Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 . __ . . -*- N A M V E T -*- ____/ \_ . . ( * \ . . Managing Editor \ Quangtri . . ---------------- \_/\ \_ Hue . . G. Joseph Peck \_Ashau Phu Bai . . \_* \_ . . Editorial Assistants \ * ) . . -------------------- _/ Danang . . Pete Farias \|/ ( \_*Chu Lai . . Sarge Hultgren --*-- \_ ------- \__ . . /|\ \_ I Corps \ . . Distribution Manager \ ------- ! . . ------------ /\_____ ! . . Jerry Hindle / ! \ . . ! !___ \ . . Section Editors ! \/\____! . . --------------- ! ! . . AGENT ORANGE: Martin H. Kroll, Sr. / Dak To ! . . IN-TOUCH: Ray "Frenchy" Moreau / * / . . INCARCERATED VETS: Joyce Flory ! \_ . . HOMELESSNESS: Lefty Frizzell ! Phu Cat\ . . FEDERAL BENEFITS: Jim Hildwine \ * * ) . . \ Pleiku ) . . -**- N A M V E T -**- \ \ . . / / . . "In the jungles of 'Nam, some of us ( -------- ! . . were scared and wary, but we pulled _\ II Corps ! . . one another along and were able / -------- \ . . to depend on each other. That has \ \ . . never changed. Today, free of the ! * / . . criticisms and misunderstandings _/ Nhatrang / . . many veterans have endured, _/ / . . NAM VET is a shining beacon, __/ ! . . a ray of hope, and a _ __/ \ ! . . reminder that the _____( )/ ! Camranh Bay . . lessons learned / !__ ! . . at such a high / \ / . . price shall not \ Bien Hoa \ / . . be forgotten - ! Chu Chi * \ __/ . . nor the errors \_ * --------- \ ___/ . . repeated!!!" ____ \ III Corps \ _/ . . / \_____) )_(_ --------- !__/ Duplication in . . ! ( ___/ any form permitted . . _____! \__ * ___/ for NONCOMMERCIAL . . ! Saigon/ purposes ONLY! . . \___ -------- / \/ . . \ IV Corps / For other use, contact: . . ) -------- / . . / ! G. Joseph Peck (413) 442-1660 . . / ____/ Managing Editor . . / Mekong/ . . ! Delta/ This newsletter is comprised of articles . . ! ____/ and items from individuals and other . . ! / sources. We are not responsible for the . . ! / content of this information nor are any of . . ! __/ NAM VETs contributors or Section Editors. . . \_/ gjp . . . NAM VET Newsletter Page i Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 ================================================================= T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S 1. Editorials n' Things Worth Thinkin' About Talk about goin' into a tailspin!!! ..................... 1 Who's at the other end of the line? ..................... 3 It didn't seem like Christmas ........................... 4 2. Across the pond... '74 Report Says "POWs still in 'Nam!" ................... 5 Where we should also look for our POWs .................. 7 Interim Report on SEA POW/MIA Issue ..................... 11 They haven't forgutten US!!! ............................ 20 Washington sells out POWs - Explosive Senate Report! .... 21 Legacy of a Covert War .................................. 24 Incarcerated Vets remember MIA/POWs ..................... 29 Christmas Tree Hijacked! ................................ 30 3. From Aztec Shore to Arctic Zone Part 1: USCG in SEA - The Vietnam Conflict ............. 31 4. ATTACK on the U.S.S. Liberty!!! The Liberty - What does the government DO with the truth? 39 "Truth" Held Hostage by Government Employment ........... 42 5. In-Touch In-Touch: What is it??? ................................. 45 IN-TOUCH Registration/Request Form!!! ................... 48 6. The NamVet Chapel Chaplain Jim??? ......................................... 50 The Electronic Chapel ................................... 52 7. Don't Abandon 'em Updating our Incarcerated Vets List ..................... 53 Incarcerated Vets Care for Needy Outsider's ............. 55 A visit or note once in awhile? ......................... 57 Incarcerated NamVets: Treated equally? .................. 58 VVA supports Incarcerated Vet Service ................... 65 Operation Self-Help for Incarcerated Vets ............... 66 "Caring" - from the inside out! ......................... 71 8. Hearts n' Minds NOT SOON TO FORGET ...................................... 73 Lets NOT let history repeat itself! ..................... 74 Is EVERYVET "not well"? ................................. 76 EVERYVET's A-OK!!! ...................................... 77 Statistics of Vietnam ................................... 84 Here puppy, here puppy... ............................... 85 9. Ol' Glory n' Shiftin' Sands Viet Vets View Similar, BUT... .......................... 86 No flags in the desert? Gimme a break! ................. 87 Thanksgiving Day Revisited .............................. 89 Whaddya MEAN - NO FLAG!!! ............................... 90 Top Ten in Saudi ........................................ 91 10. Uncle Sam wants YOU to know Disabled Vets - Last on the List? ....................... 92 Break out the Clearasil ! ........................... 93 VA To Test Mobile Clinics ............................... 94 VA Bills Insurance Companies ............................ 95 11. Concentrated IVVEC/NamVet Service The NamVet Service Desk ................................. 96 Things get worse before... .............................. 98 Congressman Says "We'll try THIS route..." .............. 100 Start Early!!! .......................................... 101 12. Please keep this in mind FIREBASE FREEDOM "91" ................................... 102 The Freedom Foundation .................................. 103 Some Gave All... ........................................ 107 NAM VET Newsletter Page ii Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 ================================================================= E d i t o r i a l s n ' T h i n g s W o r t h T h i n k i n ' A b o u t ================================================================= Talk about goin' into a tailspin!!! By G. Joseph Peck NamVet's Managing Editor VETLink #1 - Pittsfield, MA (413) 443-6313 Hiya NamVet brothers n' sisters! FINALLY, after retrofitting all of the other articles you'll be seeing in this month's issue, I've got a chance to sit down and write something from ME to YOU. I don't know HOW I made it this month (we're only four days late but, to me, that's like four decades late!). The past few months here have been difficult at best. On the verge of losing our house/home for over a year now, seems one positive thing after another kept happening and happening - just positive enough to keep us here, not positive enough to help us make any progress, except in an area that is dear to MY heart: veterans and veteran service. The clock was strikin' the 23rd hour, 59th minute, 59th second when a very dear friend said "No problem, Joe. Ya need help? How much do ya need?" I tol' him, he offered me work to pay it off - and wrote out a check for the amount we needed to re-finance the second mortgage. NOW all we gotta work on is the FIRST mortgage and the other bills... And that was the BEGINNING of a warp-drive change to this veterans self-image and self-esteem! Seems that the very next morning one of the temporary services I'm registered with called with employment for me - in a legal firm helpin' with letter writing and legal form preparation. First day on the job I felt like I'd been there a l-o-n-g time... have some great "firing line" experience doin' battle with federal and state bureaucracies... Where before I was comin' in to work in jeans and casual shirts now it's State Capitol cammy-type: suit & tie ... and it DOES something to what I've been starting to believe about this guy who'd applied for job-after-job only to discover the many reasons others had for denying very-needed employment. And now some "Are you interested in X position" letters are beginnin' to come in from the Post Office... finally. With 'nuff persistence and determination, I suppose, a body CAN find decent employment where s/he's got the SECURITY account paid first. But, with all the SECURITY "I've" known since my Army days, I've learned that it isn't SECURITY that I really want - its gettin' out here in the BBS world and blazin' new trails for veterans who NEED service, veterans who NEED to find someone else at the end of the line when the shadows are about beatin' 'em down... showin' and sharin' the UNITY in our veteran commUNITY! Many of ya were here "way back when" Todd and I used to carry on our conversations about "keep on keepin' on" and things WILL NAM VET Newsletter Page 1 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 happen. Many of ya have talked with me VOICE and TRIED to tell me that "Hey... ya gotta keep the wolf away from the door!" I remember too, the many who said "Joe, you're digging a grave for yourself and your family! Get out an' get a job, pick up aluminum cans, do dishes... ANYTHING!" "I'm not digging a grave - I'm building a solid foundation! PLUS - I'm writing about what I'm doin' and sharin' it with my brother n' sister veterans. Somewhere, someplace, somehow - somebody ELSE will see what I see in serving our veteran community via computer; somebody ELSE will see the value in providing on- line veteran camaraderie, help and support to housebound and homebound veterans - veterans who sometimes don't see beyond the four walls of their rooms for days, weeks and months; somebody ELSE will see, REALLY SEE, the help, the caring, the concern that daily goes on throughout all of the US and the world through a veteran-oriented BBS." "Digging a grave? I don't think so. We're gettin' the tee's crossed, and the eye's dotted." Yeah... I can SEE the change in a self-image... WOW! Can I really see it! Amazin' what "having a job" does for ya! It puts a LOT of meaning behind: HAVE A TERRIFIC HOLIDAY SEASON!!!! Merry Christmas Happy Hannukah and the best of all New Year's to each 'n every one of ya!!! 'til next month... Show a brother/sister veteran That YOU care!!! Ci'ao for Ni'ao - Joe - NAM VET Newsletter Page 2 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 Who's at the other end of the line? Subject: American Association of Vietnam Vets Date: 19 Nov 90 17:48:23 By: G. Joseph Peck NamVet's Managing Editor East VETLink #1 - Pittsfield, MA (413) 443-6313 ALERT!!! I received a telephone call this evening from a young lad named Ralph Savage. The telephone call began with all KINDS of information about the plight of our brother n' sister 'Nam vets... (ie "Did you know that over 35,000 have committed suicide ?" "Did you know that over 50 percent of America's homeless are Vietnam Vets "?) When I asked Ralph, "Are you Tax-Exempt" ... he said, "No, but we've applied for it." He then put down the phone, shuffled through what sounded like a lot of papers, then came back on the line to tell me that the American Association of Vietnam Vets has a Board of Directors, etc. etc. "Where are you located?" "In Santa Rosa, CA" I then asked Ralph, "Are you a Vietnam vet?" "Yes," he said. "When did you serve?" "Uh... Uh... I didn't... My father did..." I might have liked to hear the rest of his story and the rest of his appeal and would have liked to have learned WHAT they're tryin' to do for our brothers n' sisters, but, for ME... A story that STARTS "full of holes, inconsistences, and untruths" smacks all the way of a bogus appeal for funds. If any of *-YOU-* hear from this organization, please try to find out more about it for all of us in here. Seems "MY" triggers go off too easily lately... If this organization IS valid, it deserves some help (and maybe someone could tell 'em a little about 'having accurate facts at hand BEFORE they go public') 12/10/90 Update! -- Local VVA chapter informed me that people are calling them up and asking them if they have anything at all to do with the above. (They do not.) One lady was smart 'nuff to get an address from 'em: which is NOT in California: American Association of Vietnam Veterans P. O. Box 18207 Washington, D.C. 20036 Can someone in or near them please check 'em out??? NAM VET Newsletter Page 3 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 It didn't seem like Christmas By Douglas A. Martz Army Times - 12/17/90 Input by: G. Joseph Peck NamVet's Managing Editor VETLink #1 - Pittsfield, MA (413) 443-6313 It didn't seem like Christmas. Christmas meant being home with the family gathered around a blazing fire. Here in Bien Hon, north of Saigon, the sun was bright; the heat was, as always, oppressive; and sweat was a constant companion. It didn't seem to matter that we were celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace. We were in a combat zone and doing the things it took just to stay alive. I wondered what my new daughter, 7 months old, was like now. Perhaps taking her first step, sleeping through the night, cutting her first tooth, smiling at her mother - and not at me. I wondered if I would ever see her again. In the nine days I had been with her before leaving the States, she had captured my soul. There was a part of me missing, and I would not be whole until we were reunited. I was terribly lonely, and feeling right sorry for myself. The sun was shining all around, but I could not keep the darkness away. A knock at the door. Another soldier in the same hootch. Another soldier with young children who will not remember their father if he fails to return. But he's