n 23 May 1983, the Special Office received a report from CIA stating that less than a year earlier, in June 1982, two separate and unrelated groups of Hmong hill tribespeople who had journeyed past Cua Rang (Cua Rao) in far northwestern Nghe Tinh Province in northern Vietnam had seen an undetermined number of Caucasian prisoners being held in a jungle prison in the area. (Authors’ map "Postwar Indochina;" DMA SRV Postwar Province Map.")
According to the CIA report, the tribespeople had said that the camp was located in a jungle area just off of Route 7, the main road running from the Plain of Jars region of Laos to Vinh near the coast. The report stated that some of the tribespeople had gotten close enough to the camp to hear the Caucasian prisoners speaking to one another and that the tribespeople believed the prisoners were speaking in the English language. The tribespeople said the prisoners were all Caucasian and all thin. They further said the camp was guarded by approximately one battalion of PAVN troops and that portions of the facility appeared to be underground. Some of the tribespeople added that when passing through the area during the war in 1969 they had observed at different times eight, six and two Caucasian prisoners being held at this facility. 6
Background: The CIA report was significant for several reasons. First, and most importantly, the report had come from multiple witnesses who reportedly had recently seen the same thing at the same place at or near the same time, i.e., English-speaking Caucasian prisoners in a jungle camp west of Cua Rao during June 1982. Second, some of these same witnesses had reportedly said they had also seen Caucasian prisoners in the camp during the war as well. Third, none of the American POWs returned by the North Vietnamese at Operation Homecoming reported they had been confined at Cua Rao. 7
