When I heard that some of the documents collected at Mar-a-Lago were marked SCI, I thought I might write a SubStack piece, but since it would certainly turn out way too polemical, I demurred. I do know that every single modern President except one has used the National Archives to write their memoirs. Only one needed to squirl away classified documents in their homes. Enough said.
Instead, I thought I would focus on an issue that does not get as much attention as it should and that I care very much about: POW/MIA -- https://www.pow-miafamilies.org/number-of-americans-still-missing-and-unaccounted-for-by-state.html. It is one that should matter more to folks in the Intelligence Community (IC) and the academic community. As of January 2022 1,584, of our comrades are still missing and unaccounted for.
My introduction to the Vietnam POW/MIA issue began at my time as NIO for East Asia (1985-1989). The East Asia Informal (a group originally created by the late Richard (Dick) Holbrooke included representatives from State EAP, OSD/ISA, NSC, and CIA). Paul Wolfowitz continued it during the Reagan years (1989-1992). It was this group that requested me to prepare a National Estimate (NIE) on the subject. I learned later that the NIE was the brainchild of the long-time representative of the League of Families of Vietnam POW/MIA’s in Washington, Ann Mills Griffiths. As a result of numerous trips to the region, she had become as well known to senior officials in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia as she was to those in Washington. Her contacts and influence with the Congress were legendary, and she was taken seriously by senior members through a succession of administrations, including several Presidents. Also, Anne did not suffer from a lack of assertiveness or suffer fools easily. She pushed and shoved a reluctant bureaucracy unmercifully. To say that many people were afraid of her is an understatement. Her focus was on learning the fate of the remaining missing and unaccounted for from the Vietnam War, which by the time of the NIE in 1987 had been over for more than ten years.
As each Administration had come and gone, Ann had finally managed to convince senior policy officials late in the Carter Administration to form a POW/MIA Interagency Working Group, (inherited by the Reagan Administration.) Initially run by rotating chairman from OSD/ISA, JCS, State EAP, and participants which included Paul Wolfowitz, Richard (Rich) Armitage, Dick Childress (later Gaston Sigur), and Ann among others, and then continued in the George H. W. Bush Administration with Karl Jackson, Peter Watson, Ken Quinn, Ann, and I, until allowed to expire with the election of Bill Clinton in 1992. Over the course of its existence, the POW/MIA Working Group dealt with sensitive classified information and developed policies for pursuing answers for the families. Prior to the Reagan Administration, the major focus of senior officials had been to keep as far away from anything to do with POW/MIAs as humanly possible. President Reagan and the team responsible for Asia came to the issue with a much different mindset–they were true supporters of achieving National League of Families accounting objectives.
Prior to the estimate, except for my two tours in Vietnam and a couple of courses at Florida State, I had spent little time on the issue of Southeast Asia, hardly any of it dealing with the POW/MIA issue. I only had a vague notion of the political sensitivities surrounding what some not so affectionately referred to as the “tar baby.” I was happy to oblige when Wolfowitz, Armitage, and Sigur pressed me to do the Estimate. Little did I know! Trouble started as soon as I surfaced the request in the National Intelligence Council (NIC).
Not only had there never been an estimate on the POW/MIA issue, but the subject itself was considered political, not substantive in the Intelligence Community (IC). Initially, there was considerable pushback, so much so that, if I had dreamed up the idea myself, I would never have been allowed to continue with the Estimate. The bureaucracy only relented because of the high-level policy interest, and even then, it barely squeaked through. I got much the same push back from the IC when I put the Estimate on the production schedule. As I was soon to learn, most Southeast Asian specialists in the community also considered POWs a political issue except for a small band of analysts at DIA, again thanks to Ann’s efforts. Beyond that, the intelligence agencies had no one assigned to the POW/MIA as an intelligence problem.
CIA was particularly vociferous in its disdain for the issue, and it was most opposed to the Estimate. Only when I announced that we would proceed without them did they relent. It was soon clear why they had been so reluctant. There was an enormous amount of material that had been collected on the issue over the years, but it was being ignored by all, except for the few analysts that Ann had strong armed DIA into assigning to the problem. In addition to there being a lot of material available for analysts to use, I was struck by the quality and detail of the information I was seeing for the first time. My reaction was, “WOW! I wish I had even a tenth as much to work with as this when I was a China analyst.” It was clear that having never had an Estimate on the issue was certainly not because of a lack of data.
As I learned more, I discovered that there was a political motive behind not wanting to dig too deeply into the data we had on POW/MIAs. Contrary to the view that POW/MIA was only important because of the political pressure from the families and the Congress, there indeed was a political angle. It, however, came from those pressing for normalizing relations with Vietnam. They seemed not to want people to realize Hanoi’s lack of cooperation up to that point and unwillingness to even admit that it had a large amount of information it had chosen not to share with us. As it was described in the key judgments of the estimate:
“There is a considerable body of evidence that the Vietnamese have detailed information on the fate of several hundred personnel. We estimate that the Vietnamese have already recovered and are warehousing between 400 and 600 remains. Thus, Hanoi could account quickly for several hundred personnel by returning warehoused remains and by providing material evidence that could aid in determining the fate of other personnel.”
