Vietnam War POW/MIA issue: Difference between revisions

Considerable speculation and investigation have been devoted to a hypothesis that a significant number of missing U.S. service members from the Vietnam War were captured as prisoners of war by communist forces and kept as live prisoners after U.S. involvement in the war concluded in 1973. A vocal group of POW/MIA activists has maintained that there has been a concerted conspiracy by the Vietnamese and U.S. governments since then to hide the existence of these prisoners. The U.S. government has steadfastly denied that prisoners were left behind or that any effort has been made to cover up their existence. Popular culture has reflected the "live prisoners" theory, such as in the 1985 film ''[[Rambo: First Blood Part II]]''. Several congressional investigations have looked into the issue, culminating with the largest and most thorough, the [[United States Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs]] of 1991–93, which found "no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia."<ref name="report-exec"/>

The origins of the POW/MIA issue date back to during the war itself. Suffering from a lack of accurate intelligence sources inside North Vietnam, the United States never had solid knowledge for how many U.S. prisoners of war were held.<ref name="inside-32">{{cite book | last=McConnell | first=Malcolm | author2=Schweitzer III | author3=Theodore G | title=Inside Hanoi's Secret Archives: Solving the MIA Mystery | publisher=Simon & Schuster | year=1995 | isbn=978-0-671-87118-5 | url=https://archive.org/details/insidehanoissecr00mcco }} pp. 32–33.</ref> Indeed, the United States often relied upon possibly inaccurate North Vietnamese newspapers and radio broadcasts to find out who had been captured, as well as memorized lists of names brought out by the few U.S. POWs given early release.<ref name="inside-32"/> As the Department of Defense built up lists of those in the categories of killed in action, killed in action/body not recovered, prisoner of war and missing in action, its tentative numbers fluctuated, but most of the time, the number of expected returnees upon war's end was around 600.<ref name="inside-31">McConnell and Schweitzer, ''Inside Hanoi's Secret Archives'', p. 31.</ref> However, the Nixon administration had made return of the POW'sPOWs one of its central arguments to the American public for prolonging the war and bringing North Vietnam to terms. In doing so, the administration statedoverstated the number of POW'sPOWs at issue, at one point stating that there were "fifteen hundred American Servicemenservicemen" held throughout Southeast Asia.<ref name="inside-31"/> These higher numbers would be the focus of much of the controversy in the issue to come.<ref name="inside-31"/>

Following the [[Paris Peace Accords]] of January 1973, U.S. [[prisoners of war]] were returned during [[Operation Homecoming]] during February through April 1973. During this, 591 POWs were released to U.S. authorities; this included a few captured in Laos and released in North Vietnam. U.S. President [[Richard Nixon]] announced that all U.S. Servicemenservicemen taken prisoner had been accounted for.<ref name="lat092292"/> At that time, the United States listed 2,646 Americans as unaccounted for,<ref name="dpmo-histnew">{{cite web | url=http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/vietnam/ | title=Vietnam War Accounting History | publisher=[[Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office]] | access-date=2014-03-10 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140223190619/http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/vietnam/ | archive-date=2014-02-23 | url-status=dead }}</ref> including about 1,350 prisoners of war or missing in action and roughly 1,200 reported killed in action and body not recovered.<ref name="dpmo-hist">{{cite web | url=http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/vietnamwar/vietnam_history.htm | title=Vietnam War Accounting History | publisher=[[Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office]] | access-date=2008-11-22 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081117195507/http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/vietnamwar/vietnam_history.htm | archive-date=2008-11-17 | url-status=dead }}</ref> The low numbers of returnees from Laos caused some immediate concern, as previous Pentagon estimates were as high as 41 for prisoners held there, although only a few had been known to be captured for certain.<ref>McConnell and Schweitzer, ''Inside Hanoi's Secret Archives'', p. 42.</ref> By late 1973, the remains of over 700 Americans killed in Southeast Asia had been returned and identified.<ref>Personnel Recovery and Accounting: POW/MIA Accounting. Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office, 2004.

