n the morning of 26 September 1984, an official at CIA headquarters in Washington informed Senior Analyst Robert Destatte by secure phone that the Agency had just received word that a Vietnamese refugee resident of France had seen American POWs on two occasions during an extended visit to southern Vietnam in 1983. According to Destatte’s now-declassified phone notes of the conversation, the CIA official explained that the Agency had acquired the information about the sightings from a Washington, D.C.-area Vietnam vet named Michael Van Atta, who had contacted the Agency’s Washington office on the refugee’s behalf. The official said Van Atta had told CIA officials that the refugee was currently visiting relatives in the United States and that his visa was about to expire and he wanted to meet with CIA interviewers and give them the details of his sightings before leaving the U.S. The official further said that Van Atta had told CIA officials that he and the refugee had jointly decided to provide the information to the CIA rather than the DIA because they believed DIA was abusing the refugees and covering up the information the refugees were providing about live prisoners.
Destatte told his counterpart that Van Atta was known to be active in the POW issue and that he and the refugee were probably coordinating their efforts with a coalition of Vietnam vets, members of the Vietnamese community in the U.S. and POW-MIA activists who, in Destatte’s words, "have recently expended considerable effort to attack the work being done by DC-2" (the Special Office). Among those persons named by Destatte as belonging to this group were former National League of Families refugee coordinator Madam Le Thi Anh and the Chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Vietnam Veterans Coalition, J. Thomas Burch, Esq.. Like Van Atta, both Anh and Burch lived and worked in the Washington, D.C. area.
After hearing the information Destatte had offered, the CIA official went on to tell Destatte that an Agency representative was scheduled to go to Van Atta’s home at 3:00 p.m. that afternoon to interview him about the sightings and that the agent’s written report of the interview would be forwarded to Destatte as quickly as possible. The official further said that his agency would like to avoid giving Van Atta an excuse to criticize CIA for passing information to DIA against Van Atta’s wishes, and asked Destatte if he had any thoughts about how best to proceed. Destatte replied that the CIA representative should "inform [Van Atta] that DIA is the appropriate office to receive information about U.S. PW/MIA, and that the information offered by [Van Atta] will be passed to DIA." Destatte went on to say that should Van Atta decline to furnish the information under those conditions, "I recommend that CIA explain to [Van Atta] that every day the information (if valid) is withheld from the office best equipped to respond (i.e., DIA) is an additional day of captivity that [Van Atta] is imposing on the Americans involved." 111
When the CIA report of the agent’s interview with Van Atta arrived at the Special Office, Destatte saw that the refugee’s first sighting had occurred near the Ham Tan reeducation camp system east of Ho Chi Minh City where, according to Van Atta, the refugee had seen 11 American prisoners on 29 May 1983 while accompanying a longtime family friend to see her husband who was confined at one of the Ham Tan camps. Van Atta said the refugee had told him that he and his friend had traveled to the area of the Ham Tan camps by bus and that while the bus was stopped at a roadblock some six kilometers (approximately 3.7 statute miles) from the camp where the woman’s husband was being held, he had observed the American prisoners - nine Caucasian and two non-Caucasian - under guard nearby. (Authors’ map "Postwar Indochina"). Van Atta had said the other sighting involved a group of American prisoners the refugee said he had seen the following month while journeying to the Central Highlands to visit his brother who was held in a reeducation camp there. 112
The CIA report concluded by saying that Van Atta had called back after his interview to say that he and the refugee had changed their minds and would now meet with DIA if requested. Van Atta had also provided a telephone number which could be used to contact the refugee. 113
Shortly after receiving the telephone number, Destatte called the refugee to offer assistance in extending his visa and to obtain further information about his two sightings. When the refugee declined to discuss his sightings over the phone, arrangements were made to have him come to the Pentagon on 1 October for a formal debriefing. 114
Background: As Destatte had mentioned to his CIA counterpart on the telephone, the Special Office had indeed been under attack in the fall of 1984.