A later attempt by supporters of normalization to produce a new NIE with contradictory judgments fell flat. By that time, there was even more evidence available on Hanoi’s unwillingness to share information on the fate of our POW/MIAs courtesy of the “Swamp Fox,” whose exploits I will detail later. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was to develop a partnership with Ann Mills Griffiths and become even more directly involved with the League of Families, and in promoting Department of Defense involvement when I was seconded from CIA to OSD/ISA.
Secretary Cheney gave me my marching orders on the POW/MIA issue during my first encounter with him. Both he and the President Bush wanted to continue giving the League of Families their full support in the shared quest of a full accounting of those left behind in Southeast Asia. At the same time, the Secretary understood how time consuming this could become and looked to me to take the lead on this issue. I had a head start by virtue of my work on the National Intelligence Estimate while on the National Intelligence Council, and I knew most of the key players in the policy community, especially the League’s full time representative in Washington, Ann Mills Griffith.
I had plenty of help from a group of military officers assigned to the office, including Col William (Bill) Jordan, Maj. Charles (Charlie) Gittins, and Lt. Tom Doughty. I couldn’t have asked for a more dedicated and hardworking group that genuinely cared about achieving their mission. None of them, however, liked being the interface between ISA and Ann. She thought about the missing 24/7 and didn’t hesitate to share her thoughts and requirements on about the same time schedule. One and all were delighted to find that not only did I not mind working with Ann, but I also enjoyed it. She knew more about the issue than the four of us combined and was willing to share her knowledge and expertise with us. Others beyond the League of Families followed the fate of our missing servicemen, but many of those people were downright crazy, or were showboats more interested in themselves than resolving cases. They made our job harder.
Policy questions were resolved by an inter-agency group of representatives from the Department of State, ISA, the Joint Staff, the NSC, and Ann who held a SECRET clearance. The President had also appointed the late Gen. John Vessey (ret.) as his personal representative on the issue with Vietnam. The government group met frequently, but often acrimoniously with the State representative at odds with the rest of us. There were occasions when Ann didn’t get her way, but not that often and never, as I recall, did the group deny any significant requests made by the Families of the MIAs. They knew the issue so well that what they came up with was the best answer. The members of the inter-agency group generally got along except for one issue, what we called the “Road Map to Normalization” of relations between Vietnam and the United States. It was a series of steps most of us believed Vietnam could easily accomplish on POW/MIAs before Washington politicians gave away whatever leverage we had on Vietnam by agreeing to normalize. The League was eager to establish relations with Hanoi but hoped that the Families equities and interests would not be ignored in the process. The State representative thought we were asking too much from Hanoi leading to several long and hotly debated meetings. On one occasion I became so angry at State’s unwillingness to join the majority position, I abruptly left the room until I could cool off. I don’t think Ann and I ever liked the final draft of the Road Map even though our arguments prevailed on many of the toughest issues. I only say that because I think State was even more disappointed than we were with the group’s recommendations.
I traveled with Ann and Gen. Vessey on one of his several visits to Hanoi. Having never set foot in the North and it being my first visit since the war, I was wide-eyed the whole time taking in the sights and sounds of Hanoi. The conversations with the Vietnamese were less rewarding. As usual, they denied holding any remains and claimed they were doing all they could do in assisting our “Stony Brook” retrieval teams based in Thailand. Interestingly, Ann told me that, in the beginning, she and Dick Childress had approached the Vietnamese with the idea of sending teams as a way of emptying the “Warehouse” of remains without them having to admit such a building or buildings even existed. Indeed, the first few times “Stony Brook” teams were allowed into Vietnam, they went out searching an area reported to contain some remains. Finding nothing they returned to Hanoi only to find several sets of remains at plane side ready for them to repatriate to Thailand.
It didn’t take long for Hanoi to realize the goldmine remains recovery offered. If our “Stony Brook” teams were to search for remains, however, the foreign ministry insisted they bring a big bag of money with them. Buying Vietnam’s cooperation didn’t come cheap. They insisted we use their Russian-made helicopters and other military equipment for a fee, and because they claimed many areas were not safe, we also paid for Vietnamese troops to protect our teams. We suspected that most of the money went to the military and was probably a factor in the foreign ministry’s ability to gain approval in the first place for teams tromping around in the countryside looking for remains. This work continues today.
