on file at the Defense Department, and Defense Intelligence Agency papers.
A total of 2,266 U.S. servicemen have disappeared since the Vietnam War.
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