-Caveat Lector-
Advocacy And Intelligence Index
For Prisoners Of War/Missing In Action, Inc.
([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Bob Necci and Andi Wolos
THE POW/MIA E-MAIL NETWORK (c)
aiijul12.99a
Prepared Remarks
by
Presidential Candidate and United States Senator
Bob Smith
(embargoed until 1:45 p.m. delivery before the)
30th Annual Meeting
of the
National League of Families
of American Prisoners and Missing
in Southeast Asia
June 18, 1999
Washington Marriott Hotel
Washington, D.C.
Thank you ladies and gentlemen for once again inviting me to address
your annual convention. As I have told you in the past, this is always a
time of mixed emotions for me. Of course, I'm always happy to see so many of
you that I've come to know through the years. But at the same time, I'm sad
that continued Vietnamese intransigence and the U.S. Government's
foot-dragging on key elements of the POW/MIA issue causes you to have to
convene this 30th Annual Meeting.
Simply put, there has not been full disclosure by Hanoi about
unaccounted for American POWs and MIAs. The facts speak for themselves. We
have not had access to relevant POW information from the Communist Party
Central Committee --including Politburo, Military Affairs Committee, and
Secretariat level records from the war. Why can't we see the records of the
internal briefings to North Vietnam's leadership during the war about how
many POWs they had really captured? If they're not hiding anything, and
they've told the truth all these years about how many POWs they really held,
then why can't we see those documents? We also have not had access to prison
records where some of your loved ones were known to have been held, and even
suspected to have been held, during the war. We have not had full access to
Vietnamese wartime reporting on American POWs captured along the Ho Chi Minh
Trail in Laos, and at other locations in Laos, such as Lima Site 85, and Sam
Neua Province where several U.S. personnel remain unaccounted for. And we
have not had a convincing and complete response from the Vietnamese
Government about the documents uncovered in the Russian archives in 1993 that
indicated Hanoi held more U.S. POWs than they repatriated in 1973.
Despite all of this, the President continues to certify to Congress
that Hanoi is fully cooperating in good faith. As you may recall, this
Presidential certification is necessary in order for funds to be spent for
diplomatic relations. I'm really not surprised that the President keeps
making this inaccurate certification in order to advance his normalization
agenda with Vietnam.
It's a sad irony that our U.S. Ambassador and Vietnamese Government
officials are here in town this week lobbying for more U.S.
taxpayer-subsidized trade benefits and working on a new trade deal, instead
of rolling up their sleeves over here, and really spending time with you to
discuss your concerns about the accounting effort for your loved ones. I was
told this morning that last year, the Ambassador told you that you needed to
be "more patient." Imagine that. This is only your 30th annual meeting --
how much longer are you supposed to be patient?
This is really a sad and outrageous commentary on our foreign policy
toward Vietnam, and our Government's commitment to the POW/MIA issue -- and
you certainly don't need me to tell you that. I know how you feel,
especially when you hear the rhetoric, as you have for far too many years
now, about how this is our highest national priority with respect to Vietnam.
If it's really been our highest national priority all of these years,
and if Vietnam is truly and fully cooperating in good faith, then why are
there so many remaining questions about more than 2,060 American servicemen
who never came home from the war in Southeast Asia? You know the answer.
You know the answer all too well.
Despite all the work by dedicated military personnel working under
our Pacific Command, jointly investigating and excavating crash sites and
interviewing witnesses alongside Vietnamese Government personnel -- despite
all those efforts, they are not going to bring many of you the final answers
you deserve in the absence of serious high-level negotiations being conducted
by senior policy officials which are focused on what Hanoi can still do
unilaterally. Why should the League of Families have to go to Hanoi, as your
leaders did last month, to beg for more unilateral cooperation?
When I announced my candidacy for President of the United States in
February this year, I made a pledge that I will repeat here today. If the
American people put me in the White House, never again will you the families
have to beg our Government and Communist Governments abroad for answers about
your loved ones. Never again. Never again.
You know me. And you know that in my case, actions speak louder than
words, especially on this issue. You know how often I have stood alone in
the halls and chambers of the Congress putting principle before profit with
our Government's policy toward Vietnam, not the other way around. But you
know, I never truly felt alone, because I knew that you, the families,
appreciated what I've been doing and trying to do on this painful issue
through the years, and I knew that the vast majority of those who served with
your loved ones felt the same way.
Let me take just a couple moments now to reference a few things that
have happened the last year, and let you know some of the things I'm
currently working to try to help all of you with the accounting effort for
your loved ones. I know you've already been briefed by General Lajoie and
the staff who support my work as Chairman of the Vietnam War Working Group on
the US-Russia Joint Commission on POWs and MIAs. Let me just say that with
the help of the Administration, and specifically Vice-President Gore's
forthcoming contacts with the new Russian Prime Minister Stepashin, I believe
we can make more progress on whether a Soviet plan to transfer knowledgeable
Americans to the USSR in the late 1960s might have included American POWs in
Southeast Asia. I have pursued this lead from the late Russian General
Volkogonov for well over a year now, including in Moscow, and I'm going to
stay on it until I'm satisfied that we know the answer about this plan and
the extent to which it was ever implemented.
As I mentioned earlier, some of you may recall that in 1993, we
managed to obtain from the Russian Government copies of two Soviet military
intelligence reports from the Vietnam War in which very high-ranking North
Vietnamese officials were telling their own leaders, in secret, that they
held a lot more U.S. POWs than the ones that they later released in 1973. I
can tell you that since 1993, every piece of information the Russians have
provided, from the current head of Russian military intelligence on down
through the ranks, confirms that the Soviets judged these reports to be
reliable in the early 1970s --that is to say, North Vietnam did, in fact,
according to the Russians, hold more U.S. POWs than those who came home.