The first shot had been fired back in February when the widely respected Madam Anh (pronounced "Ah-un" but in one syllable), who since 1977 had steered hundreds of refugees with knowledge of live prisoners to the Special Office for interview, had resigned her position with the League because so many refugees were complaining about the harsh treatment they were receiving from the Special Office analysts. In a letter later written to the Chairman of the League, Madam Anh had explained the reason for her resignation, saying, "I can hardly find a refugee who would tell me that he was pleased with the way the [Special Office] debriefers handle him, or even that his handling has been proper, considerate and even courteous. Instead, the words ‘insulting’ and ‘exploitation’ have been used many times by refugees to describe their treatment." A refugee herself, Madam Anh had told the decidedly pro-Administration League Chairman that "we may be stateless, homeless and penniless refugees, but we still have our honor as human beings." 115
Madam Anh’s resignation had caused great concern among the activist POW/MIA families and the activist Vietnam vets. That concern had turned to outright anger in the summer when a refugee Madam Anh had personally sponsored for resettlement in the U.S. had reported that after a recent series of interviews about his sighting of American POWs, one of the Special Office analysts had threatened to deport him unless he recanted his testimony about living prisoners.
This refugee, a newly-arrived Vietnamese man named Dinh, had reported that following a series of interviews with analyst Sedgwick Tourison, Tourison had invited him to his (Tourison’s) home in suburban Washington one evening, allegedly for a meal, but that when he had arrived, Tourison had accused him of being a North Vietnamese spy sent by Hanoi to spread disinformation about live POWs. According to Dinh, when he had vigorously denied Tourison’s charge, Tourison had threatened to take him to the Pentagon that very evening and have him deported unless he signed a statement declaring that he had not actually seen the prisoners but had only heard about them from someone else. * Appalled and frightened, Dinh had refused to sign and instead had bolted from Tourison’s house and fled. 116 He had then contacted Madam Anh and, at her insistence, had taken his story to Burch, the Chairman of the Vietnam Veterans Coalition. When Burch and other Coalition officers had debriefed Dinh and found him credible, they in turn had taken him to the Hill where he had told his story to selected Members of Congress and their staffs.
Upon having heard Dinh’s account, as noted in An Enormous Crime, Chapter 23, Rep. Douglas Applegate, (D-OH), a House Veterans Affairs Committee subcommittee chairman and a highly respected congressional champion of Vietnam veterans, had gone before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee in early August to declare that he was "fearful" the Reagan Administration was covering up evidence of live American POWs. In his testimony, Applegate had said that, "[a]s of July 15, 1984, the Defense Intelligence Agency had over 2,620 reports of Americans in Southeast Asia – 640 of these reports are eyewitnesses," and, after making specific reference to Dinh’s sighting, had declared that his (Applegate’s) efforts to check out these reports had run into "roadblocks in the name of national security" and that he feared a cover-up may be underway. 117
Though Applegate’s charge of cover-up had been greeted with skepticism by the Administration’s many supporters on the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee - and had been denied outright later in the hearing by DIA Director Lt. Gen. James Williams, USA – the incendiary charge of "cover-up" had quickly become the battle cry for the activist families, Vietnam vets and others concerned about the fate of the living POWs. In mid-August, Burch and other Coalition leaders—all of whom were Republicans - had traveled to Dallas and, at a press conference held outside the site of the 1984 Republican National Convention, had charged that the Reagan Administration had "covered up the truth" about American servicemen still alive in captivity in Southeast Asia. To bolster their case, Burch and his men had released a number of declassified intelligence reports showing American POWs alive in captivity long after the war and had then brought Dinh to the podium to tell of the POWs he had seen and the mistreatment he had reportedly endured at the hands of Tourison. Following Dinh’s remarks, Burch had declared that the rough treatment Dinh and other refugees had received was keeping many refugees from coming forward with information they possessed about living POWs, thus putting the lives of the POWs in jeopardy. Burch had then called on the Administration to form a joint task force with the Coalition to ensure that the abuse of the refugee sources would stop and that the intelligence would no longer be debunked without cause. 118
After returning from Dallas, Burch had visited the Special Office and had met with Destatte to personally protest DIA’s handling of the intelligence and the harsh treatment being meted out to the refugee sources. Destatte had vigorously denied that the intelligence was being debunked without cause and, after similarly denying that any refugee had ever been abused, had told Burch that Dinh had lied about the incident at Tourison’s house and that the real reason Dinh had broken off contact with Tourison was that he feared he would be given a lie detector test about his sighting and that he knew he would fail. Destatte’s meeting notes reflect what had happened next:
