Lifting Embargo Under Present Circumstances Will Produce New Vietnam Quagmire For Clinton

With less than a week to go before a statutorily-imposed 14 September deadline, the political risks are growing for Bill Clinton if — as expected — he lifts the trade embargo on communist Vietnam. Such a step, which it is widely believed would doom efforts to establish the truth about U.S. prisoners left behind when the war ended, threatens greatly to exacerbate the President’s "Vietnam problem" in light of several recent developments:

Item: New Evidence of Vietnam’s Lies about U.S. POW/MIAs

 

On Tuesday, 7 September, the Pentagon released an explosive new document that had been turned over to American investigators last week by Russian officials in Moscow. The document, obtained from the files of the former Soviet Union’s military intelligence organization (known as the GRU), appears to offer further confirmation that Hanoi deliberately misled the United States about the number of prisoners it held.

The document, which is said to be the translation of a December 1970 report to the North Vietnamese Communist Party Central Committee by one of its officials, Khoang Anya(1), states:

"Now, I want to stop on one more issue — about the captured American fliers. The total number of captured American fliers in the DRV [Democratic Republic of Vietnam] consists of 735 people. As I have already stated, we published the names of 368 fliers. That’s our diplomatic step. If the Americans will agree to withdraw their forces from South Vietnam, we will, for a beginning, return these 368 people to them; and when the Americans finish withdrawing their forces, we will give the rest back to them. The issue of the captured American fliers, by virtue of what has been said above, is of great importance to us."

 

While the Pentagon has thus far declined to "authenticate" this document — and Secretary of Defense Les Aspin suggested yesterday that even if his department does so, its contents may still be judged "inaccurate" — the 1970 paper is but the latest in a series of indications that Hanoi has cynically manipulated information and otherwise lied about the fate of U.S. POW/MIAs.

Another recent indication is to be found in another report (also from the GRU’s records) uncovered earlier this year which recounts a similar briefing to the North Vietnamese Politburo by Gen. Tran Van Quang. Gen. Quang reported that, as of late 1972, 1,205 prisoners were being held even though Hanoi was only publicly confirming that it held 368. (The differences in the reported numbers of prisoners held may be attributable to the later date of the Quang report and the "Anya" document’s reference to "captured American flyers" as opposed to American soldiers.) In both cases, Gen. Volkogonov, the Russian leader of a Joint Commission on POW/MIAs, has attested to the authenticity of the documents.

Item: Senator Smith’s Demand for an Investigation of a Cover-up

 

Charges that the U.S. government has long known that American prisoners were left behind in Vietnam at the war’s end and has systematically dissembled about the truth have recently been raised to a new level by Sen. Robert Smith (R-NH). According to yesterday’s New York Times, Sen. Smith formally accused ten government employees of "crimes aimed at covering up what he considers the Government’s botched efforts to find the truth" in a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno dated 29 June. Those alleged to have engaged in such activities include a senior Bush Administration political appointee as well as civilian officials of the State and Defense Department and several military officers.

Item: Ross Perot’s Concern Over Dissipating Our Leverage

 

Senator Smith’s charges about a coverup were recently underscored by an individual who has, as he put it on the Larry King Live program on 7 September, spent "the past 20-some-odd years" of his life trying to determine the true fate of Vietnam-era POWs and MIAs. H. Ross Perot made the following impassioned appeal to President Clinton:

"We left men behind. There are still men alive. There is overwhelming evidence. Now , if you ever lift that embargo and you don’t account for our men — the reason we never got them is we never paid the reparations money. They gave us part of our men, they kept the rest until they got the reparations money. That’s not being too dumb, right? Then we never paid the reparations money. Watergate hit, we dropped it. They kept our men all these years — people just like you….It’s our hope that the President will not lift the embargo. If he does, they’ll kill whoever’s left. Dead men tell no tales….We don’t know how many [are still alive], but let’s assume there’s one. The principle is the same."

 

Item: Clinton Administration’s Involvement in the Coverup?

 

In the past few weeks, it has also become clear that the Clinton Administration is no more eager than its predecessors to get to the bottom of the POW/MIA story. Indeed, despite President Clinton’s repeated promises to the families of those unaccounted for — most notably his commitment made on Memorial Day 1993 to "provide not just the prayers and memorials, but also to the extent humanly possible, to provide the answers you deserve" — the Administration has been taking steps that actually help to reduce any chance that ongoing field investigations in Southeast Asia might ascertain the truth. For example, the Pentagon has recently assigned a lieutenant colonel by the name of John Clay to head up its investigative task force in Hanoi. Lt. Col. Clay reportedly has no background in intelligence or any previous experience in Southeast Asia. He appears, in short, woefully ill-equipped for a job that requires extensive linguistic, historical and investigative skills.