The [[National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia]] was created by [[Sybil Stockdale]], [[Evelyn Grubb]] and Mary Crowe as an originally small group of POW/MIA wives in [[Coronado, California]], and [[Hampton Roads, Virginia]], in 1967.<ref>{{cite book | last2=Jose | first2=Carol | last1=Grubb | first1=Evelyn | author-link=Evelyn Grubb | title= You Are Not Forgotten: A Family's Quest for Truth and the Founding of the National League of Families | publisher=Vandamere Press | location= New York | year= 2008 | isbn=978-0-918339-71-3}}</ref><ref>{{cite news | title=Evelyn Fowler Grubb, 74, Leader Of a Group Supporting P.O.W.'s | newspaper=The New York Times | date=2006-01-04}}</ref> Sybil Stockdale's husband, Navy Commander [[James Stockdale]], was shot down in 1965 and she was determined to make the American people aware of the mistreatment of U.S. POW'sPOWs. This publicity resulted in better treatment of U.S. POW'sPOWs from fall 1969 on.

The [[National Alliance of Families For the Return of America's Missing Servicemen]] was founded in 1990. Its goal was and is to resolve the fates of any unreturned U.S. [[prisoners of war]] or [[missing in action]] from [[World War II]] on forward, not just Southeast Asia and to gain the return of any live prisoners. It is a 1980's1980s-origined [[Schism (organizational)|splinter]] from the National League of Families,<ref name="skk">{{cite book | last=Keating | first=Susan Katz | title=Prisoners of Hope:: Exploiting the POW/MIA Myth in America | publisher=Random House | location=New York | year=1994 | isbn=978-0-679-43016-2 | url=https://archive.org/details/prisonersofhopee00keat }} p. 52.</ref> created by members who were dissatisfied with Ann Mills Griffiths' leadership.<ref name="skk"/> Compared to the older group, the National Alliance took a more activist, radical stance, especially towards belief in the existence of live prisoners in Southeast Asia.<ref name="inside"/>

==Recovery withand "rescue"==

From the perspective of the [[Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency]]'s history of the issue, by the late 1980s, the United States and Vietnam increased the frequency of high-level policy and technical meetings to help resolve the POW/MIA matter. The Vietnamese began allowing U.S. government search parties to operate within the country. The Laotian government also agreed to joint crash-site excavations in the late 1980s. In Cambodia, similar joint efforts began in the early 1990's1990s. By 1992, major joint field operations were taking place in all three countries, operations that would carry on for years to come.<ref name="dpaa-hist">{{cite web | url=https://www.dpaa.mil/Our-Missing/Vietnam-War/ | title=Vietnam War Accounting | publisher=Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency | access-date=November 4, 2020}}</ref>

A number of individuals were not satisfied with or did not trust U.S. government actions in this area and took their own initiative. Retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jack E. Bailey created Operation Rescue, which featured a former freighter and smuggling boat named the ''S.S. Akuna''<!-- some sources say Akuna II and some Akuna III, so leave off the number --> and solicited funds from POW/MIA groups.<ref name="inside-172">McConnell and Schweitzer, ''Inside Hanoi's Secret Archives'', pp. 170–172, 418n10.</ref><ref name="isaacs-123"/> While Bailey did pick up some Vietnamese refugees,<ref name="inside-172"/> he never produced any prisoners and the boat spent years never leaving its dock in [[Songkhla]] in Thailand.<ref name="isaacs-123"/> The effort did, however, prove adept at bringing in money through the Virginia-based [[Eberle Associates]] direct mail marketing firm.<ref name="isaacs-123">{{cite book | last=Isaacs | first=Arnold R. | title=Vietnam Shadows: The War, Its Ghosts, and Its Legacy | publisher=[[Johns Hopkins University Press]] | year=2000 | isbn=978-0-8018-6344-8}} p. 123.</ref> It was later revealed that Bailey had exaggerated his military record, claiming he had been a pilot flying combat missions when he had been a ground support officer and giving himself decorations he did not have.<ref name="inside-172"/> Financial reports indicated that Operation Rescue spent 89&nbsp;percent of the funds it raised on further fundraising.<ref name="isaacs-123"/>

