[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 110 (Monday, July 10, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H6728-H6734]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                              {time}  2100
                 A TRULY TRAGIC DAY IN AMERICAN HISTORY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Shaw). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow may be a truly tragic day in 
American history, because a person who avoided serving his country 
three times during the bloodiest subaction of the whole cold war, the 
conflict that raged on for a decade in Indochina, a person who avoided 
the draft when he graduated from Georgetown, speaking about Mr. 
Clinton, who avoided service in his first year as a graduate student at 
Oxford, when all graduate deferments were taken away and then who, 
after he actually had a call-up notice, a report date to join the U.S. 
Army as a buck private soldier and an induction date of 29, excuse me, 
28 July 1969, used political pressure, the liberal Republican 
Governor's office in Arkansas, Winthrop Rockefeller, with the draft 
board, the head of the draft board, and two or three members of the 
draft board, personal meetings, 2 hours each, to beg them to allow him 
to join after the fact the ROTC at the University of Arkansas; then he 
had a U.S. Senator, Senator Fulbright of Arkansas, phone in to the head 
of the ROTC.
  And then I learned at a dinner with the distinguished American, 
Distinguished  Service Cross  holder  of  the second medal 
down from the Medal of Honor, who had commanded ROTC units, whole 
sections of the country, commanded ROTC for many colleges, Col. Eugene 
Holmes, a Bataan death march survivor, he told me when I had dinner 
with him and his wife, Irene, down in Fayetteville, AR, last February, 
that Clinton was the only student in more than a decade, as a commander 
and professor of military science, the only student who ever showed up 
at his house. He said he did not let him in, but for 2 hours in the 
front yard, backyard, back and fourth 23-year-old Bill Clinton begged 
Colonel Holmes to let him into the ROTC as a 2-year postgraduate 
student if he entered law school to go back on a special 2-year crash 
course with the undergraduates at the University of Arkansas and get in 
the ROTC so he could avoid the draft, and Colonel Holmes told me, 
against his better judgment,
 with more political pressure than he had ever thought possible, 
Senators, Governors, draft board members, Buick dealerships, all 
putting the pressure on him, he signed up a man who graduated from 
college over 1 year and 2 months before into the special program and, 
of course, Clinton never spent a day in the ROTC at Arkansas.

  But now here he is, the Commander in Chief, and if all the stories 
are true, tomorrow at noon he is going to normalize relations, give 
diplomatic recognition honors and recognition to the war criminals, the 
Communist leaders, in Hanoi who killed better men than he, probably 
three high school students from the Hot Springs area of Arkansas went 
into the service to meet those three draft calls in June 1968, the 
spring of 1969, and then that summer of 1969 when someone had to fill 
the Clinton slot, late July 1969, and then Clinton went off to Moscow a 
few weeks later.
  Colonel Holmes had not even known this. He went through Oslo, 
Stockholm, Helsinki, Leningrad, took the train overnight to Moscow and 
was put up, when he claimed he had no money, at the best hotel in town 
on January 1, 1970, because there was so-called peace banquet for Hanoi 
in the National Hotel on the night of January 2, 1970.
  A former Member of the other body who had a rather distinguished 
career for 12 years, he was in his last year, had chosen not to run 
again, who did, I think, a very dishonorable thing. Senator Eugene 
McCarthy was a guest of honor at the peace banquet. He was one of the 
23-year-old student organizers from England who had conducted teach-ins 
at the London School of Economics, where he called Ho Chi Minh the 
George Washington of his country and the United States the 
interventionist imperialist power, the evil force in Vietnam, 
suppressing a revolution, and had, of course, led demonstrations at 
Grosvenor Square on November 15 and a warm-up on October 15, 1969.
  By the way, Mr. Speaker, that November 15 demonstrates that Clinton 
was the leader of, in London, was termed the fall offensive by the 
Communists in Hanoi. There were sympathetic demonstrations in Paris, in 
Stockholm, London, New York, of course, here in Washington, DC, people 
trashing the streets, Miami, I believe, I know for sure San Francisco, 
Chicago, and Los Angeles, all coordinated by people working to give 
comfort to the communists in Hanoi who prevailed after 10 long years of 
struggle against a
 superpower, the United States, and the superpower on the other side, 
the Soviet Union, had more staying power, and the oppressive forces of 
communism won.