At the same time, the most senior and experienced civilian investigator in the theater, Garnett "Bill" Bell, has been forced into retirement. That was the alternative given him when he and most of the other competent specialists have been told to relocate to the Joint Task Force headquarters in Hawaii.

From there, they are unlikely to be able to make any discoveries about Vietnamese dishonesty or the ultimate disposition of U.S. POW/MIAs that could complicate the Administration’s objective of achieving early normalization of U.S.-Vietnamese relations. This move is the more insidious for it coming just days after the Task Force commander, Maj. Gen. Thomas Needham personally assured the National League of Families of the high regard in which he held Bill Bell and the integral role Bell would be playing in future investigations.

Item: Grand Jury Investigation into Allegations that Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown Was Paid $700,000 to Lift the Trade Embargo

 

A federal grand jury is investigating charges by a former Vietnamese official and businessman, Binh Ly, that Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown received $700,000 from the Vietnamese government shortly before he took office. The alleged purpose: to effect a prompt lifting of the trade embargo against Hanoi.

According to U.S. News and World Report, Secretary Brown — who dismisses the allegations as "ridiculous" — has nonetheless retained a former federal prosecutor who served in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity section to represent him in this matter. At the very least, until this matter is resolved, any decision by President Clinton to lift the embargo would be unseemly, not to say suspicious.

Other Considerations Arguing Against Lifting the Embargo Now

The political costs President Clinton may ultimately pay for a decision to end the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam at this juncture could be further increased in light of the following:

• Hanoi’s Domestic Repression: Vietnam’s totalitarian regime has responded to mounting popular opposition with its trademark repression. As the Center noted on 14 June:

 

"It is no coincidence that on May 24th — as reports of a massive voter turnout in Cambodia suggested that the communists were going to be defeated — a huge demonstration was held in front of the Hue police-station in which a Buddhist monk self-immolated. This event, which reportedly was witnessed by some 10,000 pro-democracy Vietnamese and widely reported in the state-controlled media, sent shock waves through a regime which remembers vividly that such events presaged the demise of South Vietnam’s corrupt Diem government in 1963." (‘New Democrat’ Watch #3: Will Clinton Reward Hanoi for its Latest Cambodian Power-Play?, No. 93-D 47, 14 June 1993)

 

 

Not surprisingly, in June and July of 1993, hundreds of Buddhists, including the country’s most respected senior monks, were arrested in the Hue area of central Vietnam and the Vung Tau area in the south.

 

• Hanoi’s Support for a Sandinista-style "Rule from Below" Operation: Vietnam’s proxies in Phnom Penh have successfully preserved their hold on key instruments of power (notably the military and security portfolios) despite having lost the U.N.-monitored elections in May.

 

• Hanoi’s International Activities Beyond Southeast Asia Are Inconsistent With Its Stated Desire for Improved Relations: For example, Vietnam has continued to trumpet its solidarity with Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Notably, on 13 July the state propaganda mouthpiece, Radio Vietnam, reported that:

 

"In recent years, with big changes in the world, Cuba has been facing many difficulties but the Vietnam-Cuba [relationship] has been maintained and consolidated. Many of Vietnam’s senior leaders have visited Cuba. The [then-ongoing] visit by Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet will certainly open up a new page between the two countries. The event will further help to tighten the mutual understanding and affirm that Vietnam and Cuba will always be companions on the road of building respective homelands."

 

One facet of the "Vietnam-Cuba relationship" was formalized when, during a March 1990 visit to Cuba, Gen. Lee Duc Anh — who is now the President of Vietnam — signed a cooperation and mutual aid agreement which calls for "building the armies and consolidating the national defense of both countries." The Vietnamese Army received permission "to provide refresher training for high ranking military cadres of the Cuban Armed Forces." In addition, there is no evidence that Vietnam has ceased the considerable assistance it has provided in recent years to Cuban efforts aimed at training and equipping international terrorist operations in Latin America.

 

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy believes that President Clinton would be well advised, in light of the foregoing, to put any decision to improve relations with Vietnam on hold for the time being. Should he do otherwise, he will almost certainly have cause to regret the damage such a step will do to the search for American POW/MIAs and to U.S. long-term interests in democracy and stability in Southeast Asia and beyond.

In addition to retaining the embargo for at least another year, the Center calls for the immediate initiation of consultations with the Congress concerning the well-justified addition of Vietnam to the list of state-sponsors of terrorism.

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1. According to today’s New York Times, Stephen Morris — the Harvard scholar who originally discovered the 1972 document in the Soviet archives — believes that the name of the official in question has been mistranslated and that it probably was Hoang Anh, a member of the Central Committee of the Vietnamese Workers Party and of its secretariat. He held a sub-ministerial position in charge of resettlement."