Report of the
Senate Select Committee
on
POW-MIA Affairs:
Section 5
Investigation of Issues Related to Paris
Peace Accords
Most of the questions and controversies that
still surround the POW/MIA issue can be traced back to the Paris Peace Accords
and their immediate aftermath. If that agreement had been implemented in good
faith by North Vietnam and with necessary cooperation from Cambodia and Laos,
the fullest possible accounting of missing Americans would have been achieved
long ago.
During negotiations, the American team, headed
by Dr. Henry Kissinger, had sought an agreement that would provide explicitly
for the release of American prisoners and an accounting for missing American
servicemen throughout Indochina. The U.S. negotiators said, when the agreement
was signed, that they had "unconditional guarantees" that these goals would be
achieved.
The great accomplishment of the peace agreement
was that it resulted in the release of 591 American POWs, of whom 566 were
military and 25 civilian. It also established a framework for cooperation in
resolving POW/MIA related questions that remains of value today. Unfortunately,
efforts to implement the agreement failed, for a number of reasons, to resolve
the POW/MIA issue.
Obstacles Faced by U.S. Negotiators
During its investigation, the Committee
identified several factors that handicapped U.S. officials during the
negotiation of the peace agreement, and during the critical first months of
implementation.
The first and most obvious obstacle to a fully
effective agreement was the approach taken to the POW/MIA issue by North Vietnam
(DRV) and its allies. During the war, the DRV violated its obligations under the
Geneva Convention by refusing to provide complete lists of prisoners, and by
prohibiting or severely restricting the right of prisoners to exchange mail or
receive visits from international humanitarian agencies.
During negotiations, the DRV insisted that the
release of prisoners could not be completed prior to the withdrawal of all U.S.
forces, and consistently linked cooperation on the POW/MIA issue to other
issues, including a demand for reconstruction aid from the United States. Once
the agreement was signed, the DRV was slow to provide a list of prisoners
captured in Laos. Following Operation Homecoming, the North Vietnamese refused
to cooperate in providing an accounting for missing Americans, including some
who were known to have been held captive at one time within the DRV prison
system. Perhaps most important of all, the DRV's continued pursuit of a military
conquest of South Vietnam dissipated prospects for cooperation on POW/MIA
issues.
A second factor inhibiting the achievement of
U.S. objectives was the limited leverage enjoyed by U.S. negotiators. It was
U.S. policy, fully known to the North Vietnamese, that the U.S. sought to
disengage from the war. President Nixon was elected on a platform calling for an
end to U.S. involvement; support was building rapidly within the Congress for
measures that would have mandated a withdrawal conditioned on the return of
prisoners; and the American public had become increasingly divided and war-weary
as the conflict continued. These same factors, along with the debilitating
effects of the Watergate scandal on the Nixon Presidency, weakened the U.S. hand
in responding to DRV violations after the peace agreement was signed.
A third factor limiting the success of the
agreement was the absence of Lao and Cambodian representatives from the peace
table. Although the U.S. negotiators pressed the DRV for commitments concerning
the release of prisoners and an accounting for the missing throughout Indochina,
the peace accords technically apply only to Vietnam. Although the DRV, in a side
understanding, assured Dr. Kissinger that it would cooperate in obtaining the
release of U.S. prisoners in Laos, the fact is that the prisoners captured in
Laos who were actually released had long since been transferred to Hanoi. No
Americans held captive in Laos for a significant period of time have ever been
returned. Neither the peace agreement, nor the assurances provided by North
Vietnam to Dr. Kissinger, established procedures to account for missing
Americans in Cambodia or Laos.
American Protests
The Paris Peace Accords provided for the
exchange of prisoner lists on the day the agreement was signed and for the
return of all prisoners of war within 60 days. It also required the parties to
assist each other in obtaining information about those missing in action and to
determine the location of graves for the purpose of recovering and repatriating
remains.
