www.villagevoice.com/issues/0408/schanberg.php
Over the years, an abundance of evidence had come to light that the North Vietnamese, while returning 591 United States prisoners of war after the treaty signing, had held back many others as future bargaining chips for the $4 billion or more in war reparations that the Nixon administration had pledged. Hanoi didnt trust Washington to fulfill its pro-mise without pressure. Similarly, Washington didnt trust Hanoi to return all the prisoners and carry out all the treaty provisions. Hanoi held back prisoners and the United States provided no reconstruction funds. The stated purpose of the special Senate committeewhich convened in mid 1991 and concluded in January 1993was to investigate the evidence about prisoners who were never returned and find out what happened to the missing men. Committee chair Kerrys larger and different goal, though never stated publicly, emerged over time: He wanted to clear a path to normalization of relations with Hanoi.
The entire charade does not appear to be an honest effort and may never have been. Finally, Peck said: From what I have witnessed, it appears that any soldier left in Vietnam, even inadvertently, was in fact abandoned years ago, and that the farce that is being played is no more than political legerdemain done with smoke and mirrors to stall the issue until it dies a natural death. An overview would include the following: He allied himself with those carrying it out by treating the Pentagon and other prisoner debunkers as partners in the investigation instead of the targets they were supposed to be. When Defense Department officials were coming to testify, Kerry would have his staff director, Frances Zwenig, meet with them to script the hearingsas detailed in an internal Zwenig memo leaked by others. Zwenig also advised North Vietnamese officials on how to state their case. Further, Kerry never pushed or put up a fight to get key government documents unclassified;
Moreover, after promising to turn over all committee records to the National Archives when the panel concluded its work, the senator destroyed crucial intelligence information the staff had gatheredto to keep the documents from becoming public. When revelatory sworn testimony was given to the committee by President Reagans national security adviser, Richard Allenabout a credible proposal from Hanoi in 1981 to return more than 50 prisoners for a $4 billion ransomKerry had that testimony taken in a closed door interview, not a public hearing. But word leaked out and a few weeks later, Allen sent a letter to the committee, not under oath, recanting his testimony, saying his memory had played tricks on him. Kerry never did any probe into Allens original, detailed account, and instead accepted his recantation as gospel truth. A Secret Service agent then working at the White House, John Syphrit, told committee staffers he had overheard part of a conversation about the Hanoi proposal for ransom. He said he was willing to testify but feared reprisal from his Treasury Department superiors and would need to be subpoenaed so that his appearance could not be regarded as voluntary. Syphrit told me that four men were involved in that conversationReagan, Allen, Vice President George HW Bush, and CIA director William Casey. The final Kerry report brushed off the entire episode like unsightly dust. It said: The committee found no credible evidence of any such ransom offer being made. A newcomer to this subject matter might reasonably ask why there was no great public outrage, no sustained headlines, no national demand for investigations, no penalties imposed on those who had hidden, and were still hiding, the truth. The simple, overarching explanation was that most Americans wanted to put Vietnam behind them as fast as possible. They wanted to forget this failed war, not deal with its truths or consequences.
When prisoner stories did get into the press, they would have a one-day life span, never to be followed up on. The New York Times put the story on page one but never pursued it further to explore the obvious ramifications. At that public hearing on September 21, 1992, toward the end of Schlesingers testimony, the former defense secretary, who earlier had been CIA chief, was asked a simple question: In your view, did we leave men behind? He replied: I think that as of now, I can come to no other conclusion. He was asked to explain why Nixon would have accepted leaving men behind. He said: One must assume that we had concluded that the bargaining position of the United States .
Another example of a story not pursued occurred at the Paris peace talks. The North Vietnamese failed to provide a list of the prisoners until the treaty was signed. Afterward, when they turned over the list, United States intelligence officials were taken aback by how many believed prisoners were not included. American records showed that more than 300 were probably being held. A story about this stunning gap, by New York Times Pentagon reporter John W. The story said: Officials emphasized that the United States would be seeking clarification .
He gave orders to his committee staff to shred crucial intelligence documents. The shredding stopped only when some intelligence staffers staged a protest. McCreary, a lawyer and staff intelligence analystreported that the committees chief counsel, J. William Codinha, a longtime Kerry friend, ridiculed the staff members and said, Whos the injured party? When staffers cited the 2,494 families of the unaccounted-for United States servicemen, among others, the McCreary memo continued, Codinha said: Whos going to tell them? Kerry defended the shredding by saying the documents werent originals, only copiesbut the staffs fear was that with the destruction of the copies, the information would never get into the public domain, which it didnt. Kerry had promised the staff that all documents acquired and prepared by the committee would be turned over to the National Archives at the committees expiration. Both the staff and independent researchers reported that many critical documents were withheld. Another protest memo from the staff reported: An internal Department of Defense Memorandum identifies Frances Zwenig Kerrys staff director as the conduit to the Department of Defense for the acquisition of sensitive and restricted information from this Committee .
It also said the Zwenig leaks were endangering the lives and livelihood of two witnesses. A number of staffers became increasingly upset about Kerrys close relationship with the Department of Defense, which was supposed to be under examination. It had become clear that Kerry, Zwenig, and others close to the chairman, such as Senator John McCain of Arizona, a dominant committee member, had gotten cozy with the officials and agencies supposedly being probed for obscuring POW information over the years. Committee hearings, for example, were being orchestrated to suit the examinees, who were receiving lists of potential questions in advance. Another internal memo from the period, by a staffer who requested anonymity, said: Speaking for the other investigators, I can say we are sick and tired of this investigation being controlled by those we are supposedly investigating. The Kerry investigative technique was equally soft in many other critical ways. He rejected all suggestions that the committee require former presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and George HW Bush to testify. All were in the Oval Office during the Vietnam era and its aftermath. They had information critical to the committee, for each president was carefully and regularly briefed by his national security adviser and others about POW developments.
With these word games, the committee report buried the issueand the men. The huge document contained no findings about what happened to the supposedly small number. Were they executed when ransom offers were rejected by Washington? Kerry now slides past all the radio messages, satellite photos, live sightings, and boxes of intelligence documentsall the evidence. In his comments for this piece, this candidate for the presidency said: No nation has gone to the lengths that we did to account ...
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