A Clearer Picture on a Wrenching Issue : At long last, Hanoi will open an archive that could end much MIA-family uncertainty

The break so long awaited by the families of hundreds of Americans missing in action in the Vietnam War may be at hand.

Vietnam has agreed to make available thousands of photographs along with other information on missing U.S. servicemen whose bodies have never been recovered. Some died in prison camps. Others were killed in action or died soon after being captured. Additionally, Vietnam may provide other documentation that could help pinpoint the location and time of death for many missing Americans.

Some of the photographs are believed to be of men whose deaths were documented earlier. But others are likely to provide the first proof that men long listed as missing in fact died. If nothing else, the agonizing uncertainty that hundreds of families have for so long had to bear should at last be lifted.

Movement on the MIA issue came in the course of a weekend trip to Hanoi by retired Gen. John W. Vessey, President Bush’s special emissary for POW-MIA affairs, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs and himself a former prisoner in Vietnam.

Until last weekend Vietnam had refused to acknowledge the existence of the long-suspected MIA archive. A joint statement issued in Hanoi on Monday noted that “the government of Vietnam informed Gen. Vessey it has been conducting a countrywide search of all its archives for documents, photographs and other material related to American POW-MIA cases and will make all such material available to the United States at its military museums.” Hanoi, in other words, would have Americans believe that only now--nearly 20 years after U.S. military involvement in Indochina ended and more than 17 years after North Vietnam’s victory--has it discovered the evidence it now offers to share.

The cruel truth seems to be that for decades Vietnam deliberately kept secret information that could have assuaged the anguish of hundreds of American families. Now, at last, at least some of the survivors of the more than 2,200 Americans still unaccounted for will be able to find some peace.