During the 1980's1980s, former [[United States Army Special Forces]] member [[Bo Gritz]] undertook a series of private trips into Southeast Asia, purportedly to locate U.S. POW'sPOWs whom some believed were still being held by Laos and Vietnam, for example at location [[Nhommarath]]. These missions were heavily publicized and controversial – for instance, as some commentators stated, few successful secret missions involve bringing to the border towns females openly marketing commemorative POW-rescue T-shirts.<ref>{{cite news |author=Colonel Robert K. Brown |author2=Jim Graves |title=Hoagland Hoax: Gritz Caught in War Lie |magazine=[[Soldier Of Fortune (magazine)|Soldier of Fortune]] |pages=51–53 |date=Spring 1983 }}</ref><ref>Keating, ''Prisoners of Hope'', pp. 131–142.</ref>

One such mission in 1982 was to free POW'sPOWs reported to be in Laos; Gritz led 15fifteen Laotians and 3three Americans, but they were ambushed shortly after crossing the border from Vietnam to Laos and the mission failed.<ref name="daniel"/> Command Sergeant Major [[Eric L. Haney]], a former [[Delta Force]] commando and a holder of the live prisoners belief, later wrote that beginning in 1981 his unit was twice told to prepare for a mission involving the rescue of U.S. POW'sPOWs being held by the North Vietnamese in camps in Laos, but both times the missions were scrubbed, for reasons unclear.<ref name="haney">{{cite book | first=Eric L. | last=Haney | title=Inside Delta Force: The Story of America's Elite Counterterrorist Unit | publisher= [[Delacorte Press]] | year=2002 | isbn=978-0-385-33603-1 | pages=250–256| title-link=Inside Delta Force }}</ref> The [[United States National Security Council|U.S. National Security Council]] would eventually say: "Throughout his years of involvement, Mr. Gritz contributed nothing of value to the POW/MIA issue. In fact, his activities have been counter-productive."<ref>McConnell and Schweitzer, ''Inside Hanoi's Secret Archives'', p. 178.</ref> Haney later said that years later he met a former senior member of the North Vietnamese diplomatic corps, who asked him why the U.S. never tried getting their POW'sPOWs back after the war's end.<ref name="haney"/> Regarding a Laos mission, Lieutenant General [[William G. Boykin|William G. "Jerry" Boykin]], a former Commandercommander of Delta Force, briefly mentions in his 2008 memoir that at one time, Delta Force had been engaged in planning for a mission to "infiltrate Laos to search for American MIA'sMIAs", but that the idea, like several unrelated missions that Delta Force had considered during its early years, had not gone forward due to the White House thinking it too risky a venture.<ref>{{cite book | title=Never Surrender: A Soldier's Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom | author1=LTG (Ret.) William G. Boykin | author2=Lynn Vincent | publisher=FaithWords | location=New York | year=2008 | isbn=978-0-446-58215-5 | pages=203–204}}</ref>

Another figure of the 1980's1980s was Scott Barnes, who claimed he had both been in a secret operation in Cambodia and had seen an American POW.<ref name="valor">{{cite book | last=Burkett | first=B.G. |author2=Whitley, Glenna | title=Stolen Valor : How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History | publisher=Verity Press | year=1998 | isbn=978-0-9667036-0-3}} pp. 422–424.</ref> His actions caused significant dissension among POW/MIA activists, especially once he claimed that he had seen more American POW'sPOWs in Laos but had been ordered by the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] to assassinate them.<ref name="valor"/><ref name="prescott-92"/> He published the 1987 book ''BOHICA'' that related this story.<ref name="prescott-92">{{cite news | url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=886&dat=19920305&id=xW9LAAAAIBAJ&pg=5977,1246751 | title=American POWs left in Laos, area man to tell Senate | first=Steve | last=Lee | newspaper=[[The Prescott Courier]] | date=March 5, 1992 | page=1A}}</ref> The [[National League of Families]] ended up accusing him of exploiting the MIA issue for personal gain, as one wife had mortgaged her house to fund him.<ref name="valor"/> Barnes, who had concocted much of his purported military background, would subsequently become a controversial figure within [[Ross Perot presidential campaign, 1992|Ross Perot's 1992 presidential campaign]].<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.posner.com/articles/time.htm |title=Citizen Perot: book adaptation from ''Time'' |author=[[Gerald Posner|Posner, Gerald]] |magazine=Time |date=1996-08-05 |access-date=2008-12-13 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080630010314/http://www.posner.com/articles/time.htm |archive-date=June 30, 2008 }}</ref>