  Two years after we had pulled out of our military effort, we left so 
precipitously in such a disgraceful way that our embassy had open file 
drawers with the files of all the people who had worked with us up and 
down that beautiful little country of South Vietnam, and the Vietnamese 
years later wrote, General Giap, wrote in his book, that they just came 
in picked up papers off the floor, from the file cabinets, put them on 
clipboards, went out and executed 68,000 people. General Giap, who was 
hugging Senator Harkin on July 4, General Giap is a war criminal. 
General Giap was on the politburo.
  General Giap signed off on the execution of 68,000 people. In some 
cases, their only crime was to be a secretary, a man or a woman typing 
on an American typewriter at one of our multiple military bases up and 
down from the DMZ to the Mekong Delta. Unbelievable. Sixty-eight 
thousand people killed, but even that horrendous figure, 10,000 more 
than our men and 8 women whose names are on the Vietnam Memorial, that 
figure is dwarfed by the 700,000 to 800,000 people who drowned on the 
South China Sea trying to escape from communism.
  My oldest daughter worked in the camps at Snap Nikam, Nam Aret, 
Aryana Pretit, and the people that survived the high seas, the South 
China Sea, the sharks, dehydration, drownings, they would carve little 
plaques. I have two of them in my den at home.
  It says, ``liberty or death on the high seas.'' Sounds like Patrick 
Henry, somebody they never heard of. Another one said, ``Some of us are 
here in the camps. The rest are with God.''
  Then what about the 1 million, 2 million, or as one of my interns, 
Vuth, told me the other night, tears running down his face, ``Maybe 3 
million of my people died, Congressman. And is Mr. Clinton going to 
normalize relations with the war criminals who did this?'' He was 
speaking of the killing fields of Cambodia.
  What a horror that took place. Very few speeches, if any, in this 
well or on the Senate floor by those who are taking the lead now with 
normalization with the war criminals in Hanoi; I did NBC's ``Meet the 
Press'' yesterday, and a friend of mine who is on the other side of 
this issue, and to try and put this balance, I
 read the stories of his horrendous torture in this book, ``POW,'' the 
definitive book that came out in 1976, the month that I won my first 
election to Congress, November of 1976. This book came out, and the 
torture stories in here, the war crimes in here just stagger your 
imagination. It is medieval. It is Nazi Germany at Auschwitz. It is 
poor Bosnia a few years ago with the ethnic cleansing. It is just 
horrible.

  And I read the story of how this now U.S. Senator was tortured, how 
he would not accept parole, how when his father was moved from being 
the commander of the Navy in NATO in Europe to being commander in chief 
of all of our Pacific forces, and the head, the combat commander, of 
the bombing operation, how they kept offering this young Navy attack 
pilot early release to go home to get his terrible wounds taken care 
of, and it gave me renewed respect for him.
  But I am still boggled at his appearance on ``Meet the Press'' where, 
if I had had the time, I could have refuted every single solitary thing 
he said.
  The Vietnamese have not given a full accounting of our missing-in-
action. Last year the byword with those who are sympathetic to the 
Communist war 

[[Page H 6729]]
criminals in Hanoi, the byword was that they were giving us 
unprecedented cooperation. That simply was not so.
  Last year and early this year the word was superb cooperation. My 
friend from the other body said it was substantial. It is not. He said 
that on ``Meet the Press'' yesterday.
  And the Washington Post a week ago today ran an editorial so that a 
congressional delegation of all liberals without a single Republican 
Member or staffer on this minority trip, at taxpayer expense with one 
of the luxurious airplanes out of the 89th Squadron at Andrews; it has 
become a disgrace, Air Force officers carrying the bags of people who 
avoided service and the cost when there are commercial flights 
available to go to even Hanoi, and we will have legislation on that 
this year, I can promise the taxpayers that, this delegation in Hanoi, 
one of the Senators holds up last Monday's Washington Post with a kind 
of a coordinated editorial, and it said, how is this for reaching for 
words, ``prodigious diligence, prodigious diligence, in moving toward 
an accounting of our missing-in-action.''
