Ex-POW Is Picked as Ambassador to Vietnam

President Clinton on Friday announced his choice of Rep. Pete Peterson (D-Fla.), a former bomber pilot who spent 6 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, as the first U.S. ambassador to Hanoi.

“The quarters and the food will be much better this time,” Peterson said of the job that will put him in the forefront of efforts to build a peaceful relationship between the former enemies more than 20 years after the war’s end.

“I went back to Vietnam in ’91 and ‘94” as a member of congressional delegations, he said in an interview Friday. “I’ve gone through all the emotional struggles that one goes through to get well. It will not be a big emotional process for me personally.”

Asked if he expects to encounter any of his former jailers in new roles as government officials, Peterson replied: “I’m sure I will.

“There are a couple that I won’t have too many warm feelings for,” he said. “But there were some who also helped me.”

By selecting a former POW who reached the rank of colonel during a 27-year career in the Air Force, Clinton appears to have insulated himself from criticism by veterans groups of the first exchange of ambassadors with Communist-ruled Vietnam.

Clinton avoided military service during the Vietnam War.

The choice of Peterson drew an immediate endorsement from another prominent former POW on Capitol Hill, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

“Pete Peterson served his country both in uniform and as a member of Congress,” McCain said. “I believe he is very well qualified. I know that he performed exceedingly well in prison and he had a fine reputation.”

In Orange County, some Vietnamese leaders who have long opposed normalized relations with Vietnam expressed disappointment at the appointment, saying it strengthens that bond. Others said the appointment was inevitable.

“We just have to resign ourselves to the fact that our opinion really doesn’t matter in this debate,” said Co Thien Nguyen, editor in chief of the Westminster-based Nguoi Viet Daily newspaper.

Westminster City Councilman Tony Lam, however, criticized the president’s action, saying that an ambassador to Hanoi should not have been named while the issues of human rights and MIAs and POWs remain unresolved.

Peterson, a three-term lawmaker from the northern Florida Panhandle, announced in September that he will not run for reelection in November because he believes that the increasingly partisan Congress has no room for political moderates.

“Throughout my tenure, I have worked as a bridge-builder to find bipartisan solutions,” he said then. “Unfortunately, the current political climate on Capitol Hill and throughout the nation has rendered this approach ineffective.”

There is little question that the ambassadorial post in Hanoi demands a bridge-builder.

“At this stage of the relationship, it will be good to have such a person,” said Fred Brown, associate director of Southeast Asia studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. “He is a smart cookie who can hold his own with the Vietnamese.”

Peterson said he believes that his most important job will be to seek full cooperation with the Vietnamese government in accounting for all service personnel still listed as missing in action. Unlike some MIA activists, he said it is unlikely that any MIAs remain alive.

“I would never say ‘never,’ ” he said. “But it is highly unlikely that any American prisoner is being held by any of the governments of Southeast Asia at this juncture. It is becoming more and more unlikely that any American prisoners were transferred to the Soviet Union. I would say it is highly unlikely that anyone is held against their will anywhere in Southeast Asia.”

That is a view that has been advanced by the White House over the last several administrations.

Some MIA activists reject that conclusion, occasionally accusing the United States and Vietnamese governments of a conspiracy to cover up the truth.

Peterson, 60, said that too little was done to resolve MIA cases during the first few crucial years after the war ended. For a while, he said, the Vietnamese were “playing hardball with us” and the U.S. government seemed to do nothing about it, establishing public distrust that persists to this day.

Now, he said, cooperation “is as good as we could have it. . . . They are allowing us to walk into prisons, talk to anyone spontaneously anywhere in the country. They are allowing us into their archives, as limited as they are.”

Peterson, a native of Omaha, flew 66 bombing missions over Vietnam before being shot down in 1966 near Hanoi. After his release, he returned to active duty in the Air Force and served until retiring in 1981.

He went into the computer business and served as director of the specialized treatment program in the psychology department of Florida State University before being elected to Congress in 1990. He also was headmaster of the Dozier School for Boys, a state institution for juvenile offenders.

In 1988, the Republican governor sought to close the school in an economy move, but Peterson lobbied successfully to keep it open.

During his tenure in the House of Representatives, Peterson’s voting record has been close to the Democratic mainstream, although he opposed Clinton on the North American Free Trade Agreement and the ban on assault weapons. He also tried to dissuade Clinton from sending U.S. troops to Haiti, although he supported the operation once forces were deployed.

In 1991, as a freshman, he became a celebrity when he opposed U.S. participation in the Persian Gulf War. Urging then-President George Bush to rely on economic sanctions instead to roll back Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, Peterson said he learned in Vietnam that the United States should never commit troops to combat without firm public support.

Times staff writer Lily Dizon contributed to this report.