PUTTING CLINTON’S VIETNAM POLICY ON THE ‘SPOT’: ‘COLD SPOT’ FILES CRY OUT FOR INQUIRY ON POW COVER-UP
(Washington, D.C.): In the
op.ed. article published in
yesterday’s Washington Times, a
distinguished member of the Center for
Security Policy’s Board of Advisors, Al
Santoli, makes a stunning revelation:
According to recently declassified U.S.
government documents, a joint CIA-Air
Force program code-named “Cold
Spot” was mounted from 1971 to 1975
for the purpose of intercepting communist
North Vietnamese and Laotian radio
communications. On at least two
different occasions in the course of this
program, intercepts were obtained that
showed “USA prisoners” were
being held in Indochina long after
all U.S. POWs were ostensibly returned in
March 1972.
According to Santoli — a former
Vietnam veteran, congressional
investigator and noted author:
“On 8 October 1973, a
communique from the governor of Nghia
Lo province to the Minister of
Defense in Hanoi confirmed the
transfer of ‘112 USA pilots’ from Lai
Chau [near the Laotian border].
The ‘USA prisoners’ were taken to a
prison that previously held ‘Thai
[captured in Laos] and Vietnamese’
prisoners. And, ‘their snapshots were
finished and I will send them to
Hanoi to register with the Ministry
of Defense…and names and ages of
all will be attached.’
“On 11 November 1973,
the governor of Sontay Province
reported to the Minister of Defense
in Hanoi: ‘112 USA prisoners in
prison in Sontay Province.’
He named a doctor who treated 10
prisoners with ‘pain in their
hearts….They are not in a good way.
Therefore, I quickly send this cable
for you to decide what to do.'”
As the Center for Security Policy has
previously reported,
these documents are but the
latest materials to become public that
establish Vietnam and/or its Laotian
proxy retained American prisoners after
Operation Homecoming — and that the
U.S. government was aware of that fact.
The conclusion is therefore inescapable: Persistent
statements by U.S. officials under
successive administrations denying these
facts have been untrue.
Recent Manifestations of
the Continuing Cover-Up
Two recent developments make this
finding particularly noteworthy:
The Justice Department
Stonewalls Sen. Smith: First, on
4 January 1994, the Clinton Department of
Justice responded to a June 1993 letter
from Sen. Robert Smith (R-NH). In his
letter, Senator Smith alleged that ten
present or former U.S. government
officials, identified by name, had
provided false statements to the Senate
Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs — of
which he was the Vice Chairman — or
otherwise engaged in “potential
federal and criminal violations.”
The Senator asked that “criminal,
civil or administrative procedures…be
initiated by the Justice Department”
if warranted by an investigation into
these allegations.
Given the astonishingly perfunctory
nature of the Justice’s response, it
is mystifying why it would have taken the
Department six months to issue it.
Writing on behalf of Assistant Attorney
General Jo Ann Harris, Acting Assistant
Attorney General John Keeney told Sen.
Smith that:
“…We have conducted a
thorough review of the documents that
we obtained from you, analyzing each
instance in which you have
articulated concern. We have
concluded that further investigation
by the Department of Justice is not
appropriate.”
Remarkably, according to Sen.
Smith, the Justice Department’s
“thorough review” did not
include interviews or depositions of
individuals directly involved in the
cases highlighted in the documentation.
On 11 January 1994, Sen. Smith ridiculed
this superficial investigation, saying:
“I believe Justice officials
should have at least talked
to all of the individuals named or
involved in these matters. Attorney
General Janet Reno had publicly
pledged to review ‘all the available
evidence’ on cases referred to her
for criminal investigation. However,
she is clearly not in the
investigative mode these days. First,
we had ‘Whitewater’ and now we have
‘Whitewash.'”
DIA Stonewalls on the Russian
Document: Second, the Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA) today released
its official assessment of a 1972
document discovered last year in the
files of the Central Committee of the
Soviet Communist Party by Harvard
researcher Stephen Morris. DIA judges
this paper — which has come to be known
as the “1205 Document” for its
reference to that number of American
prisoners being held by Vietnam — to be
an authentic, but inaccurate,
Soviet report of remarks by Gen. Tran Van
Quang to the Vietnamese Politburo.