  What an absolute distortion of the truth.
  Now, I have before me a letter that our Speaker,
   Mr. Gingrich, is presenting to the Commander in Chief as we speak, 
Mr. Speaker. They are having dinner tonight, Newt Gingrich and William 
Jefferson Blythe Clinton, and Newt is going to tell him it is going to 
be a rough road in this Congress, in this House, and in the U.S. 
Senate, to try and find the money under our foreign affairs bills to 
fund any normalization or set up an embassy in Hanoi.

  I think this House is going to overwhelmingly vote to kill any money 
under the appropriations bills process. We all know the language, Mr. 
Speaker, ``No money under this bill shall be expended to do such and 
such.'' A negative amendment is always ruled in order, and I think the 
President is in for a big surprise. Mr. Clinton is in for a surprise, 
because the statistics that I gave on ``Meet the Press'' that my friend 
from the Senate said he did not buy are absolutely correct.
  I said, first of all, the families who have suffered long over these 
years, they have suffered under an anti-Geneva Convention war crime 
where the communist victors in Hanoi have psychologically tortured the 
family members, the children who have grown from little toddlers and 
babies up into their late 20's, 30's, and some in their 40's, the 
teenagers, the parents who are now aging into their 70's and some into 
their 80's, many of them passing on to go to Heaven, the widows, some 
who have married and have never forgotten that first young hero of 
their early life, others who have never ever found a replacement for 
their heroic young knight of the sky or that handsome young special 
operations sergeant special forces, young enlisted man, young grunt, 
young marine up and down Vietnam fighting for freedom, fighting to 
contain communism, they have never found a match for that young hero of 
their early life. All of these people have been manipulated, because 
the communists in Hanoi have slowly, like an ugly time capsule, 
released boxes of our heroes' remains.
  Now, I can remember in 1979 having before our International Relations 
Committee a mortician from Vietnam who passed multiple polygraph lie 
detector tests; I recommended he even take truth serum. He was willing 
to do that. I do not know if he did. He was of Chinese heritage because 
Vietnam, after the war, in a vicious human rights crusade of violence, 
threw out all of the Vietnamese of Chinese heritage, and that is why 
he, as a top doctor, a mortician, was thrown out of the country, but he 
had prepared for storage in a big warehouse near Hanoi over 400 sets of 
American remains.
  This has been admitted to me by the highest people in the Reagan 
administration and by President Reagan himself, who believed this, that 
they had 400 boxes of our heroes' remains. President Bush believed 
this. I discussed it at length with him. I have discussed it with three 
directors of the CIA. They all believed it. Defense Intelligence, back 
to the late Eugene Tye, my good friend from Loyola University, he also 
believed it. I have never met anybody in the entire intelligence 
community, and I am on my seventh year in the Intelligence Select 
Committee, I have never met anybody who did not believe this 
mortician's story.
                              {time}  2155

  And at the central investigative laboratory at Hickam Air Force Base 
in Hawaii, which I have visited about eight times over the years, they 
said, Yes, we have gotten back selectively over the last 10 years, 
about 160 remains that we can tell were warehoused, even if they were 
dug up out of the ground a year or two after a crash, they were still 
processed.
  Some of these were people who obviously died in captivity. The light 
color of the bones and their condition and the chemical substances on 
the bones, we know they were prepared for storage. And 160 from over 
400 brings us roughly a number of over 260.
  I said at a press conference on the grassy triangle in front of this 
Capitol that it is an act of treachery to normalize relations without 
demanding the 260 remaining boxes of remains. I predicted that they 
will be thrown into the Red River and flushed out into the Tonkin Gulf, 
or worse, thrown in a pit all of these heroes' bones, knights of the 
sky, these young aviators, these special forces officers and sergeants. 