grinning. "Come on over," he said, "and share some cookies. My wife wrote and said my daughter backed them. She said she helped 'just a little.' Come on over and share them with me." I went. Everyone was there - all the guys who shared this building every day, guys recalled from the field to serve here. Someone had brought soda, someone else cheese. I retrieved some pictures and food packages sent from home. We shared our "bounty," there together with the ache of separation. I looked at the familiar faces of young-men-grown-old sharing their food and themselves. I knew I had misjudged. It seemed just like Christmas. ------------------------------------ Army Lt. Col. Douglas A. Martz and his wife, Anne, live in Elgin, Ill., with their three children. Amy Elizabeth, whom he missed at Christmas, is now 20 and engaged. NAM VET Newsletter Page 4 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 ================================================================= A c r o s s t h e p o n d . . . ================================================================= POWs STILL IN VIETNAM, '74 REPORT SAYS By: Bill Gertz The Washington Times 10/29/90 P. A7 Input by: Sarge Hultgren NamVet Editorial Assistant Freedom's Choice BBS - Lynn, MA (617) 593-2605 ^^ This File Is Reproduced "AS IS" from the ORIGINAL DOCUMENT ^^ A Senate report to be released today says the U.S. government reported secretly in 1974 that "several hundred" Americans still were held captive from the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia. The Senate report, which revealed the conclusion of the still- secret Defense Intelligence Agency report, does not address the possibility that U.S. military personnel are still in captivity. The last known U.S. prisoner of war held by the Viet Cong in Vietnam was released in April 1973. The report says that despite "internal policies and public statements after April 1973, that "no evidence" existed of living POWs, the DIA authoritatively concluded as late as April 1974 that several hundred POWs and MIAs were still held captive in Southeast Asia. The Washington Times obtained a copy of the Interim Report on the Southeast Asian POW/MIA Issue, produced by the Republican staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and set for release today. The issue highlights the possibility that a conflict against Iraq could revive the problem of recovering POWs, the report states. Secretary of State James A. Baker III also has said recently that the POW issue is the last remaining obstacle to normalized relations with Vietnam. The report is based on a yearlong investigation of the U.S. government's handling of the POW-MIA issue and is continuing. It concludes that the U.S. government stance that there is no evidence of American POWs in the region "cannot be supported." The Senate report supports charges by critics that the Pentagon and other government agencies with covered up or discredited reports that Americans were being held captive by the communist governments of Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia since the end of the war. "This [DIA] report undercuts 17 years of official denials that POWs remained in captivity," said one committee investigator. Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said a large majority of the American public believes U.S. prisoners are still alive in Vietnam. "Clearly, the U.S. government no longer maintains credibility on this issue," Mr. Helms said in an introduction to the report. In a related development, a Pentagon source said the National Reconnaissance Office, a supersecret photographic intelligence agency, obtained photographs of suspected American captives in Laos earlier this year. A Pentagon spokeswomen declined to comment on the report. The Pentagon stated in July that "although thus far we have been NAM VET Newsletter Page 5 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 unable to prove that Americans are still being detained against their will, the information available to us precludes ruling out that possibility." According to a new book on the subject, "Kiss the Boys Goodbye," the administration scrapped plans for two covert operations to rescue captive Americans in Southeast Asia in 1981 and 1983. An intelligence source said the CIA vetoed the operations because the rescue would have publicized past covert activities. According to the Senate report, the DIA concluded "beyond a doubt that several hundred living American POWs remained in captivity in Southeast Asia. This was a full year after Defense Department spokesmen were saying publicly that no prisoners remain." Congressional investigators for the first time were permitted to examine about 400 of the approximately 1,400 secret DIA reports of "live sightings" of Americans in Southeast Asia since 591 POWs were repatriated by the Vietnamese in 1973. At that time, the Pentagon declared, and subsequent administrations have repeated, that there are no living POWs left. As a result, the Senate report states, the emphasis has been to recover the remains of those killed in action rather than seek out living prisoners. A total of 2,103 cases of POWs or MIAs remain unresolved, according to the report. The report also states that the number of missing Americans could double if those captured or killed during covert paramilitary operations between 1973 and 1975 are factored in. NAM VET Newsletter Page 6 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 Seven New Areas That Were Classified In "Kiss The Boys Goodbye" By: Michael Van Atta P.O. Box 302, Chatham, N.J. 07928 Input by: Sarge Hultgren NamVet Editorial Assistant Freedom's Choice BBS - Lynn, MA (617) 593-2605 ^^ This File Is Reproduced "AS IS" from the ORIGINAL DOCUMENT ^^ [From: 11/1/90 Dear Insiders (ISSUE #21)] (This information service, provides Bush appointees with facts & proof that Vietnam and Laos still hold US prisoners in captivity, alive in their prison systems, in 1990.) The SOVIET UNION and its involvement inside of Vietnam with captured U.S. POW's is a STATE SECRET, in the USA! At a SECRET debriefing facility in VINH, North Vietnam, captured U.S. prisoners, who had special knowledge, were interrogated by Soviet and Chinese Advisors. U.S. POW's with special knowledge in the areas of electronic countermeasures and military combat order of battle knowledge, who were taken to the SECRET facility at VINH would never return home according to defectors, ralliers, and workers at this VINH facility who have been debriefed by U.S. intelligence. "All of the U.S. POW's taken to this VINH complex were given three options- transfer to the U.S.S.R., transfer to China, or death." (see CIA report #CS-311/04439-71) The U.S. feared, during the Vietnam War, that the conflict would escalate into a super power war, pitting U.S. troops against Soviet and Chinese troops, in a direct combat role. Although, this fear was publicly expressed, the exposure of the extent to which Soviet and Chinese advisors were involved in a combat role, was thought to be so, politically sensitive, that the intelligence communities confirming acknowledgment, was and still is today, withheld as a STATE SECRET, in the USA. Although, the Vietnam War ended in 1975, it was not until May 1989 that the Chinese government publicly admitted that its troops had a direct combat role. "China admitted for the first time yesterday it sent more than 300,000 combat troops to Vietnam to fight against U.S. forces..." Chinese officials said that, "more than 4,000 Chinese soldiers were killed during the war. "The United States claimed repeatedly during the Vietnam War that there was evidence that Chinese forces were involved in the war. In April 1989 the Soviet Union confirmed politically, for the first time, that they also had a direct combat role in the Vietnam War, and had awarded medals to Soviet officers who, "helped shoot down 24 U.S. bombers. "But, the U.S. has remained silent, in exposing the extent of its knowledge of the Soviet combat role in Vietnam, because most of the U.S. intelligence on the Soviet role, remains highly classified, SECRET. The powers to be, have silenced all who talk about the Soviet combat role, and Soviet control of U.S. POW's. In fact, many at Defense Intelligence have made public statements denying any U.S. knowledge of the Soviet combat role in Vietnam NAM VET Newsletter Page 7 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 and denying that any captured U.S. POW's were moved to the Soviet Union. In December 1988, the DIA Director, Lt. Gen. Leonard Perroots wrote in the Armed Forces Journal, "There is absolutely nothing to suggest that any of our men were ever taken from Vietnam to the Soviet Union or any other Eastern-bloc nation." Stated assurances by DIA directors, denying that they have seen classified information to the contrary, erode public faith in government officials. General Perroots remarks are disputed by several others. In May 1990 Col. Schlatter told a group of veterans in a meeting at the State Department that Jon Sweeney (MIA 2/19/69-released 6/17/70) "was taken from Vietnam to the Soviet Union, and then to Stockholm where he was released." Jerry Mooney in March 1989 provided an affidavit, stating that while he was an employee of NSA he tracked, through enemy radio intercepts, the capture of U.S. POW's who were "Moscow Bound". Larry Hagerty in April 1990, with the Freedom Now TV Network, taped another former NSA employee who stated that he electronically tracked, captured U.S. POW's where were taken to VINH, North Vietnam (the SECRET Soviet debriefing site). These American POW's were then, taken back to Sam Neua, Laos (the headquarters for the Pathet Lao), and "flown on IL-14 Soviet type aircraft to the Soviet Union." Although, the U.S. POW's who were released in 1973, were debriefed about their contact with Soviet advisors, while prisoners, all of their debriefings are still, SECRET. Only by reviewing debriefings of defectors and ralliers, can one piece together a clearer picture of the Soviet combat role in Vietnam, a story that is still, a SECRET. Clearly, the Soviets took an active role in planning operations, but did they participate in combat? Were the Soviets directly responsible for the death of U.S. soldiers and did the Soviets suffer casualties? The Soviets helped develop sophisticated propaganda plans as captured propaganda material, printed in the Soviet Union, indicates. U.S. troops fought against Soviet supplied weapons, logistical support and manpower. There are many indications that Soviet Advisors worked deep inside Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam, in addition to their direct role at Surface-to-Air, (SAM) missile sites in North Vietnam. ^^ In 1970 Bui Con Tuong, defected and told that in 1967 he escorted a Soviet delegation to Kien Hoa, South Vietnam to see a "liberated" hamlet in the Mekong Delta. He escorted 5-Russian officers including a Soviet 1-star general and a captain, with a heavy security element that crossed over from Cambodia. During the trip, they came under fire briefly by U.S. and ARVN troops. ^^ In May 1965 Nguyen Van Ton defected and stated that he, "escorted Russians on military operations in War Zone C." ^^ In 1967 a Navy SEAL Team killed a Soviet Advisor in combat in Kien Gia Province and a U.S. Intelligence Officer confirmed that the Team had killed a Russian Advisor. ^^ In September 1969 Dr. Dang Tan defected in Pleiku Province and stated he saw Soviet Advisors in South Vietnam and Laos, who carried arms. He was in contact with 4 or 5 groups of foreign NAM VET Newsletter Page 8 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 military advisors including Cubans, Chinese, North Koreans, and Soviets who came to study the battlefield in South Vietnam. ^^ On October 29, 1967 Thomas Roubideaux on a L.R.R.P. ambushed and killed a Soviet fire team, including a Soviet Advisor and captured a secret Soviet "Dragunov' (SVD) sniper rifle that was used against U.S. troops. ^^ Many intelligence reports show that NSA intercepted a lot of Russian voice transmissions from Takeo Province, Cambodia using code words to direct secret missions. ^^ In late 1967 Truong Nhu Trang, a NLF rallier, said he was with Soviet visitors inside of South Vietnam when they were hit by a B-52 strike. ^^ In 1971 GRU operatives, acting as elite Soviet Spetsnaz Units operated, in South Vietnam. Russians disguised as Americans, were targeting U.S. SOG teams effectiveness. SOG teams who detected the Soviets, claim that some of the Soviets were killed and some Soviets were captured. ^^ In 1969 a Soviet Mi-6 Helicopter was ambushed in Darlac Province, killing 7-Soviet crewman. Intelligence sources confirm that Soviets piloted choppers delivering troops and supplies into Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam. ^^ A Viet Cong defector (identity withheld) claimed that Soviet submarines unloaded people and munitions along the South Vietnamese coast. ^^ In 1971 U.S. Intelligence reported that about a dozen Soviets were attached to the VC 3001st. battalion in An Xuyen Province. ^^ In July 1966 Soviets piloted a MIG jet that downed a