U.S. officials, especially in the Department of
Defense, were disappointed that more live American prisoners were not included
on the lists exchanged when the peace agreement was signed or--with respect to
prisoners captured in Laos--four days after the agreement was signed. The record
uncovered by the Committee's investigation indicates that high level Defense
Department and Defense Intelligence Agency officials were especially concerned
about the incompleteness of the list of prisoners captured in Laos.
This concern was based on intelligence that some
Americans had been held captive by the Pathet Lao, on repeated Pathet Lao claims
that prisoners were being held, and on the large number of American pilots who
were listed as missing in action in Laos compared to the number being proposed
for return. Top military and intelligence officials expressed the hope, at the
time the peace agreement was signed, that as many as 41 servicemen lost in Laos
would be returned. However, only ten men (7 U.S. military, 2 U.S. civilian and a
Canadian) were on the list of prisoners captured in Laos that was turned over by
the DRV.
During the first 60 days, while the American
troop withdrawal was underway, the Nixon Administration contacted North
Vietnamese officials repeatedly to express concern about the incomplete nature
of the prisoner lists that had been received. In early February, President Nixon
sent a message to the DRV Prime Minister saying, with respect to the list of
only ten POWs from Laos, that:
U.S. records show there are 317 American
military men unaccounted for in Laos and it is inconceivable that only ten of
these men would be held prisoner in Laos.
Soon thereafter, Dr. Kissinger presented DRV
officials with 19 case folders of Americans who should have been accounted for,
but who were not. The U.S. protests continued and in mid-March, the U.S.
threatened briefly to halt the withdrawal of American troops if information
about the nine American prisoners on the DRV/Laos list and about prisoners
actually held by the Pathet Lao were not provided. By the end of the month, top
Defense Department officials were recommending a series of diplomatic and
military options aimed at achieving an accounting for U.S. prisoners thought to
be held in Laos.
Ultimately, the Nixon Administration proceeded
with the withdrawal of troops in return for the release of prisoners on the
lists provided by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong.
Post-Homecoming
The public statements made by President Nixon
and by high Defense Department officials following the end of Operation
Homecoming did not fully reflect the Administration's prior concern that live
U.S. prisoners may have been kept behind. Administration officials did, however,
continue to stress publicly the need for Vietnam to meet its obligations under
the peace agreement, and U.S. diplomats pressed both the North Vietnamese and
the Pathet Lao for information concerning missing Americans. Unfortunately, due
to the intransigence of our adversaries, those efforts were largely unavailing.
During the Committee's hearings, it was
contended by Dr. Kissinger and some Members of the Committee that Congressional
attitudes would have precluded any Administration effort to respond forcefully
to the DRV's failure to provide an accounting for missing American servicemen.
These Members of the Committee contend that their view is supported by the
Senate's rejection on May 31, 1973 of an amendment offered by U.S. Sen. Robert
Dole that would have permitted the continued bombing of Laos and Cambodia if the
President certified that North Vietnam "is not making an accounting, to the best
of its ability, of all missing in action personnel in Southeast Asia."
Conclusions
The Committee believes that its investigation
contributed significantly to the public record of the negotiating history of the
POW/MIA provisions of the Paris Peace Accords, and of the complications that
arose during efforts to implement those provisions both before and after the
completion of Operation Homecoming. That record indicates that there existed a
higher degree of concern within the Administration about the possibility that
prisoners were being left behind in Laos than had been known previously, and
that various options for responding to that concern were discussed at the
highest levels of government.
The Committee notes that some Administration
statements at the time the agreement was signed expressed greater certainty
about the completeness of the POW return than they should have and that other
statements may have understated the problems that would arise during
implementation and that--taken together, these statements may have raised public
and family expectations too high. The Committee further notes that statements
made after the agreement was signed may have understated U.S. concerns about the
possibility that live prisoners remained, thereby contributing in subsequent
years to public suspicion and distrust. However, the Committee concludes that
the phrasing of these statements was designed to avoid raising what were
believed to be false hopes among POW/MIA families, rather than to mislead the
American people.