George Carver, another valued member
of the Center for Security Policy’s Board
of Advisors who formerly served as the
top CIA official responsible for Vietnam
issues, believes the latest DIA
assessment to fit the general, deplorable
pattern: “It is reminiscent of what
[ex-DIA director Lt. Gen.] Eugene Tighe
once branded a ‘mindset to debunk'”
any POW-MIA-related information that
conflicts with the U.S. government’s
party line that no Americans were left
behind in Indochina.
Other Data
The Center has learned that in
addition to “Cold Spot” there
were at least two other U.S.
(Air Force/NSA) intelligence collection
programs — code-named “Olympic
Torch” and “Comfy Gator”
— that might also provide documentation
of the whereabouts prior to the end of
the Vietnam war of American POW-MIAs who
did not come home. In the face
of the information disclosed by Al
Santoli, that supplied in a detailed
December 1993 briefing prepared by Sen.
Smith and that contained in materials
compiled by the American Legion, the
official “debunking” line is
becoming utterly untenable. It is,
moreover, increasingly an insult to the
intelligence of the American people.
Regrettably, the nation missed an
early opportunity to learn more about the
information available to U.S. government
officials from Vietnamese and Laotian
communications intercepts when Admiral
Bobby Ray Inman, the former director of
the National Security Agency, asked that
his nomination to become Secretary of
Defense be withdrawn. As a result, the
Senate Armed Services Committee was
denied the chance to query Adm.
Inman about his previous testifimony to
the effect that in 1973 he believed that
some Americans had been left behind.
Presumably this judgment was reached on
the basis of signals intelligence
operations like “Cold Spot,”
“Olympic Torch” and “Comfy
Gator.” Adm. Inman would have been
well aware that these operations provided
not only information about the
whereabouts of American POW-MIAs but also
offered insights into the sorts of pilots
most highly valued — and, therefore,
routinely targeted — by Vietnamese
anti-aircraft personnel and their Russian
and Chinese advisors.
Fortunately, Sen. Smith has
announced his intention to force a debate
on the cover-up that has been perpetrated
by the Clinton Administration and its
predecessors concerning the fate of U.S.
POW-MIAs in Indochina. He will
offer an amendment, perhaps as early as
today, to S. 1281, the State Department
authorization bill for Fiscal Years 1994
and 1995, that will require the President
to certify that:
- Vietnam has resolved as fully as
possible POW-MIA cases where
Vietnam can be “reasonably
expected” to have additional
information based on U.S.
investigations to date. - Vietnam has addressed, to the
President’s satisfaction, the
POW-MIA related documents
concerning Vietnam which were
found in Russian archives in
1993. And - The United States has fully
investigated intelligence reports
concerning POW-MIAs in the
possession of the U.S.
intelligence community.
Under the terms of the Smith
amendment, the twenty-year old trade
embargo on Vietnam could not be rescinded
until such a certification was made in
writing and submitted to the Congress.
The Center for Security Policy strongly
supports this amendment and welcomes the
opportunity it will at long last afford
for a full and open Senate debate about
the implications of “Cold Spot”
and other information about the fate of
U.S. POW-MIAs left behind in Indochina.
The Bottom Line
Whatever the outcome of the debate on
the Smith Amendment, however, it is
unconscionable for the U.S. government to
engage in further prevarication or deceit
about unaccounted-for Americans from the
Vietnam war. At a minimum, the fresh look
called for by Al Santoli into the wealth
of intelligence and other official
records should be conducted under the
supervision of the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Gen. John Shalikashvili.
To assure the thoroughness and
legitimacy of this review, however, it
must be performed by people who have no
ideological baggage or record to conceal
or defend. If, as the Center
believes would be the case, such an
independent analysis establishes
malfeasance and systematic perfidy on the
part of U.S. officials, criminal
prosecution would be in order. And
obviously, in light of the Justice
Department’s recent stonewalling of Sen.
Smith, it will have to be undertaken by
an independent counsel.
– 30 –
1. See, for
example, the Center’s recent Decision
Brief entitled What
About an Operation Coming Clean On
American POW-MIAs Abandoned In Indochina?,
(No. 94-D 1, 3
January 1994) and its press release
entitled Center Charges a
Cover-Up on Vietnam POW-MIAs That Should
Dwarf Watergate; Urges C-SPAN to Air Sen.
Smith’s Briefing, (
January 1994).
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