U.S. C-47D, an airborne Command and Control aircraft. ^^ In June 1968 north of the Ben Hai River, near the DMZ, between 9 and 12 Soviet built and piloted Mi-4 helicopters, carrying Soviet STYX missiles were tracked on U.S. radar. U.S. Navy Phantom jets shot down all of the helicopters. General Cao Van Vien's staff said, "There were Russians aboard these Helicopters." ^^ A Pathet Lao defector (identity withheld) told of Soviet officers at Pathet Lao headquarters complex at Ban Na Kay Neua. He confirmed that Soviet manned helicopters flew between Hanoi and Sam Neua. ^^ There are several 100 intelligence reports that are eye witness sightings of Soviets, in the field of battle, inside South Vietnam. Soviets operating with enemy units were sighted near Camau in February 1973, at An Loc in November 1973, and outside of Danang in February 1974. Clearly, Soviet Advisors in Vietnam took on an active combat role in fightings against Americans and put their hands on captured U.S. POW's. Sincerely, Telephone (201) 701-0238 NAM VET Newsletter Page 9 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 Michael Van Atta, P.O. Box 302, Chatham, N.J. 07928 Prisoners of War & Missing In Action What happened to the Americans who were captured alive in the Vietnam war who were not released? Find out in a new book "Kiss the Boys Goodbye" by Monika & Bill Stevenson. To order, send $20.00 to Mike Vanatta, P.O. Box 302, Chatham, N.J. 07928 NAM VET Newsletter Page 10 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 Interim Report on SEA POW/MIA Issue Input by: Sarge Hultgren NamVet Editorial Assistant Freedom's Choice BBS - Lynn, MA (617) 593-2605 ^^ This File Is Reproduced "AS IS" from the ORIGINAL DOCUMENT ^^ UNITED Interim Report on the STATES Southeast Asian SENATE POW/MIA Issue (Seal) By the U.S. Senate Committee On Foreign Relations Republican Staff Release Date: Monday, October 20, 1990 United States Senate Committee On Foreign Relations Washington, DC 20510-6225 October 26, 1990 Dear Republican Colleague: Enclosed is an Interim Report prepared by the Minority Staff of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on the U.S. Government's handling of the POW/MIA matter. This summary document represents a year of intensive investigation, culminating in a major breakthrough in the careful examination of DIA live-sighting reports on POW/MIAs -- the first time in 17 years that an independent branch of the government has had an opportunity to make an objective evaluation of the methods used in accounting for those categorized as POW/MIAs in Southeast Asia. On October 17, 1990, the Foreign Minister of Vietnam, Nguyen Cao Thac addressed a coffee at the Foreign Relations Committee and attended by Senators of the Committee as well as invited guests. In my opinion, the department of State's invitation to Thac to visit the United States was inappropriate at a time when the Executive Branch is still unwilling to address the hard issue of living American POWs still being held captive in Southeast Asia. The thrust of Thac's address was to call for the acceleration of the time table for renewal of relations between the governments of Vietnam and the United States. Thac indicated that the resolution of the POW/MIA issue is one of two major areas of contention. Furthermore, Thac stated that he had agreed to all terms levied by the President through his special envoy, General John Vessey USA (Ret.). But in re-stating the terms to which he had agreed, Thac never once mentioned that the issue of living American POWs in Vietnam had been addressed. The position of the Executive Branch is that there is "no evidence" that living Americans existing SE Asia, nor were any left after American prisoners were returned in 1973. Nevertheless, public opinion polls continue to suggest that 62% of the American people believe that U.S. POW/MIAs are still in NAM VET Newsletter Page 11 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 Vietnam, and 84% of Vietnam veterans believe so. Clearly the U.S. Government no longer maintains credibility on this issue. For this reason, a year ago, I assigned investigators on the Minority Staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to conduct a staff investigation of the handling of the POW/MIA issue by the U.S. Government. These investigators are highly trained professionals, with a total of more than 68 years of investigative experience in the Executive Branch, including criminal investigation experience, as well as more than 17 years of experience in intelligence analysis. All served in Vietnam and are knowledgeable about history, geography, and language of that unfortunate country. The investigation has proceeded quietly, and without public fanfare. But much remains to be done. Information developed in the course of the inquiry was the result of the following methods: 1) face to face and telephonic interviews; 2) review of various classified and unclassified official documents; 3) corroborative information from government and private sources; and 4) historical research. This report is in all respects an interim report: It is incomplete and it is a summary report of conclusions which must be further tested. The Committee on Foreign Relations has authority to engage in oversight of POW/MIA issues implicit in its broad mandate to study and review foreign policy. Senate Rule 25.lj specifically refers to the Committee on Foreign Relations matters dealing with: "[11.] Intervention abroad and declarations of war," and "[15.] Protection of United States citizens abroad and expatriation." The focus of the inquiry has centered on the following questions: 1. Does the U.S. Government possess valid information concerning living POWs in Southeast Asia? 2. Has the U.S. Government failed to act on information concerning living POWs in Southeast Asia? 3. Has the U.S. Government acted improperly to intimidate, coerce, or discredit sources which have valid information concerning living POWs in Southeast Asia? I believe that the investigators have come to valid conclusions, although of course much of the material they reviewed remains classified. Moreover, I believe that the American people have the right to see that this inquiry is pursued to a proper conclusion. I am deeply grateful for the enormous contribution of Senator Chuck Grassley who, out of his deep concern for American service personnel, joined me at the very beginning and supported and encouraged it at every step. Sincerely, /s/ Jesse Helms JESSE HELMS:lb "Accountability lies in oversight by Congress or in criticism from the electorate, but not in the judgement of the courts." NAM VET Newsletter Page 12 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 -- From Smith vs. Regan, United States Court of Appeals, for the Fourth Circuit, No. 87-1661, April 20, 1988, regarding the POW/MIA issue. INTRODUCTION One year ago, the Ranking Minority Member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations assigned members of the Minority Staff to investigate the following questions: 1) Whether the United States Government has received and still possesses valid information concerning living prisoners of war/missing in action -- POW/MIAs -- in Southeast Asia; 2) Whether the U.S. Government has failed to act on such information; and 3) Whether the U.S. Government has acted improperly to intimidate and discredit sources of such information. The primary purpose of this investigation has been, and will continue to be, to determine whether the U.S. government has handled the question in a truthful and effective manner. But if it results in a determination that even one POW may still be alive, it will result in a dividend of blessings. The inquiry remains on-going. It is based not only on the review of thousands of classified and non-classified documents, but also upon hundreds of telephonic and face-to-face interviews with government officials and those affected by their decisions with regard to POW/MIAs. A full report will require much additional investigation and analysis. The following, however, represents an interim report at the conclusion of one year's work. It allows the presentation of some preliminary conclusions. PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS The U.S. Government states it has no evidence that POWs were left behind in Southeast Asia. The official policy asserts that it is open to investigation of all reports. For example, the official Department of Defense (DOD) POW-MIA Fact Book, issued July, 1990, states: Although we have thus far been unable to prove that Americans are still detained against their will, the information available to us precludes ruling out that possibility. Actions to investigate live sighting reports receive and will continue to receive necessary priority and resources based on the assumption that at least some Americans are still held captive. Should any report prove true, we will take appropriate action to ensure the return of those involved. Notwithstanding this professed openness to new evidence, the U.S. Government has insisted since April 12, 1973, that it has no evidence of living POWs. In fact, on that date - at the conclusion of OPERATION HOMECOMING, which brought home 591 POWs - Dr. Roger Shields, then Assistant Secretary of Defense, stated that the DOD had "no evidence that there were any more POWs still alive in all of Indochina." The assertion has been consistent. For example, last July, Col. Joseph A. Schlatter, then chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency's Special Office for POW/MIAs, was saying that "If we look at everything we collected during the war and everything we've NAM VET Newsletter Page 13 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 collected since the war, we don't find any evidence that Americans are captive." Furthermore, as late as October, 1990, an unnamed "senior State Department official" was quoted in the press as saying the U.S. Government has "no evidence" of living American prisoners in Southeast Asia. However, to say that the U.S. Government has "no evidence" is not the same as saying that no evidence exists. After all, there have been nearly 11,700 reports relating to POW/MIAs over the years, including 1,400 first-hand, live-sighting reports. The question is whether every single one of these reports can be dismissed from the category of credible evidence. The U.S. Government position makes sense only if every single one of these reports can be shown to have been fabricated, erroneous, or not relating directly to a POW/MIA -- for example, some reports may relate to Europeans in the area. In fact, DIA analysts have rejected the evidence of all these reports, except for a small pool of less than 150 still considered "unresolved." The preliminary conclusions presented by staff for review by Senators are as follows: 1. After the conclusion of OPERATION HOMECOMING in April, 1973, brought the return of the 591 POWs, official U.S. Government policy internally adopted and acted upon the presumption that all other POWs were dead, despite public assertions that the government was still open to investigating the possibility of discovering the existence of living prisoners. 2. Following the adoption of an internal policy in April, 1973, that all POW/MIAs were presumed dead, the U.S. Government, convened commissions in each military service to consider each case on the POW/MIA list in order to make a statutory declaration of presumption of death. 3. While there is no reason to believe that the majority, if not most, of the declarations of presumptive death are incorrect, staff review of live-sighting report files at DIA found a disturbing pattern of arbitrary rejection of evidence that connected a sighting to a specific POW/MIA or U.S. POW/MIAs in general. 4. The pattern of arbitrary rejection resulted in a declaration of presumptive finding of death for every such individual case, except one. 5. The internal policy that all POW/MIAs were presumed dead resulted in an emphasis on finding and identifying remains of dead personnel, rather than searching for living POW/MIAs. 6. The desire to identify specific sets of remains with specific names on the POW/MIA listed led DOD to an exaggeration of the capabilities of forensic science, and identification based on dubious presumptions and illogical deductions rather than actual physical identification -- a process which resulted in numerous misidentifications of remains. 7. Despite adherence to internal policies and public statements after April, 1973 that "no evidence" existed of living POW/MIAs, DIA authoritatively concluded as late as April, 1974 that several hundred living POW/MIAs were still held captive in South East Asia. 8. Although the Pathet Lao declared on April 3, 1973, NAM VET Newsletter Page 14 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 that Laotian Communist forces were holding American POWs and were prepared to give an accounting, nine days later a DOD spokesman declared that there were no more American prisoners anywhere in South East Asia. No POWs held by Laotian Communist forces ever returned. The evidence indicates that the U.S. Government made a decision to abandon U.S. citizens still in the custody of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, at the conclusion of U.S. involvement in the Second Indochina War. 9. U.S. casualties, including POW/MIAs in South East Asia, resulting from covert or cross border operation, may not be included on the list of those missing. 