Joint Search Team Is Helping U.S., Vietnam Enter a New Era

When a military helicopter crashed in central Vietnam last month, killing 16 U.S. and Vietnamese government representatives, it demonstrated how far the two nations have come since the Vietnam War.

Paradoxically, it was the war itself that brought the victims together 26 years after the last known member of the U.S. armed forces was killed in Vietnam.

Seven U.S. servicemen and nine Vietnamese soldiers and officials died April 7 when their Russian-made helicopter hit the top of a mountain in heavy fog. All 16 were part of a U.S.-Vietnamese mission searching for the remains of Americans lost during the war.

The crash dealt a devastating blow to a program that diplomats say has done more than any other to bridge the gap between the United States and Vietnam.

The deaths of the seven Americans--including two Army lieutenant colonels and an Air Force major--have prompted some to question whether it is worth risking the lives of more Americans to find the remains of those lost in combat three decades ago.

“A lot of people are asking that, but they really shouldn’t have to,” said Douglas “Pete” Peterson, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam. “The first and foremost reason we do it is so that the families of those persons whose fate is unknown have closure. That is not too much to ask for a family that has made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of the freedoms and policies of our nation.”

Since the Joint Task Force--Full Accounting was formed in 1991, one of its priorities has been to find any Americans taken prisoner during the war who might not have been released with other POWs after the Paris peace accords were signed in January 1973.

The Vietnamese government has long denied that any prisoners were kept behind. In more than a decade of searching, the joint team has not turned up any sign of Americans kept in Vietnam against their will after the war.

Today, U.S. officials acknowledge there is little chance that any American left behind in 1973 might still be living here.

“I have always said, ‘I never say never,’ ” said Peterson, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, “but it is not likely, given the time that has passed and the circumstances that they would have had to survive all of these years.”

Mission Opened Door

The 10-year-old mission was the first official presence of the U.S. government in Vietnam after American forces hastily evacuated their embassy in Saigon in 1975. U.S. officials are vague about the cost of the program, but at least $100 million has been spent on the search for the missing in Indochina.

The program has strong backing from many U.S. veterans, including some who have long believed that Americans were left alive in Vietnam.

The Vietnamese government recognizes that the issue is the key to building relations with the United States and has committed personnel, helicopters and other resources to the search.

Vietnam’s search for its own missing lags far behind. About 220,000 members of the North Vietnamese army are still listed as missing, not to mention countless soldiers who fought on the losing side for the South Vietnamese army.

To answer accusations that the Communists kept U.S. prisoners after the war, Hanoi has given American searchers access to prisons, military facilities, remote villages and even the basement of the mausoleum where the body of Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh lies on display in a glass case.

A helicopter is on standby so that a joint team of Americans and Vietnamese can respond immediately to reports of any sighting of a suspected U.S. prisoner anywhere in the country.

During the past decade, the Americans have received more than 2,000 such reports. Most turn out to be foreigners whose presence was already known. Sometimes the “prisoners” have been members of the task force itself, working in the field with Vietnamese soldiers.

“Some of the live sightings in fact were us,” said Air Force Capt. Brad Sturgis, a task force veteran who returned to Vietnam to help with the program after the helicopter crash.

Some cases, however, have warranted serious investigation, such as the report of a sighting of an African American under armed guard in a remote logging camp near the Cambodian border. A witness said the prisoner could be seen with a chain around his neck.

When investigators arrived, they quickly found the man: a Senegalese-Vietnamese who worked as a logger. He often carried chains draped over his shoulders to fasten around the logs. The armed guards were there to protect the timber.

Of 196 servicemen believed to be alive in Vietnam when the war ended, the task force has now accounted for all but 41.

The number of live sighting reports has dwindled almost to nothing in recent years, although a law passed by Congress last year may prompt new reports. Under the Bring Them Home Alive Act, any Vietnamese who helps locate an American prisoner who is still alive is promised U.S. immigrant status.

Vietnamese officials say the measure will not do any good, and privately some Americans agree.

“It only encourages citizens who want to go to the United States to submit false information,” said Vu Khac Nhu, director of the Vietnamese effort to find missing Americans. “We turned over all the prisoners to the United States in 1973. We have no reason to keep anyone in Vietnam after that.”

Remains of Missing

Most of the task force’s effort goes into searching for the remains of the missing. Part detective work and part archeology, the program relies on a search of Pentagon records, interviews with Vietnamese witnesses and excavations of sites where there is a good chance remains of Americans can be recovered.

In its decade of operations, the task force has mounted 64 missions, which often have included excavations at several sites. Usually about 100 troops and specialists are brought in from outside Vietnam to work in teams to locate remains. Then-President Clinton visited one of the digs last year.

The remains of more than 600 Americans have been found and returned to the U.S., reducing the number of those missing in Vietnam to fewer than 2,000. The remains of about three-quarters of the missing are believed to be in Vietnam and the rest in other parts of Southeast Asia, where the task force also operates.

Many of those still listed as missing in Vietnam are pilots whose planes likely crashed into the sea, making recovery difficult, if not impossible.

As time goes on, the cases that remain become even tougher to solve. In many, the searchers have only a vague idea of where the troops were lost. Bones decay quickly in Vietnam’s acidic soil. And witnesses who might provide clues are dying off.

The team of 16 Americans and Vietnamese was flying to Hue to scout sites for the 65th recovery mission when their helicopter suddenly encountered heavy fog and crashed just 10 yards from the top of the mountain.

The American dead included the outgoing head of the program, Lt. Col. Rennie Cory Jr., 43, and the man who was scheduled to replace him, Lt. Col. George D. Martin, 40.

Also killed were two of the three deputy directors of the Vietnamese side of the program, Sr. Col. Tran Van Bien and recently appointed Nguyen Thanh Ha.

The other U.S. victims were Air Force Maj. Charles E. Lewis, Master Sgt. Steven L. Moser, Tech. Sgt. Robert M. Flynn, Navy Chief Petty Officer Pedro Juan Gonzalez and Army Sgt. 1st Class Tommy James Murphy.

Eight excavations, originally scheduled for next month, have been postponed.

On April 14, the remains of the Americans who died in the crash were flown back to the United States, just like the hundreds of remains of MIAs the task force has recovered and shipped back.

Despite the cost in human lives, both the Americans and the Vietnamese say they have no intention of curtailing their effort.

“This has been one of the most successful humanitarian projects that America has ever entered into with any other nation,” Peterson said. “I would be very saddened if we were to arbitrarily withdraw this effort for factors other than the objective of fullest possible accounting. This has been a great success story.”

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Paddock was recently on assignment in Vietnam.