One afternoon I received a call from Rich Armitage. He explained that he had just talked with an interesting fellow that might be of help on the POW/MIA issue, and that he had recommended that he come and see me. An hour or so later a fellow appeared at my door that I eventually dubbed the “SWAMP FOX.” He indicated that he wanted to write a book about the POW/MIA issue. He had spoken to the Vietnamese officials in charge of the war archives, and they had tentatively agreed to let him research the records from the war they had kept. If he hadn’t come recommended by Rich, I probably would have let it drop after that first meeting. Instead, I prepared a memo for the Secretary outlining what value might be gained if this guy got Vietnamese approval. I asked to discuss it with him. Cheney, like everyone who heard about the “SWAMP FOX” for the first time, was skeptical about his claims. But he also recognized that the potential for gaining information on our missing was so great that we had to find out, if the “SWAMP FOX” could pull it off. He nixed the idea of a book right away but gave me permission to explore the opportunities that “SWAMP FOX” appeared to offer.
The nixed book was almost a deal breaker, but “SWAMP FOX” agreed with my suggestion that he need not worry about that sort of detail until his work in Vietnam was over, and he was back home. This left other details to work out that included finding someone who could provide transportation costs, and some sort of per diem. Both were well beyond anything I could do with ISA resources, so I turned to DIA. He had gotten the brush off earlier from DIA, but with knowledge that the venture was supported by the Secretary and a nudge from Rich, we had found our financial sponsor.
Once “SWAMP FOX” thought about it overnight, he got cold feet over having an intelligence organization involved in the venture. He was afraid that the Vietnamese might view him as a spy and throw him into prison or worse. I told him I understood his concerns, but those were our terms. He could take them or leave them. Plus, I asked why he needed to tell the Vietnamese DIA was funding him. He finally said OKAY, and on that basis agreed to reconnect with the officials in the archives.
About that time, State got wind of what we were planning and threw a fit. I was told to forget the whole idea. I did not have State’s approval. Any arrangements with the “SWAMP FOX” to visit Vietnam were to cease. I checked with Secretary Cheney who smiled when I told him State’s position and indicated that he would fix that with the Secretary of State and the President. We should proceed as planned. I suppose I created several enemies at State in the process.
I don’t know what I expected to come from this initiative, but I suspect that it wasn’t much. It all seemed too easy. I remained skeptical until we received “SWAMP FOX’s” first of many reports. As he had suggested, he had been given direct access to virtually everything contained in the archives. The most dramatic examples were glossy 8X10 photos taken by Hanoi’s POW/MIA recovery teams. These teams were rushed to every crash site whenever one of our aircraft went down in Vietnam. Usually, it was a series of photos from a variety of angles showing the aircraft and included shots of the American airmen’s bodies and equipment associated with the aircraft. In some cases, the quality of the photos was good enough to read the name of the crew member on his fight suit. We had suspected, but “SWAMP FOX” confirmed, that it was standard practice to gather everything associated with any crash site and send it back to headquarters for storage. He told me of walking along rows at the archive where boots, uniforms, dog tags, and a variety of other items had been stored since their receipt from units in the field.
Despite providing photos to us via “SWAMP FOX,” the Vietnamese were unwilling to answer any of our follow up questions. The most vivid case in my memory involved a crash site photo of an F-4 we received from “SWAMP FOX.” It showed the two crew members’ bodies, clearly enough so that we could read one of the crew member’s name tag that firmly associated the photo with two long-standing, unaccounted for cases. At my first opportunity, I asked one of Hanoi’s specialists, if he could tell me more about the two men in the photograph, specifically what had become of the bodies and would it be possible to return them the next time one of our teams was in-country. He looked me straight in the face and said, “You have everything.” When I asked if he meant the Vietnamese in the photo didn’t follow protocol by not collecting and removing everything from the site, he repeated his claim again. Over the next 15 minutes he continued to deny any additional knowledge on any of the dozen or so Vietnamese photos I asked him about.
It took courage for “SWAMP FOX” to take on this assignment. I will be forever grateful to him for the contribution he made to our understanding of Hanoi’s POW/MIA archives. I’m also grateful to the Secretary for approving what many thought was a crazy idea. The partial closure of many cases for families that had been waiting for so long, made any risk incurred more than worth it. Oh, by the way, “SWAMP FOX” did eventually write his book.
“SWAMP FOX” is gone, but the Vietnamese continue to cooperate on the POW/MIA issue. I just wish that Laos and Cambodia were as accommodating. Ann keeps her hand in League affairs from semi-retirement in California. Without her efforts the League’s success at accounting for those still missing might have collapsed years ago. We all owe her a great deal of thanks. Don’t forget about the unaccounted for from the Vietnam and Korean War.
Thanks! Coming from you it means a lot.
Terrific story that also reflects the work of a dedicated former Army and intelligence officer whose savvy contributed enormously to the success of his role in DoD policy circles.