10. The executive branch has failed to address adequately the concerns of the family members of the POW/MIAs, and has profoundly mishandled the POW/MIA problem. DEFINITION OF POW/MIA The subject of POW/MIAs requires some definitions. After the Second Indochina War -- popularly known as the Vietnam War, even though Thailand, Burma, Laos and Cambodia saw U.S. combat action -- hundreds of POWs returned alive, notably in OPERATION HOMECOMING, which concluded in April, 1973. Those who did not return home are classified by the Department of Defense into two categories: POW/MIAs -- that is, those for whom there is some documentation that they were captured but never repatriated; and KIA/BNRs -- that is, those believed to have been killed in action, but whose bodies were not recovered. For the latter, there is no evidence of their death except DOD's evaluation of the circumstances, even though no physical evidence of death may be available. In April, 1973, DOD reported that 2,383 personnel were unaccounted for: 1,259 POW/MIAs, and 1,124 KIA/BNRs. This study assumes that both categories of the unaccounted for deserve review. Since 1973 DOD has announced the return of 280 sets of remains, diminishing the overall number by that amount. In addition, there could well be an equal number of military personnel missing in action from various U.S. covert actions during the war. Since DOD files on covert actions have not been opened, and the participants in such actions never publicly identified, this inquiry could not establish any number for covert POW/MIAs. However, public source books and interviews with participants suggests that the issue of covert operations adds a substantial, but unknown, dimension to the MIA question which has received no scrutiny. REVIEW OF LIVE-SIGHTING DOCUMENTS In this inquiry, staff has reviewed hundreds of U.S. Government classified, declassified, and open-source documents. In addition, Senator Grassley and Committee Minority Staff were given access to, and have reviewed personally, hundreds of classified live- sighting reports (accounts by Southeast Asians of live POWs in Southeast Asia) in the files of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). According to DIA, this is the first time that either a United States Senator or any United States Congressional Committee staff have been given access to the raw intelligence contained in the 1,400 live-sighting reports. Out of the 1,400 live-sighting reports, approximately 1,200 are considered by DIA to be "resolved." Each of the so-called "resolved" sightings was resolved by concluding that the live- NAM VET Newsletter Page 15 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 sighting report did not pertain to U.S. POWs present after April, 1979. Staff felt that in some cases such a conclusion was correct, but that in many it was not supported by the facts. Staff began by first examining so-called resolved cases in order to study DIA methodology by which a conclusion of "resolution" was reached. Since the guidelines set by DIA for access to the files were extremely restrictive, the time available allowed review of only about one-quarter of the so-called "resolved" cases, and none of those in the category of "unresolved." Nevertheless, staff concluded that a significant number of the "resolved" cases reviewed showed that the DIA methodology was faulty, or that the evidence did not support the DIA conclusion in the case, or both. The information collected and reviewed to date by the staff shows that the position held by the United States Government -- namely, that no evidence exists that Americans are still being held against their will -- cannot be supported. Rather, the information uncovered during this inquiry provides enough corroboration to cast doubt upon the veracity of the U.S. Government's conclusion. Without revealing classified information, staff believes that the review of the classified live-sighting reports reinforces that doubt. Although more information remains to be reviewed, the evidence this inquiry has thus far uncovered shows that: 1) living U.S. citizens, military and civilian, were held in Southeast Asia against their will after the U.S. Government's statement on April 13, 1973, that no prisoners remained alive; and 2) the information available to the U.S. Government does not rule out the probability that U.S. citizens are still being held in Southeast Asia. In fact, classified, declassified and unclassified information all confirm one startling fact: That DOD in April, 1974, concluded beyond a doubt that several hundred living American POWs remained in captivity in Southeast Asia. This was a full year after DOD spokesman were saying publicly that no prisoners remained alive. Evidence uncovered in the several hundred cases reviewed thus far clearly demonstrates that, in a disturbing number of cases, DOD made significant errors in drawing conclusions about live- sighting reports, the presumed death of individuals, or about individuals that were unaccounted for at the conclusion of the war. Although many cases resolved correctly based upon the files, there were too many errors apparent to rule out the need to undertake and complete the review of the "unresolved" cases. Staff also concluded that DOD spent an excessive amount of effort in discrediting live-sighting reports, while exaggerating or mishandling forensic data in order to confirm a presumptive finding of death. DOD appeared to be more anxious to declare a presumptive finding of death than in following up reports of sightings with creative investigative work. Furthermore, there is evidence of insensitivity on the part of the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government in providing complete and accurate information to the next-of-kin of missing American servicemen. The classified evidence in DIA files suggests a pattern by a few U.S. Government officials of misleading Congressional inquiries by concealing information, and misinterpreting or NAM VET Newsletter Page 16 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 manipulating data in government files. Interested Senators and staff with proper clearances no doubt will want to review the classified files themselves and draw their own conclusions. THE 1973 POLICY DECISION Those who have not dealt with the POW/MIA issue may find it difficult to understand how DOD's analysis of the information could be in error. Unfortunately, staff believes that DOD has allowed its procedures to be dictated by a preconceived policy finding. The New York Times reported on April 12, 1973, as follows: WASHINGTON, April 12 (AP) -- The Pentagon, two months after the first American prisoners of war began coming home, said today that it had no evidence that there were any more prisoners still alive in all of Indochina. Despite the fact that interviews with all returning prisoners are nearly complete, a Pentagon official, Dr. Roger Shields, said that none of the 1,389 Americans listed as missing were now technically considered prisoners. "We have no indication at this time that there are any Americans missing alive in Indochina," Dr. Shields said at a news conference. Dr. Shields was at that time Assistant Secretary of Defense, but he was following guidance issued on that date by the Department of State in a memorandum DOD which stated that "There are no more prisoners in Southeast Asia. They are all dead." This directive was issued immediately after the return of the last POWs in OPERATION HOMECOMING. This finding was made despite that the fact that none of the hundreds of POW/MIAs that the Pathet Lao publicly acknowledged holding were ever returned from Laos. There were hundreds of live-sighting reports on file in 1973. Thousands of such reports have continued to be received since then. PROCESS FOR "PRESUMPTION OF DEATH" Since it was official policy, then, that all MIAs were dead, it became a bureaucratic necessity for all "unresolved" cases to be resolved in favor of a presumed finding of death. Each respective military service from time to time convenes its own special commissions to pronounce on individual cases. Such a commission has before it at least three categories of information: The first is intelligence-related information concerning the individual. The second is eyewitness accounts of the loss event. The third is the so-called "incident report" -- the official report of the loss incident. If a year passes without new information, the respective military service can convene a commission to determine whether a presumptive finding of death should be declared. The April, 1973, statement of policy was a political statement, rather than a finding according to statutory authority. As a result, the military services subsequently review each individual case of those who previously had been declared dead en masse. And in every case except one, the commissions made a determination of a presumptive finding of death. NAM VET Newsletter Page 17 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 Because of this procedure, the bureaucratic necessity arose for discrediting any evidence that might cast doubt on the mass presumptive finding of death of April 1973. From the standpoint of law and military regulations, the procedure followed in each case gave a legal affirmation to the original political statement. Therefore, in order to discredit any information which might undermine the political thesis, the analysis of intelligence files fell into a systematic pattern of debunking information contrary to the thesis. The systematic debunking included discrediting of reports, possible intimidation of witnesses, dismissal of credible evidence through technicalities, and -- if all else failed -- the arbitrary disregard of evidence contrary to the thesis. DOD's WORKING HYPOTHESIS An analysis of DOD's working hypothesis for fully accounting for American MIAs is the key to undertaking the discrepancies between DOD's position on the POW issue and the evidence uncovered by the staff. DOD's premise, beginning in April, 1973, has been that all MIA's are dead; the corollary, therefore, is that DOD must never find any evidence that any MIA is alive. The best evidence, in DOD's opinion, is a set of physical remains that can be identified as a specific individual on the POW/MIA list. Once such an identification has been made, the case of that individual can be removed forever from the list. This is an easier task than to accept live-sighting reports that might point to a living POW, thereby necessitating appropriate follow-up action. It is a reasonable assumption to remove POW/MIAs from the list when remains are identified, if the identification is correct. But the fact is that in a significant number of cases, such identifications have been made on the basis of inadequate physical evidence, using presumptive deductions that may or may not be true. The pressure to identify sets of remains even has resulted in specific cases where caskets have been buried with full military honors as the "remains" of the individual when, in fact, the casket is empty. Therefore, DOD acts on its premise by vigorously investigating for the remains of dead MIAs. The list of MIAs presumed dead following the conclusion of the war totalled 2,383. DOD has received and claimed to have identified a total of 280 sets of remains since 1973. Any full accounting of MIAs, according to DOD's working hypothesis, would necessarily involve only those cases in which either a presumptive finding of death could be made, or else full or partial remains could be discovered. As each presumptive finding of death is declared or set of remains is identified, DIA would remove, as accounted for, the names that matched those on the original MIA list. In this respect, DOD claims that DIA has vigorously investigated and resolved hundreds of such cases. The policy of DOD is to focus attention on the cases where some evidence, no matter how small, of physical remains can be recovered. But even while DOD enthusiastically and vigorously investigates remains case -- no matter how fragmentary -- it just as vigorously discredits live-sighting and other witness accounts. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of thousands of Asians fled Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. These refugees provided many first-hand reports, or knew by second- or third-hand reports, of American prisoners being held in their respective countries. NAM VET Newsletter Page 18 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 To date, over 11,700 accounts have been received by DOD; 1,400 of these are first-hand, live sighting reports. DIA claims to have analyzed fully each of these live-sighting reports, and to have left "no stone unturned" in searching for living prisoners. After analyzing the live-sighting reports, DIA has concluded that the majority are not related to living American POWs, with the possible exception of a small percentage of reports that DIA describes as "unresolved." However, no "resolved" case has ever concluded that an American POW remains captive in Southeast Asia. In this way DIA concludes that there is no evidence of Americans currently being held captive in Southeast Asia. This contention is consistent with both the working hypothesis described above and with DIA's apparent success at removing MIA list names that involve only those cases in which remains are identified, or a finding of death declared. Insofar as these discrepancies relate to the 1,400 first-hand reports of living prisoners, DOD's original premise comes into question. Numerous live-sighting reports have been erroneously discredited by DIA analysis. Moreover, staff has reason to believe that DOD has misidentified the remains of scores of MIAs, and has incorrectly presumed dead many others. This analytical bias is typical of bureaucracy defending an established policy at all costs, even if it means denying the obvious. It is also typical characteristic of an outmoded paradigm that can no longer explain the real world or real facts. If the original premise of DOD had been that at least some of the 2,383 MIAs were alive, then DOD would have been forced by circumstance to view the evidence collected, including the hundreds of live-sighting reports, from an objective standpoint. The relevance and validity of each report could have been judged on its own merits rather than whether it supported a pre- determined hypothesis that no living POW/MIA remained. Unfortunately, DOD chose to make its own analysis, without proper legislative oversight. Claiming extreme sensitivity and possible threats to sources and methods of intelligence gathering, DOD evaded the proper oversight that would have assured the objectivity of their process, The result has been a disservice to the POW/MIAs, their families and the American people. NAM VET Newsletter Page 19 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 W W M M W W M M M M W W \ / M M M M OOOO W W W --*-- M M M IIII O O W W W W / \ M M II O O W W W W M M II O O W W M M II O O II PPPPPP O O ..... II AA PP PP OOOO . '' '' .. IIII A A PP PP ..' '.. A A PPPPPPP ..' ''. A A PP ..' '. AAAAAA PP .' ''. A A PP .' '. A A .' .:::::.. '. .' .::::::::::. ' .' .::::::::::::::. '. .' __ .::::::::::::::::;:... '. .' _- -_ .:::::::::::::::::::::::. '. .' _-_ _ _ -_ ::::::::::::::::::::::::' '. .. _- -!!___!!!-_:::::::::::::::::::::::. .. .' ==_ _- _= .:::::::::::::::::::::::: ', . =-_= _= = :::::::::::::::::::::::: . .' =-_ =_- = ::::::::::::::::::::::: '. .' = - -_ =_:::::::::::::::::::::. '. .' -_ -_- .:::::::::::::::::::;;;. '. .' _-_ ..::::::::::::::::::::::::; '. . _ _ .:;:::::::::::::::::::::;, . ' _ .:::::::::::::::::::::::::. '. Y .'.....::::::::::::::::::::::::::;' '. N ::::::::::::::::::::::::' `''' ': O `::::::::::::::::::::::: \v/ \ / :'E `:::::::::::::::::::::: =========================== :' U `:::::::::::::::::::::. /^\ \ :'T `:::::::::::::::::::: .: A `:::::::::::::::::: .:'T `::::::::::::::::::. .;' R `:::::::::::::::::. .;' T `::::::::::::::::. .;' E `:::::::::gjp::: .:' O `:::::::::::::...........'' G N O T F O R " Bring them home --- NOW !!! " NAM VET Newsletter Page 20 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 WASHINGTON SELLS OUT POWS HELMS AND GRASSLEY BLOW THE WHISTLE ON PLAN TO SELL OUT U.S. POWS. From: The Spotlight - November 5, 1990 By Mike Blair Submitted by: Terry Hayes VETLink #1 - Pittsfield, MA (413) 443-6313 EXPLOSIVE SENATE REPORT The Spotlight has learned that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is preparing to issue a report that will blast official U.S. government handling of the issue of American prisoners of war and missing in action still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia from the Vietnam War. There are currently 2,296 Americans still missing from the war, which ended in 1975 with the takeover of South Vietnam and neighboring Laos and Cambodia by the communists. For several months an investigative team, directed by Sen. Jesse Helms, (R-NC) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has been quietly delving into the matter of the missing Americans. Helms is ranking minority member of the Foreign Relations Committee. A source close to the investigation told The Spotlight that the report is "explosive" and "devastating" on the U.S. government's official policy regarding the POWs and MIAs. LEFT IN CAPTIVITY The source said that the report will indicate that Americans were left behind in communist captivity, that the U.S. government was aware of it, and that the action taken by the government to account for the missing Americans has either been incompetent or a political agenda in Southeast Asia in which the POWs and MIAs were a liability. The report will include an appraisal critical of the methods used by the U.S. Department of Defense to identify remains of supposed MIAs recovered from Southeast Asia with the cooperation of the communist governments led by Hanoi. It will detail and question how some of the missing are identified by a single tooth, a method questioned by most experts, and how some remains have not been adequately identified and buried in communal graves. Helms recently criticized the Pentagon's methods of identification of remains in a speech on the Senate floor. His findings will be further detailed in the report. In a related issue, the panel's investigators have carefully probed the connections between Mrs. Ann Mills Griffiths, executive director of the National League of Families of Missing in Action and Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, and the U.S. government. During the course of the investigation, Helms and Grassley requested from the Department of Defense, files regarding live sightings of U.S. POWs in captivity and other material concerning the fate of the men. An attempt to block them was made by Mrs. Griffiths, who has a unique security clearance to examine such files as a member of an "interagency group" working on the POW/MIA issue, granted her as the league's representative. The security clearance is unique because Griffiths has no official U.S. government affiliation. In a memorandum to Undersecretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, Griffiths stated: "On any matter of highest national priority [the government NAM VET Newsletter Page 21 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 claims the POW-MIA issue is of highest national priority], sensitive information is not subject to indiscriminate release outside of the parameters established by the Congress itself". GRASSLEY FURIOUS: "I have to go to the Pentagon myself and camp out there if I want to review these documents," an angry Grassley said on the Senate floor. "I am not allowed to bring in my own staff, regardless of [security] clearance they have. Instead, I have to bring staff from one of the three committees, even though I do not sit on any of them. Furthermore, if I leave, the staff has to leave as well. Needless to say, this is a maximum inconvenience for a member of the United States Senate for documents that are classified mostly as "Secret", "Confidential", of "For official use only", which is not a category of classification at all". Referring to Griffiths, Grassley explained that in spite "of her non-governmental status, she has been given a security clearance. That clearance has enabled her to review the very documents she has lobbied strenuously to deny members of Congress access to, those eyewitness accounts of U.S. prisoners in Southeast Asia." SENATORS UNTRUSTWORTHY??? "She told me", Grassley continued, "in a meeting I had with her in my office in April, that she has read those eyewitness reports, and that they show no evidence that American citizens were left behind in Southeast Asia after the war in Indochina. Why is it then . . . that this quasi-government official would want to deny United States Senators an opportunity to review these documents as well?" "Could it be that she simply has a misunderstanding about the role of the United States Congress as laid out in the Constitution? Could it be that after years as a quasi-governmental official, that she has become afflicted with a disease known as "bureaucratitis"? Grassley accused Griffiths of having a "lack of awareness of the line between advocacy of a principle or an issue, and the government's own position. When a self-declared POW advocate, which Griffiths is in her non-quasi-governmental role, begins to take the government's position at face value", as Ms. Griffiths declares in her memo [to Wolfowitz] that she has done, then that line is crossed. . ." WHO'S PANDERING? Griffiths, who stated the decision to allow the senators to peruse the documents is "seeking to pander to Congress", is the object of considerable criticism by other POW-MIA activists and is accused by many of pandering herself to the official U.S. government position on POW-MIAs, as Grassley pointed out. The Senate panel has also investigated the part played by Griffiths in the funnelling of about $200.000 to Southeast Asia for supposed efforts to obtain information about POWs and MIAs but which instead allegedly ended up in the hands of anti-communist guerrillas in Laos. The money was supposedly donated by several Texan contributors including Nelson Bunker Hunt of Dallas, Ellen St. John Garwood of Austin and Robert Perry of Houston --- some of the same private contributors to the U.S. backed Contra rebels in Nicaragua. They were under the impression that their money would be used to seek NAM VET Newsletter Page 22 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 information about POWs and MIAs. The money was funnelled in 1982 and 1983 through a California- based organization, Support Our POWs/MIAs, reportedly with Griffith's instructions and with the full knowledge of the National Security Council, to the bank account of an individual by the name of Mushtag Ahmed Diwan in Bangkok, Thailand. A source in Thailand reported that Diwan "is a shadowy figure with Middle East connections and no substantial involvement in the POW-MIA issue". =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= (Note From Terry Hayes) Although we have already seen the report, I thought this was a rather extensive article and thought it was of much interest. It shows a picture of "Annie" with her hand out and looking a bit thin. Do you suppose it is from Sampley's process servers or this article??? I bet she has to walk backwards as she better watch her back! Uploaded by Marsha This is (The Spotlight) a paper that a neighbor of mine gets and he is aware of my consuming interest and involvement in the issue, so he brought it over for me to read. NAM VET Newsletter Page 23 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 Legacy of Covert War - The Boys We Left Behind By Monika Jensen-Stevenson and William Stevenson Input by: David Stager Sonoma Online, RFE! - Santa Rosa, CA (707) 545-0746 ONE OF THE high costs of covert operations in Southeast Asia has been the denial of normal rights to U.S. armed forces personnel taken prisoner during the Vietnam War. If American military men and women become involved in secret operations in the Persian Gulf, their rights as prisoners may be no better protected. The Paris peace accords of 1973 resulted in the homecoming of 591 U.S. servicemen whom communist authorities admitted to holding. However, according to an interim Senate staff report to be released today (see Page C4), an April 1974 Defense Department intelligence document concluded that several hundred POWs remained in captivity. This intelligence remained classified until now under the rationale of protecting U.S. covert activities. The Pentagon in 1973 listed 317 Americans as missing in Laos, and government spokesmen were quoted as saying the figure was actually much higher. The communist Pathet Lao claimed it had a detailed list of prisoners but would hand this over only if the U.S. government were willing to negotiate. The government, which was still conducting covert operations against the Pathet Lao, did not negotiate. Some of the young men recruited from the U.S. armed forces to participate in covert warfare obeyed orders reluctantly; others entered secret agreements in the belief they would be entitled to the usual guarantees that the U.S. government, in return for their services, would make every effort to bring them home or give a full accounting of their fate to their families. Few, if any, members of the armed services expected to be treated as "plausibly deniable" in the manner of Central Intelligence Agency controlled assets, and yet they were. Here are two of their stories: Air Force Sgt. Peter Cressman was a Morse systems operator assigned to an EC-47Q "Flying Pueblo" reconnaissance aircraft. On Feb. 5, 1973, while on a mission on the Vietnam-Laos border, the EC-47Q was shot down. The shoot-down occurred nine days after the Paris peace accords were signed. Cressman