Their bones will be thrown in a mass grave, covered with lime, lye, and 
they will be forgotten, except to God, in that mass atrocity grave.
  If are there any Americans still alive, particularly in Laos, which I 
have visited four times. I have been to Vietnam 10 times and Cambodia 
three times. I have worked this issue for 30 years and 1 month since my 
best friend, David Herdlicher, was shot down, May 18, 1965.
  And I still wear his bracelet and this No. 1 Hmoung bracelet, H-m-o-
u-n-g, the French word was Montagnard, mountain people. Since I put 
that on in Kontum in the central highlands in September 1968, it has 
never been off my wrist since. I alternate POW bracelets. No, this is 
not David Herdlicher's; this is a young sergeant from Hope, AR. I wear 
that symbolically sometimes, James Holt, missing in South Vietnam, 
September, excuse me, February 7, 1968, the beginning of the Tet 
offensive.
  The first week of the Tet offensive, that week, we lost 1,111 
Americans killed in action. That was the month that Robert Strange 
McNamara quit on leap year day, so he would only have to remember it 
every 4 years; resigned 29, February 1968.
  It rained all over this big ceremony on the lawn in front of the 
river entrance to the Pentagon. They canceled the fly-by. How fitting 
that God saved four Air Force pilots the ignominy of flying by, 
probably all of them Vietnam vets, in tribute to a man who had betrayed 
the fighting men on the field.
  Well, here is McNamara's book, Mr. Speaker. That is how I spent part 
of my district work period; working my way through this tragic book of 
evil revelations on how McNamara never even believed in the cause in 
1962 or 1963, when there were less than 50 Americans killed in action. 
Not 58,000; less than 50. He did not believe in what we were doing 
there.
  And McNamara tells in this book what he did after that fly-by was 
canceled and it rained all over this retirement ceremony. Where LBJ 
rewarded him with 13 years as head of the World Bank, where he made 
$250,000 a year without ever paying a nickel of taxes on it. That is 
what a lot of U.N. jobs, and the job at World Bank, pays.
  McNamara in his book says the next day, on March 1, he left for a 
month of skiing at Aspen. We had hundreds of people in prison in Hanoi. 
Twelve of them had been beaten to death inside their prison cells. One 
man, Maj. Earl Cobeal, beaten senseless and incoherent. Never got his 
sanity back and died alone in some cell without any other American 
there to hold him and nurture him as he died. We have gotten back his 
remains. While he was being tortured by three Cubans imported by the 
good graces of Castro to teach the Vietnamese how to torture with more 
severity the way Castro was cutting up people and letting them rot, 
stark naked, in black cells without a shred of light for up to 25 
years.
  He was showing the South Vietnamese that they had forgotten in the 
Orient what the ``death of a thousand knives'' was like, I guess. And 
McNamara was skiing.
  Imagine how many young men and women we had in hospitals from one 

[[Page H 6730]]
  end of Vietnam to another, after the horror of that Tet offensive named 
after a religious holiday that they decided to attack on, imagine how 
many triple amputees, quadruple amputees. I visited one quadruple 
amputee at a hospital in September of that year and I talked to some of 
the nurses that said these are the cases that would just tear your 
heart out. How many people had given their arms and legs during that 
Tet offensive?
  I remember going in the big refrigerated morgue at Bien Hoa in that 
year, 1968. And I said to this young corporal, first asking him how he 
could work in a
 place like this, and he said, ``Mr. Reporter, I spent six months in 
the bush shooting at Charlie and getting shot at. And when they offered 
me a chance at the midpoint to work in this morgue, I took it because I 
know I am going home. And I cry a lot in here looking at all these men, 
many younger than I, who are on the way back to the United States in 
green body bags.''

  And I said, ``What is in that huge bag over there?'' He said, ``That, 
sir, that bag is all the arms and legs cut off our men in the hospitals 
around here and we treat it with respect. We are going to take it out 
in a helicopter and bury their arms and legs at sea soon.''