Who were these POWs, and what happened to them? We still don't have
answers from the Vietnamese, and once again, unfortunately, this
Administration has not done nearly enough to press the Communist leadership
in Hanoi. In fact, the Administration prefers instead to discount what the
Russians have given us. The view of the Clinton/Gore Administration is that
they know more about the internal situation in North Vietnam during the
Vietnam War than the Soviet Union might have known, so we can't accept what
the Russians have given us and what they tell us. I doubt any of you would
accept that kind of view. I certainly don't. And it's even worse than that,
my friends. And I'll going to tell it to you like it is. That's the way I
am. When those Russian top secret reports hit the press in 1993, and there
was a big uproar by everybody, President Clinton and Vice-President Gore had
a meeting at the White House with the National Security Council, the State
Department and the Defense Department. I am told by a trusted source whose
credibility I have absolutely no reason to doubt that it was directed in that
meeting that the revelations in these Russians documents about American POWs
not be allowed to get in the way of normalization of U.S. relations with
Vietnam.
I'm a Vietnam veteran. I wore my country's uniform into a combat
zone in the Gulf of Tonkin off of North Vietnam during the war. And I have
devoted much of my tenure in Congress on the Armed Services Committee of both
Houses to our men and women who now wear the uniform. I find it
reprehensible that when faced with dramatic information bearing on missing
U.S. servicemen, the White House response was don't let it interfere with
lifting the trade embargo and establishing diplomatic relations with Hanoi.
So where are we now with respect to these Russian documents. Some of
you will remember that two years ago when the Senate was considering whether
to confirm a U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, and agreement was struck between the
President's National Security Advisor and the Senate Majority Leader. As a
condition for letting that nomination go through the Senate, the
Administration agreed to do what's called a national intelligence estimate on
the Vietnam POW/MIA issue, with special emphasis on those documents from
Soviet archives.
That formal assessment, led by the CIA, was completed last year, and
the full results of that assessment, which have not been declassified, raise
very serious and troubling questions about the thoroughness and objectivity
of the collection and analysis done by our U.S. Intelligence Community. I
wrote a classified 200-page assessment this past November of what the
Director of Central Intelligence came out with. I told the CIA Director in
writing that believed his research was either shoddy or reflected a
predetermined effort to discredit relevant information, and in either case,
it was a sad commentary on his agency's commitment to the issue. And it's
interesting that his report was distributed internally right about the same
time that the President had to certify again whether Vietnam was being fully
cooperative on the POW/MIA issue.
The good news on this matter is that the Chairman and Vice-Chairman
of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama and
Senator Robert Kerrey of Nebraska, at my urging, have formally asked the
Inspectors General of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of
Defense to conduct an independent investigation and to respond to the charges
contained in my classified 200-page report, which I wish I could speak about
in more detail, but, unfortunately, I cannot at this time. I can tell you
that the investigation has been underway since April, and one of the things
they're looking into is whether there was any inappropriate contact, as some
have suggested to me, between the policymakers and the intelligence analysts
on what the final estimate was going to say, to make sure it didn't conflict
with Administration policy to Vietnam.
I did ask last November for all of this to be declassified, so I
could share it with you, but so far, I haven't received a response to that
request. But I will keep at this, because you deserve to know everything our
own Government knows that might relate to your loved ones, and you deserve a
better commitment from our Intelligence agencies in my opinion.
And last, but not least, one of the ways I'm going to keep at this in
the days and weeks ahead is by drafting and working to pass new and
comprehensive legislation on the POW/MIA issue.
Simply put, too many documents remain classified on the POW/MIA
issue, and we need legislation to correct this, and we need to make it easier
for you to get access to this information. I know firsthand the uncertainty
you've endured and how even the smallest bit of evidence can help relieve
your burden. I lost my dad, a Naval aviator, at the end of World War II --
two days before my 4th birthday. I know the impact it had on me, on my
brother, and especially on my mother who passed away a few years ago, and is
now buried next to my dad in Arlington National Cemetery. You deserve better
with respect to declassification of documents, so that will be the first part
of my bill.
And the second part is going to deal with integrating the POW/MIA
issue, in a coordinated way, into our foreign policy objectives toward every
country that might hold answers on unaccounted for personnel. Your Executive
Director knows all too well how the elimination of the POW/MIA InterAgency
Group in the Clinton/Gore Administration has resulted in so many missed
opportunities to press the POW/MIA issue in Russia, Vietnam, Laos, and
Cambodia at the highest levels in a substantive way. We need to use our
leverage, including our trade benefits, instead of always giving everything
away without getting the fullest possible accounting effort that you deserve
in return.
It has been a privilege to work with you -- the POW/MIA families --
and I want you to know that I am going to continue to do everything I can to
help keep this issue front and center in our dealings with the Communist
governments in Southeast Asia. I'm only one person, but you know that
together, we can go a long way. And if I make it to the White House myself,
there will be no doubt about our nation's commitment to the accounting effort
for your loved ones. You know my record and you know how personally
committed I am to helping all of you. Thank you, and I'd be pleased to
respond to any questions you might have.
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Advocacy And Intelligence Index
For Prisoners Of War/Missing In Action, Inc.
1220 Locust Avenue, Bohemia, Long Island, New York 11716-2169 USA
Voice: (1-516) 567-9057 Fax: (1-516) 244-7097 TDD: (1-516) 244-6996
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Necci)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Andi Wolos)
Website: http://www.aiipowmia.com/
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