had realized that he and his colleagues were flagrantly violating the peace in a neutral country. Worried about the possibility of becoming responsible for war crimes, he had visited the base legal office to find out what his rights and obligations were. He was told he had no right to do anything but obey orders, even if they were illegal. Cressman's family would never have known about their son's mental anguish in the days before his shoot-down if he had not written several drafts of a letter, addressed to a public official, outlining his dilemma and asking for help. If he ever completed an official letter, there was no public record of it. Instead, the draft letters were returned to his family with his belongings. Evelyn Cressman felt that someone in her son's unit wanted his family to know the truth, and that this was how the drafts escaped the notice of military censors. NAM VET Newsletter Page 24 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 After the crash, it seemed unlikely there would be survivors. Air Force sources later told the Cressmans there was little chance of skilled specialists like their son being taken prisoner. Because of the sophisticated electronic equipment on board, arrangements existed for the immolation and destruction of the aircraft before it could fall into enemy hands, and it was almost impossible for the men to bail out. The unlikely occurred. Shortly after the shoot-down, another U.S. reconnaissance aircraft intercepted enemy communications and ascertained that at least four members of the EC-47Q had survived and been captured. This information was conveyed to U.S. officials almost immediately. A few days later, a U.S. search party found more evidence that crew members were taken captive. On Feb. 17, four crew members were seen and identified about 15 miles from the crash site, in apparent good health and under the guard of their captors. U.S. officials were again made immediately aware of this information. The Cressmans and other families of the EC-47Q flight crew were told none of this although Air Force directives ordered that families of such men be given the most complete information possible. Seventeen days after the shoot-down, the Air Force declared all of the men dead. Long after the war was over, Evelyn Cressman and Mary Matejov, the mother of Sgt. Joseph M. Matejov, one of Cressman's fellow crew members, went to see POW Task Force Director Roger Shields. He told them, they said, that their sons' names had initially been placed in the U.S. list of POWs to be returned in 1973 (i.e., those for whom the United States insisted on an accounting based on its own intelligence that they were alive). The mothers reported that Shields told them the names had then been crossed off the list. Shields wanted them to know, he said, that he himself had not made that decision. Then-congressman Billy Hendon (R-N.C.) later told the Cressmans he personally saw their son's name penciled in the official Operation Homecoming Bluebook. The name was crossed through and marked over with "Killed in Action." To Hendon, it seemed that the government was indicating to the former enemy that the United States was abandoning the men and the communists could therefore treat them as badly as they wanted. The Cressmans, like many other families, vowed to find out what really happened. It took them years to find out that two months after the shoot- down, the four captives were sighted again, still in apparent good health, about 40 miles from the crash site. Again, such information was known immediately by U.S. officials but withheld from the families. The Cressmans also found there were persons in the Department of Defense who strongly objected to what was done, but to no avail. These dissenters did succeed in having a written memorandum of their protest included in official files. Those files remain classified. When we first spoke to Evelyn Cressman, she told us, "Some of those dissenters told me privately what happened. They say they can't go public because it will hurt the country. It will NAM VET Newsletter Page 25 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 damage national security. Whose security? The security of boys like my son, Peter?" She sent us a voluminous file on her son. It included clearly stated "live sighting" intelligence reports on her son and a lengthy correspondence with government officials. The Cressmans explored every avenue in an attempt to get their government to take action to bring back its own men. The best answer they ever got was an evasive admission that information indicating some of the crew might have survived had been received and withheld by the government. The information was not, however, enough to warrant a reconsideration of the determination of death. Mel Holland was an American Air Force sergeant with a special talent for electronic intelligence and high-tech warfare who felt trapped in a covert operation in Laos. "They lied to us about this operation," he had written to his wife, Ann. "We'll talk about it on my next leave." But there was no next leave. He was lost soon after in a communist command strike everyone said was impossible. "They lied to us," he wrote, "real bad." What did he mean? The question had gnawed at Ann Holland during her long years of struggle to raise five children alone. She was warned by U.S. officials to drop the issue. Melvin Holland had disappeared in 1968. He had been assigned as a technician to a remote mountain top in Laos: Site 85, one of a chain of bases in the CIA's war in Laos, where, supposedly, no war was going on. Officially, he was based in Thailand. Each time he was flown from Thailand into Laos, he was "sanitized" and turned into a civilian in a secret war. If he was captured, or if his unit threatened to become a political embarrassment, the U.S. government would deny all knowledge of them. In March 1969, Ann was told he was missing. She must say nothing, not even to her five small children. Two years later, President Richard Nixon denied the loss of any Americans in ground combat in Laos. Ann had then asked her case-officer, "If my husband wasn't lost in Laos, where was he lost?" Holland contacted us after hearing about the POWs story Monika had produced for CBS News's "60 Minutes." The segment, entitled "Dead or Alive," aired during the Christmas season of 1985. We knew who she was because Site 85 had cropped up in Monika's research. Monika had even come across a report that at one time the U.S. government had put $6 million in a Hong Kong bank as a ransom payment for six Site 85 technicians. But we could never get a handle on what really happened because every bit of documentation was classified and most family members of men who had disappeared there were afraid to talk because they had signed secrecy oaths. Ann understood the frustration because she had struggled for years to learn the truth about what happened to Melvin. We felt Ann had a right to find out what happened - the truth might hurt national pride, nothing more. We were also intrigued by Site 85. Monika told her she'd look into her husband's case, and our education in irregular warfare took a new turn. NAM VET Newsletter Page 26 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 We heard, for instance, about "sheep-dipping" - a process for building the secret CIA army. An American serviceman, like Mel Holland, would go through the motions of formal resignation, his records would be transferred to a top-secret file, and some convincing story would be invented to explain his sudden return to civilian life. In Mel's case, the story was that he was working for Hughes Aircraft. However, he would continue to pursue his military career, though officially "off the books." He was then ready for clandestine activities. Pensions and insurance had to be somehow covered, and the CIA ran its own proprietary companies to deal with such problems. In some cases the families of MIAs who were sheep-dipped still receive two pensions - one from the military and one from the civilian "cover" company. It was thought by some that this was considered a good way to keep the families quiet, since they could be threatened with losing one pension. In the summer of 1986, Ann came to Washington from her home on the Pacific coast to ask a former helicopter pilot who had flown her husband and other men on and off the peak for rest breaks in Thailand, "Were they captured?" "That's something I cannot, absolutely cannot, talk about," he said. She demanded a better answer, and he said, "Ann, those men did not technically exist then. They do not technically exist now . . . . But you're on the right track. Don't give up now." Ann got a copy of a top-secret intelligence analysis of the seizure of Site 85 during a brief period when it was declassified. What she saw made it clear that her husband and other U.S. airmen were prized by the enemy as "special talents." In 1968, at Site 85, they ran highly secret equipment to guide American bombers onto targets around Hanoi, 160 miles to the east. The CIA said the enemy could not possibly pierce the heavily fortified, narrow path to the top, or scale the steep 5,600-foot cliffs. Despite such assurances, the enemy took the garrison in a surprise assault, using tactics developed by the Soviet Union's "Spetsznaz" special-operations regiment. Ann sent us her own painfully acquired documents. They revealed an extraordinary effort by friends in the armed forces to help her dig out facts. A senior U.S. Army officer, who had served with distinction in combat and military intelligence in three wars, said, "Remember, lots of areas in Laos, like Site 85, are remote. Communists come seldom, and then to collect taxes and rice. Even in that one cave where American captives have been reported, the communists don't have much communication equipment . . . . One CIA rescue effort was abruptly cancelled. There were to be six prisoners rescued. One died of a bleeding ulcer. They were Site 85 personnel. They were separated from another three prisoners in another cave. ALEX (code name for a ground observer) has a friend there captured in 1978, three years after Saigon fell, and was set up to be captured, but that's real low profile. The six Air Force guys captured are on the mountain at Phou Pha Thi . . . ." Cmdr. Hugh Taylor, a retired U.S. Navy pilot who later became a newspaper editor and spent many years seeking answers to the Site NAM VET Newsletter Page 27 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 85 mystery, claimed, "The U.S. government lied, threatened and purposely withheld information from the wives and families of the men left behind at Site 85. Families were prevented from finding out each other's identities to foil any attempt to correlate what little they knew, and were warned to stop trying to find out what happened. There are reports the Americans at the site were denied defensive support because their presence posed a threat to local CIA-supported drug operations" Hugh Taylor had a personal interest. During the Vietnam War, he had been approached to fly unspecified missions. Those who advised him against the seductive offer of intrigue and adventure - he was very young then and admired the secret services - later told him he was lucky. Had he volunteered to be sheep-dipped, he would likely be counted among the missing, his fate concealed from friends and family. Just like Melvin Holland. NAM VET Newsletter Page 28 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 "Vietnam Veterans Hold Candlelight Vigil" author-unknown Submitted by: Ron Triplett VVA 31 - Muskegon, MI Input by: Joyce Flory NamVet's Incarcerated Veterans Section Editor Desert Dolphin BBS - Las Cruces, NM (505) 523-2811 Sunday evening, on September 18, at 8:00 p.m., residents at MCF (Joyce's note: Muskegon Correctional Facility) were treated with the sight of two columns of Vietnam Veterans of America leaving the school building with lit candles in their hands. The candles represent that undying spirit that we hold for those who fought in Vietnam and are still Missing In Action (MIA) or are Prisoners Of War (POW) to this very day. The solemn procession marched to the MIA/POW Memorial near the visiting yard to honor those brave men and women who are still unaccounted for. As they approached the memorial from behind , each veteran placed his candle on the mantle, on either side of the flagpole. Ron Triplett, MCF's VVA Chairman, gave a welcoming address to the residents gathered there, and a few special guests, and acting chaplain, Guy Blondin, gave a prayer for those we refuse to forget. VVA Coordinator at MCF, John Kemme, Chapter #31, then delivered his address. Following Kemme, Michigan State Council Representative Lupe Alivar, Chapter #31, spoke to the assembled veterans about current MIA/POW issues. As the membership stood quietly by, with their hats in their hands, almost in an unconscious state of "attention," Ron Triplett read the roll call of those Michigan MIAs and POWs represented on our Memorial. Following the roll call, the acting chaplain read an emotional benediction and the vigil came