THE 1983-1984 COVER-UP: CASE 6

n early March 1984, officials at the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark informed the Special Office that a former ARVN Warrant Officer who had escaped from Vietnam and resettled in Denmark had approached embassy officials with news about American POWs being held in several areas of northern Vietnam. After a period of unavoidable delay, embassy personnel conducted in-depth interviews of the source in Copenhagen in late July. In early August they dispatched their report to the Special Office along with a 14-page report the source himself had written about his experiences at several reeducation camps in the North and the details of the POW-related information he possessed. 56

In the report the Warrant Officer himself had written, he stated among other things that in 1978, while confined at "Central Re-education Camp No. 3" near the town of Tan Ky in Nghe Tinh Province (Authors’ map "Postwar Indochina;" DMA SRV Postwar Province Map.") he had been told by another inmate - a former Communist border policeman imprisoned for narcotics trafficking - that on many occasions he (the border policeman) had seen car convoys carrying American POWs from place to place in Nghe Tinh Province. 57

The Warrant Officer in Denmark then explained that he and some of the other ARVN inmates were often sent out of their reeducation camp on re-supply missions, and that during one such mission to Tan Ky around the time of Tet 1982, he and inmates with him at the time learned that three carloads of American POWs had been moved through Tan Ky the night before.

The Warrant Officer explained that the news about the Americans had been relayed to him and his fellow prisoners by a female innkeeper and restaurant operator he and the others had come to know and trust over the years. The Warrant Officer stated that the woman said she had personally seen the Americans the previous night when the drivers of the vehicles carrying them had stopped at her inn for snacks. The Warrant Officer stated that he and the other ARVNs had asked the woman if she was positive the prisoners she had seen were Americans and that she had replied, "I have been running this restaurant for a long time now, and I am aware of EVERYTHING (Source’s emphasis). I also know everybody, so that I am certain that they are American POWs. Poor lads! When will they be released and back with their families? All of them are skinny, unshaven, the only color on their person was their blue eyes!" 58

Tan Ky, shown on U.S. Government maps as Xom Ranh Ranh, is located at a major highway intersection several kilometers southwest of Central Prison #3 headquarters. 59

Disposition of Case: On 28 August 1984, some three weeks after the U.S. Air Attaché in Copenhagen had dispatched the reports to the Special Office, he telephoned the Office to request feedback on the information he had sent and to inform the Office that he had personally taken part in the interviews of the former Warrant Officer and that in his opinion he was a very credible witness and should be flown to Washington at the earliest possible time for further debriefings. 60

In response, senior Vietnam analyst Robert J. Destatte informed the Attaché that his (Destatte’s) initial impression of the source’s written report was that source was "pulling our leg." Destatte then, as he often did in discrediting sources who provided intelligence on live prisoners, suggested that the Warrant Officer might well be a North Vietnamese spy sent to spread disinformation—something Destatte told the Attaché had occurred in the past with other sources. Destatte then told the Attaché that because the source (who had served seven and one half years in Communist re-education camps before fleeing the SRV by boat) might be a spy, he should not be brought to Washington for further interviews as the Attaché had suggested. 61

Destatte and his junior analysts handling the case did nothing more on the case until late October, 1984, when Destatte took another look at the Warrant Officer’s report and penned a memorandum to the junior analyst handling the case. In the memorandum, Destatte advised the analyst how he "might build a case for this guy’s deceipt [sic]." In a rambling, surreal discourse, Destatte declared:

This guy certainly does not seem to be any friend of the USG. Some thoughts/themes that come to mind as I read this dissembling drivel: 1) "I come not to bury Ceasar [sic], but to praise him." (Or, as this guy seems to be saying: "I don’t care what everyone else says, Americans are not a bunch of cowardly inept braggards [sic] who deserted the GVN and now are failing to keep faith with their missing men who are PWs in VN.) 2) "With a dissembling diffidence the deceiptful [sic] Iago presents misleading facts, gives them a deceitful turn, and with a deceiving concern for his victim, constructs a delusive theory for Desdomona’s unfaithfulness." For Iago, read our source; for victim, the MIA next of kin and the American public; and for Desdomona, read DIA and USG. I.E., With a dissembling diffidence the deceitful [SOURCE] presents misleading facts, gives them a deceitful turn, and with a deceiving concern for the U.S. MIAs and the American people, constructs a delusive theory for the USG’s unfaithfulness to our missing men. 62

With that, the "deceiptful [sic] Iago" and the American POWs whose plight he had reported appeared doomed.

As fate would have it, however, only weeks later, in late November 1984, the Warrant Officer and the POWs reportedly being moved throughout Nghe Tinh Province received a reprieve when another report came in from JCRC that tended to corroborate both the Communists border policeman's and the Warrant Officer’s account of American POWs being moved around Nghe Tinh province at night. This new report, dispatched to the Special Office on 25 November, quoted a former inmate of that same Nghe Tinh Re-education Camp as saying that sometime during 1977 or 1978, a guard at the facility named Hung had told him that there were approximately 70 live Americans being held captive in the province; that Hung said he had personally seen some of the Americans, and that most were "former POWs" with the remainder being "non-military Americans;" and that the Americans were "constantly on the move and only moved at night." 63

Had the U.S. effort been an honest one, this late November report about the 70 American prisoners being moved around Nghe Tinh Province would have prompted an immediate cable to the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen informing officials there that the Special Office was now in receipt of yet another report that tended to corroborate the Warrant Officer’s story and that as a result the Warrant Officer should be brought to Washington immediately for further debriefing. But by late 1984, the U.S. effort was no longer honest, and so, instead of sending that cable, on 5 December, only days after the report of the 70 American prisoners being moved around Nghe Tinh Province at night had been received at the Special Office, Col. John Oberst, USAF, the Special Office Chief, cabled the U.S. Air Attaché in Copenhagen and informed him that "interviews with several defectors and other former inmates of the camps at or near those which [the Warrant Officer] described, revealed no information which corroborates the presence of groups of U.S. PWs in North Vietnam." 64

Oberst then moved to shut the investigation down and head off receipt of any "more" intelligence concerning the presence or movement of U.S. prisoners in Nghe Tinh Province by dispatching this truly remarkable message to the JCRC office in Bangkok. The cable, dated 3 January 1985, read in part as follows:

1. REFUGEES [THE WARRANT OFFICER] … AND [THE FORMER INMATE WHO TOLD OF THE 70 AMERICAN PRISONERS BEING MOVED AROUND NGHE TINH PROVINCE DURING 1978] … REPORTED SIMILAR ACCOUNTS OF AMERICANS IN NGHE TINH {P} CIRCA 1978. ALTHOUGH BOTH REFUGEES PROVIDED ONLY HEARSAY ACCOUNTS OF LIVE AMERICAN PWS, BOTH REFUGEES DESCRIBE A SITUATION IN WHICH GROUPS OF AMERICAN PWS ARE MOVED AROUND NGHE TINH PROVINCE AT NIGHT. [ONE OF THE SOURCES] ELABORATES IN STATING THAT THIS MOVEMENT IS MADE TO PRECLUDE ANOTHER SON TAY-TYPE RESCUE. EACH STATED HE WAS AT THE NGHE TINH CENTRAL REEDUCATION CAMP 3 AT APPROXIMATELY THE SAME TIME {1978}.