U.S. Seeks to Dismiss Vietnamese Raiders’ Claim

A claim filed by a group of Vietnamese commandos who served in a CIA-sponsored army in the 1960s should be dismissed because the men waited too long to file legal papers, attorneys for the federal government said Monday.

In the first detailed response to the $11-million back-pay claim filed by the so-called “lost army” commandos, federal attorneys asked U.S. Judge Lawrence S. Margolis to dismiss the legal action on other grounds as well: that the commandos are not U.S. citizens, that they did not work for the United States, and that the law prohibits spies from discussing their contracts in public courts.

The case, now pending in U.S. Claims Court in Washington, was brought by 281 former South Vietnamese agents sent into North Vietnam on spy missions during the 1960s. Most were captured and served long prison sentences. About three-quarters of them now live in the United States, most in Orange and Los Angeles counties.

The commandos assert that the U.S. government recruited them, trained them and sent them on the secret missions, then wrote them off as dead when they were captured. They argue that the United States breached its contracts by cutting off pay to their families while the commandos were in prison.

They are asking the government to pay them $2,000 a year for every year each commando spent in prison, a total of $11 million.

In papers filed in court Monday, attorneys for the CIA, the U.S. Army and the Department of Defense did not acknowledge any role in the secret effort, known as Operation 34-Alpha. They argued the claim has no place in the courtroom.

The lawyers said the commandos waited too long to file their claim. Federal law requires that people filing such claims against the government must do so no more than six years after the alleged injury occurred.

Most of the commandos were released from Vietnamese prisons in the early- and mid-1980s. “All of the plaintiffs’ claims are barred . . . and are outside of the court’s jurisdiction,” Assistant Atty. Gen. Frank W. Hunger wrote.

John Mattes, the attorney representing the commandos, rejected the government’s contention, saying the documents outlining the U.S. government’s role in Operation 34-Alpha were top-secret until 1992, when they were declassified. The commandos could not have filed their suit before now, he said.

Mattes said those documents suggest government officials knew the commandos were alive in Communist prisons but did nothing to get them out.

“The same government that kept the commandos in prison is now saying they didn’t get to the courthouse in time,” Mattes said.

The United States also argued the commandos’ claim was not valid because their contracts apparently were with the government of South Vietnam, not the U.S. government.

“The plaintiffs apparently believe that they do not need to base their claim upon a contract between the United States and the commandos,” Hunger wrote.

Mattes and the commandos say the United States funded and directed the operation, and used the South Vietnamese government as a front. They say the U.S. government has the contracts.

“The White House ordered this program, Congress funded it, and Army generals ran it,” Mattes said.