to an end. This solemn ceremony was received well, not only by those participating, but from the MCF staff and residents as well. Today we salute those MCF veterans who so proudly paid tribute to their "brothers in battle" who seem to have been forgotten by far too many. This special day for MIAs and POWs was celebrated with such solemn occasion all across the country, with the ultimate hope and prayer that "Someday we WILL bring them home!" " NAM VET Newsletter Page 29 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 Christmas Tree Hijacked! U.S. Veteran News & Report 11/19/90 Input by: Terry Hayes VETLink #1 - Pittsfield, MA (413) 443-6313 WALDEN, CO -- Fifty to sixty Vietnam Veterans, POW/MIA family members and activists ambushed a freight train in Walden, Colorado today. The train was carrying the official Christmas tree bound for the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Dr. Bruce Adams, whose brother, MSgt. Steven H. Adams, has been missing in North Vietnam since 18 October 1966, led the group which included long-time POW/MIA advocate Lew Ross, from Nevada. The action, called "Project Desert Wreath" supported U.S. servicemen and women serving in the Persian Gulf, and in particular, the eight now reported MIA from Operation Desert Shield. The group also called attention to live POW/MIAs from the wars in Southeast Asia and Korea as well as World War II. After stopping the train, Adams mounted ladders on the locomotive and held a press conference during which he dubbed the train the "Freedom Train" and the tree the "People's Tree." The group then decorated the tree and its car with a wreath containing the names of the eight MIAs from the Persian Gulf and several wreaths decorated with POW/MIA bracelets from all fifty U.S. states. "Project Desert Wreath" marks the first time a POW/MIA message has adorned an official tree of the U.S. Capitol Building. Dr. Adams asks for public support and media attention to the tree, which leaves Walden en route to Washington, D.C. through Nebraska in the next few days. He requests that concerned Americans make sure the tree reaches Washington still carrying the POW/MIA message. For information, contact Dr. Adams at: (307) 742-7260 or (307) 721-2900. Groups supporting the event included: Vietnam Veterans of Wyoming National Committee for American War Veterans National Alliance of Families (Special note must be taken that when the train stopped and the engineer appeared, he was a Vietnam veteran and was wearing a POW/MIA hat!) [Note from Joe: The reported MIA/POWs in Operation Desert Shield, after much discussion in VIETNAM_VETS, appear to be those that were KIA-BNR (Killed in Action - Body Not Recovered). THANX to all of you who responded so quickly when the question was asked!] NAM VET Newsletter Page 30 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 ================================================================= F r o m A z t e c S h o r e t o A r c t i c Z o n e ================================================================= U.S. Coast Guard in South East Asia/Vietnam Conflict; Part 1 By: John (Jack) Hawkins, USCG (Ret) VETLink #1 - Pittsfield, MA (413) 443-6313 ------------------------------------- From Aztec Shore to Arctic Zone To Europe and Far East Our Flag is carried by Our Ships In Time of War and Peace Verse from "SEMPER PARATUS" The Coast Guard Marching Song ------------------------------------- The United States Coast Guard is the smallest of this nation's five armed services, and during the Vietnam War, Coast Guardsmen continued to serve with distinction, as their fathers did in Korea and World War II and their grandfathers in World War I. Operating from 82 foot coastal patrol boats, destroyer sized large cutters, C-123 & C-130 aircraft, 180 foot buoy tenders, ammunition laden vessels, isolated Loran stations, or as exchange pilots with the 37th ARRS or on staff with the merchant marine details in Saigon, "COASTIES" performed military duties every bit as heroic as their brother and sister Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force brother and sister Vietnam veterans. This article is the first part of a multi-part history of Coast Guard operations in SOUTH EAST Asia and the Vietnam Conflict. Many books, videos, movies, and such have discussed Vietnam from all angles, except from the view of the Coast Guardsman in SouthEast Asia. Originally written in 1975 as part of the Coast Guard Historical Nomograph program, I have transcribed it verbatim. The author, Eugene Tulich, then a Coast Guard Lieutenant, served two tours afloat on coastal barrier patrols off the coast of South Vietnam. So, we'll start with "A Story of Twenty-six", the 82-foot coastal patrol boats. ------------------------------------- And never have we struck it yet In spite of foeman's might Who cheered us on and cheered again for showing how to fight. "SEMPER PARATUS" ------------------------------------- INTRODUCTION Early in the war in Vietnam it was obvious that the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces were obtaining their supplies in a myriad of ways. The forces allied with the Republic of South Vietnam had no effective means of stopping the enemy infiltration of men, arms and supplies During February of 1965, an Army pilot flying over Vung Ro Bay near Qui Nhon noticed an "island" moving slowly from one side of the bay to another. Upon closer observation the "island" was NAM VET Newsletter Page 31 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 discovered to be a carefully camouflaged ship. Air strikes were called in and the vessel sunk. Intelligence sources determined the ship was of North Vietnamese origin and engaged in rearming enemy forces. It became imperative to establish a tight security and surveillance system. This would be no easy chore with over 1,200 miles of coastline to patrol and over 60,000 junks and sampans to control. To provide this coverage the Coastal Surveillance Force was established in March of 1965. This Task Force provided a single command to integrate sea-, air- and land-based units and coordinate U. S. Navy, Coast Guard and South Vietnamese naval units. This unique organization was called Market Time after the native sampans and junks utilizing coastal waterways for fishing. Naval units of the Market Time operation successfully interdicted enemy vessels carrying supplies and personnel. The success of the operation forced the enemy to rely on the Ho Chi Minh trail to transport supplies. As most of the trawler "kills" were in southern Vietnam near the Ca Mau peninsula, the enemy had to carry supplies over an extraordinarily long distance. A TALE OF TWENTY SIX It was shortly after the February trawler incident that Commander Naval Forces Vietnam (COMNAVFORV) gave serious thought to maintaining surveillance and patrols in the inland and coastal waters of the Republic of Vietnam. It was not long before the need for Coast Guard units was recognized and on the 16th of April, 1965 the Secretary of the Navy requested information on the availability of Coast Guard units from the Secretary of Treasury. Three days later on 19 April, the Commandant of the Coast Guard advised that 82 foot and 40 foot patrol boats were available. Coast Guard Representatives were sent to Commander in Chief Pacific Fleet (CINCPACFLT) and again only three days passed before the decision was reached that the Coast Guard would provide seventeen 82 foot patrol boats. In support of the seventeen, the Navy promised to support two Repair Ships (ARL's). A few days later on the 29th of April, the Secretaries of Defense and Treasury sent a joint memorandum to the President advising him of the proposed deployment. The following day it was announced that Coast Guard Squadron One was being formed. Shortly thereafter on the 6th of May the Coast Guard promulgated an operation order for the deployment of the seventeen and only twelve days later the 17 patrol boats were being loaded as deck cargo on merchant vessels in New York, Norfolk, New Orleans, San Pedro, San Francisco, and Seattle. Nine days following the loading of the patrol boats, Coast Guard Squadron One was commissioned at Coast Guard Base Alameda. The ceremony took place at 1000 hours, 27 May 1965. Particular note should be made of the willingness of the Navy to call up its primary back-up force and the preparedness of the Coast Guard to swiftly shift from a peacetime mission to a combat mission. Initially, total Coast Guard personnel assigned to the newly formed Squadron One numbered 47 officers and 198 enlisted. These Coast Guardsmen underwent survival training at Coronado, California and were instructed by the Coast Guard on such topics as the care and feeding of the 81 mm mortar and the .50 caliber machine gun, and other subjects which included NBC warfare, Damage Control, Navigation and Piloting, Organization, Rules of the Nautical Road, Boarding Procedures and Tactics, Lookout NAM VET Newsletter Page 32 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 Procedures, Recognition, Combat Indoctrination, Radiotelephone Procedures, Water Survival, Hand to Hand Combat, and the Code of Conduct. Upon completion of the required training, the personnel joined their patrol boats at Subic Bay, Philippine Islands. On the 12th of June 1965, Coast Guard Squadron One came under the Authority of the Navy when it changed operational control to Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet. While under the operational control of CINCPACFLT, the men and patrol boats of Squadron One were given shakedown and refresher training at Subic Bay Naval Base. While the cutters were preparing for the voyage to Vietnam, Squadron One established an liaison office at the Headquarters of Chief, Naval Advisory Group in Saigon to help smooth the rough waters that were bound to work up. Finally on 15 July, the boats of Coast Guard Division Twelve departed Subic Bay for Da Nang and five days later the patrol boats of Division Eleven sailed for An Thoi in the Gulf of Thailand. Upon arrival at their respective bases they CHOPPED to Commander Task Force 71. They were only under CTF 71 a few days as Commander Task Force 115 (Market Time) was established on 30 July 1965. Five Coastal Surveillance Centers were set up under CTF 115 and located at Da Nang, Qui Nhon, Nha Trang, Vung Tau, and An Thoi. These CSC's coordinated the patrols of the RONONE cutters and directed most significant operations. The cutters lost no time getting on patrol and going about their duties. As there was a great profusion of junks, sampans, and varied other craft, a priority system of boarding was instituted. The priority scheme was: first, vessels transiting the area; second, junks fishing or operating in restricted areas; third, fishing boats anchored and not working nets; and fourth, fishing boats working nets. These patrol duties were accomplished by being on underway two-thirds of the time in Division 11; and 3 days on patrol followed 1 day inport with a 5 day respite after 6 patrols in Division 12. When the cutters were underway they reported to the minesweeper or destroyer escort that was maintaining the outer barrier patrol. The outer barrier ships assisted the WPB's with radar and navigational information. In turn, the WPB's provided similar service to Vietnamese Naval Junk Force units that were close inshore. Though the water was too shallow for the cutters to be in close with the VNN junks, they were able to provide gunfire support if necessary. A few matters required quick rectification. The CGC POINT ORIENT on its first night time patrol near the 17th parallel received mortar and machine gun fire. White cutters are a beautiful sight on a moonlit or flare-lit night, that is unless you are on the cutter. On the 21st of September, CTF 115 ordered the patrol boats painted grey. An old adage of military life also crept in - the 10% that did not get the word. CGC POINT YOUNG on one of its early patrols received fire from friendly forces. Luckily no one was hurt and immediate steps were taken to preclude further incidents, though we will note a little later there was still that 10% of the 10%. It was felt that after one month of aggressive patrols there was only about a 10% chance of a junk slipping through the barrier and no chance of a steel hull. Division Eleven in its first month of operations boarded more than 1,100 junks and sampans, inspected over 4,000 Vietnamese craft, and used more that 4,800 man hours to carry out the assigned mission "Stop Sea Infiltration of Weapons and Supplies to the Viet Cong". The heavy patrol schedule of the NAM VET Newsletter Page 33 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 cutters was complemented by the shore staff working an average of 84 hours a week. The effectiveness of the patrols hurt the VC and the barrier patrol became both a physical and psychological warfare battle. The VC told the fishermen that the WPB's were driving them from their best fishing grounds just so U.S. fishing boats could be brought in. This may have appeared to be true to the Vietnamese fishermen since frequently the best fishing grounds were in restricted waters and the WPB's did chase them out. To counter this Coast Guard, Navy, and South Vietnamese set up a counter PSYOPS program which included handouts of literature and SVN flags. Medical treatment was given as needed and medevacs to U.S. hospital facilities were common. Of course, an American cannot participate in PSYOPS without dispensing profuse quantities of candy and cigarettes. Action was always just around the bend or the island and on 19 September 1965 the POINT GLOVER and the POINT MARONE had some. POINT GLOVER was nearly rammed by a 20 foot junk carrying five men, one of whom was subsequently captured along with several small arms, ammunition, papers and clothing. The cutter POINT MARONE was attempting to inspect a 40 foot junk when the junk evaded and opened fire with small arms and grenades. The cutter responded with machine gunfire killing 8 Viet Cong. One VC was captured along with small arms, ammunition, grenades, a lead sealed box, clothing, money, and caulking compound. Besides the normal duties of preventing the infiltration of enemy men and supplies, the WPB's were frequently called upon to provide emergency support for U.S. Special Forces camps. This emergency support consisted of the transportation of personnel, medevacs, and firing urgent Naval Gunfire Support missions. Even though the performance of the cutters was nothing less than outstanding, there remained a large gap in the force which had to be filled. Division Twelve in Da Nang covered the East Coast and Division Eleven provided coverage on the West Coast, but no one really protected the vital Southeast Coast. So on the 29th of October, 1965, the Coast Guard, at the request of the Secretary of the Navy, ordered nine additional Coast Guard 82 patrol boats detached from normal duties for deployment to RONONE under CTF 115. The WPB's of Division Thirteen were embarked on 1 December 1965 and the division established on the 12th. The cutters sailed from Subic enroute Vung Tau on 15 February 1966. As Squadron One grew so did the duties of its staff. On 5 November 1965, Commander Coast Guard Squadron One was assigned additional duty with COMUSMACV Joint Staff attached to NAVADVGRP in connection with IV Coastal Zone advisor task. On 15 December, COMCOGARDRONONE was upgraded to a captain (O-6) billet and the position tasked with additional duty as advisor to CHNAVADGRP SAIGON for Coast Guard related matters. The cutter POINT WHITE had not been in-country a month when she started conducting patrols on a VC controlled area of the Soi Rap River. The POINT WHITE used a ruse of steaming out of the patrol area and covertly returning to the VC area. Soon she spotted a junk crossing the river and attempted to stop it. The junk opened fire with small arms, including automatic weapons. POINT WHITE returned the fire and rammed the junk throwing the occupants into the water. The cutter's Commanding Officer rescued a survivor who turned out to be a key VC leader of the Rung Sat Secret Zone. During this month of March, 3 WPB's of Division Thirteen accounted for 27 VC killed in action, 7 captured in action, and considerable NAM VET Newsletter Page 34 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 contraband confiscated. Activity continued throughout April, 1966 with Coast Guard Cutter POINT COMFORT being fired upon by a Cambodian patrol in the Gulf of Thailand; the POINT PARTRIDGE capturing a hard core VC Colonel of Engineers; and Coast Guard and Navy personnel fighting a conflagration that destroyed seventy housing units in the village of An Thoi, Phu Quoc Island. May started out with the POINT PARTRIDGE capturing a junk containing CHICOM weapons and the POINT GRACE capturing a sampan taking 3 prisoners, rifles and ammunition. On the 19th of the month a significant naval engagement was fought. The POINT GREY was on patrol near the Ca Mau peninsula when she sighted a 120 foot trawler heading on various courses and speeds. Her suspicions were aroused and POINT GREY commenced shadowing the trawler. After observing what appeared to be signal fires on the beach she hailed the vessel, but received response. The trawler ran aground and POINT GREY personnel attempted to board it. They were prevented from doing so by heavy automatic weapons fire from the beach which resulted in three wounded on board POINT GREY. POINT CYPRESS and U.S. Navy units came to assist. After a determination was made that the trawler could not be salvaged, it was destroyed. U.S. Navy salvage teams recovered a substantial amount of war material. This incident was the largest single known infiltration attempt since the Vung Ro Bay incident of February, 1965. May was also the first birthday of RONONE and during that first year of operations the cutters of Squadron One steamed more than half million miles; were underway over seventy percent of the time; detected 150,000 junks; inspected 30,000 junks; boarded 35,000 junks; accounted for 75 VC KIA/WIA/CIA; arrested hundreds; destroyed sixteen s and one steel hull; captured enemy weapons and supplies in excess of 100 tons; conducted thirty-five NGFS missions; participated in special operations in support of U.S. and South Vietnamese forces; and conducted an active PSYWAR campaign. The month of June proved to be as exciting as May. The POINT LEAGUE was on patrol and detected a 98 foot trawler in South Vietnamese waters. The POINT LEAGUE challenged the trawler and was fired upon. The cutter returned fire and ran the trawler aground. The cutters POINT SLOCUM and POINT HUDSON joined in the fray along with aircraft. A small explosion was observed on the trawler and she was subsequently boarded and captured. After refloating, the trawler was towed to Vung Tau where many tons of war material was removed. Two Coastguardsmen were wounded during the battle. Little happened during July, 1966 and August started off slowly with routine operations. The POINT ARDEN rescued an LCU from straying over the 17th parallel, a not uncommon occurrence due to the configuration of the coastline. On 11 August 1966, the POINT WELCOME was on patrol near the DMZ when suddenly she was illuminated and then attacked by friendly aircraft. Sustaining several hits in the bridge area, she was also ablaze with a gasoline fire. She attempted to repel the attack while extinguishing the fire. Still under attack she ran aground and was abandoned, but not before all donned life jackets. When other Coast Guard units arrived on scene the Commanding Officer of the POINT WELCOME was dead along with one of his crew. The executive officer, two other crewmen, the Vietnamese liaison, and a Life NAM VET Newsletter Page 35 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 Magazine reporter were wounded. The POINT WELCOME was refloated and towed to port for repairs. September was a time for rescues with the Coast Guard saving four of six crewmen from a downed helicopter. The POINT LEAGUE responded to a distress on the S/S DRAGONLADY. POINT LEAGUE dewatered a flooded compartment, replaced the injured Chief Engineer with a first class engineman and gave general comfort to the seasick officers and the inexperienced crew. October was quiet and November was highlighted by the POINT COMFORT dispersing enemy forces attacking U.S. Special Forces personnel. POINT COMFORT provided NGFS, suppressed enemy fire and evacuated refugees. The days went routinely until 14 March 1967 when the POINT ELLIS and USN units detected an enemy steel hull trawler and forced it to beach. The enemy, forced to destroy a precious cargo of mortars, small arms, uniforms and other contraband, was deprived of a large quantity of much needed war material. The waters around Vietnam were relatively uncharted and so survey vessels were dispatched to conduct hydrographic operations. During these operations in May, 1967 a survey boat from the USS MAURY was hit by enemy fire and was sinking. The POINT KENNEDY went alongside the survey boat to give damage control assistance and simultaneously suppressed enemy fire while skillfully extracting both craft from this precarious position. The same month the Vietnamese liaison and a crewman from the POINT ELLIS went into the water to recover a sailor lost overboard from the USS PRINCETON. On 15 July 1967, the POINT ORIENT led an attack on an enemy trawler. The trawler, after being taken under fire by POINT ORIENT and a PCF grounded near a river. The trawler's superstructure was heavily damaged and she was ablaze from stem to stern. Though on fire she did not explode though several minor explosions did take place. The contents of the trawler were salvaged by USN and ROK units. In addition to trawler killing Coast Guard patrol boats acted as blockade units to prevent exfiltration, provided NGFS and conducted Harassment and Interdiction missions. The Coast Guard patrol boats were built for offshore rescue work in adverse weather conditions while their Navy counterpart, the PCF, was not. So well suited to their missions, they frequently remained on station while larger naval units departed. This did not go unnoticed at CTF 115. So in September, 1967, it was decided that seasonal shifts of WPB's were to take place with the WPB's following the monsoons and the PCF's following the sunshine. Though this policy may not have been popular with an occasional Coastguardsman, they still maintained the patrol schedule and fulfilled all their duties. The 29th of February, 1968 brought the largest naval engagement of the Vietnam war. Four trawlers attempted to penetrate the barrier. Of these, three were destroyed and the fourth beat a retreat to the north. The first attempted to run the barrier in the area near Da Nang. The Coast Guard Cutter ANDROSCOGGIN challenged her and shortly after commenced fire which the enemy infiltrator returned. POINT WELCOME closed in illuminating; with the POINT GREY and a PCF using machine guns. The trawler fired back at the patrol boats, but she beached herself. POINT WELCOME fired 81 mm and others fired machine guns which silenced the enemy fire. Shortly after 0230 on the 1st of March, the trawler destroyed itself. NAM VET Newsletter Page 36 Volume 4, Number 12 December 14, 1990 Another trawler was destroyed off the Ca Mau peninsula. After numerous hits by gunfire from the CGC WINOA, POINT GRACE, POINT MARONE, POINT HUDSON, and USN PCF's she burst into flame and subsequently exploded. She disappeared from the radar screens about the same time as the previous one. About the same time that the second trawler was sounding her death knell a third sounded hers. Caught and beached northeast of Nha Trang, she attempted to return fire of the Coast Guard and Navy units, but was destroyed after several direct hits from 81 mm mortars. A fourth trawler was spotted by the Cutter MINNETONKA on outer barrier patrol before the trawler crossed into Vietnamese waters. The trawler turned and left the area. Near the DMZ was a base at Cua Viet where a LST ramp was located for unloading supplies and ammunition. The POINT ARDEN was at that location on 10 March when a fire started. The chief boatswain's mate from the POINT ARDEN extinguished the fire, secured a 5" rubber hose pumping gasoline and is given probable credit for saving the main ammunition dump. He received shrapnel wounds from a minor explosion that took place. Between the Cua Viet LST ramp and the next major phase of RONONE history was the conducting routine operations such as patrol, NGFS, H & I, SAR, arresting draft dodgers and so forth. The POINT ORIENT captured six NVA officers in an infiltration attempt. A high level decision was made and in January 1969, two Vietnamese Navy lieutenants reported aboard WPB's as the first phase in a transition to Vietnamese control of WPB's. A month later 17 VNN ensigns and 2 more lieutenants reported as part of the turnover. With out a doubt language and communications did arise but they were quickly overcome. Vietnamese enlisted men phased in, replacing U.S. counterparts and after several fully operational patrols were ready for turnover. On 16 May 1969, the cutters POINT GARNET and POINT LEAGUE were transferred to the Vietnamese Navy in appropriate ceremonies at Saigon and named LE PHUOC DUC and LE VAN NGA respectively. While transition was taking place the other cutters continued their normal duties. In two boat trips through the surf, the POINT BANKS extracted nine friendlies trapped by the VC. The damage control parties of the POINT CYPRESS and the POINT WHITE saved a PCF from sinking. The POINT WHITE refloated two PCF's that went aground at Ha Tien. While at Ha Tien, crewmen from the cutter repaired an evaporator previously thought unrepairable and gave the forces in Ha Tien their first consistent water supply in more than a year. Regardless of whatever other activities the cutters were involved in the primary mission was turnover. Included in this turnover process was the training of Vietnamese repair forces. By August the VNN WPB repair crew was able to remove and install overhauled engines in the WPB's unaided except for some American muscle. Problems were inherent in the turnover as personnel reporting not of the proper