  I will never forget that story. Tears were running down my face in 
this cool, refrigerated little corner of Bien Hoa Air Base in an 
extremely hot summer day in 1986. Thinking about this particular corner 
of the world's struggle against communism. Again, to quote Kennedy, a 
``twilight struggle'' It was not so much twilight in Korea and Vietnam.
  And I would like to read a line, Mr. Speaker, from McNamara's book. 
It used an expression that I used on this House floor on the day after 
the State of the Union speech. And I said I would revisit this again 
and again and that if I ever got a ruling from the Chair again that aid 
and comfort to the enemy was not a legitimate historical expression for 
debate on this floor, that I would appeal the ruling of the Chair. And 
if my party voted against me and did not sustain me, I would resign 
from Congress on the spot.
  It is not tonight. That day is coming earlier in the day. And I will 
find the right moment. I will know it. I will smell it when it comes. 
And I will do it in the well with plenty of Democrats and I will give 
Mr. Fazio and Mr. Volkmer, and a lot of my other colleagues, a big 
chance to take down my words again.
  But those words, ``aid and comfort to the enemy,'' have popped up 
twice just in the last couple of weeks. Mr. Clinton used the words 
against people who want to vote out the assault weapon ban. He said 
that is giving aid and comfort to the criminals in the street, the 
enemy in the streets, to vote against the assault ban. So Mr. Clinton 
has aid and comfort to the enemy in his head. He knows what that 
expression means.
  Here is what McNamara writes on page 105 of his book. Fitting number 
of the page, since we lost more F-105s than any other airplane in the 
Vietnam conflict.
  By the way, to set the scene, let me take out my little U.S. 
Constitution and read where this line comes from. Article III, section 
3 of the U.S. Constitution, and why treason is not applicable without a 
declaration of war to using this term.
  Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war 
against them. Remember, until the Civil War, we always referred to 
ourselves as individual States. The Civil War brought us together into 
one unit as a country.
  In levying war against the individual States, or in adhering to their 
enemies, and our Founders and Framers of the Constitution capitalized 
Enemies. Giving them Aid, capital A, and Comfort, capital C. Giving 
them Aid and Comfort.
  No person shall be convicted of treason, unless on the testimony of 
two witnesses to the same overt act or on confession in open court.
  Now, that is where that term, aid and comfort to the enemy, comes 
from. That is where Clinton, although he did not realize it, got it 
when he referred to people who strictly interpret the second amendment 
as giving aid and comfort to the enemies in
 the streets, the criminals.

  Here is Mr. McNamara in this profoundly evil, self-aggrandizing, 
nonatoning book; over 58,700 dead Americans, 8 of them women. McNamara 
says, ``Upon my return to Washington, DC, on December 21st,'' and he is 
talking now about 1963, just a month after, one day less than a month 
after Kennedy's horrible assassination. He talks about secret missions 
up to the North.
  And this is courageous South Vietnamese who were captured, tortured 
to death, because it was poorly organized and planned. It was endorsed 
by what we call the 303 Committee under Ambassador Lodge, an 
interagency group charged with reviewing such top secret plans, 
following recommendations from Secretary of State; from McCone, head of 
the CIA; from George McBundy, National Security Advisor; and me, Robert 
McNamara, the President approved a 4-month trial program beginning on 
February 3, 1964, so it hadn't started yet. Its goal was to convince 
the North Vietnamese that it was in their self-interest to desist from 
aggression in South Vietnam.
  Looking back, it was an absurdly ambitious objective. For such a 
trifling effort, it accomplished virtually nothing.
  McNamara probably went skiing or mountain climbing that winter and 
here were young Vietnamese that we trained, sent north, bailed out of 
our secret, unmarked airplanes into North Vietnam, most of them 
compromised and captured and viciously tortured to death, and we wrote 
them off like they were just expendable pawns at the beginning of this 
conflict.
  But here he is, before these men have bailed out to their certain 
death, none of them ever came back as prisoners, these Vietnamese. 
``Upon my return to Washington, DC on December 21st, 1963, I was less 
than candid when I reported to the press. Perhaps a senior government 
official,'' McNamara goes on, ``could hardly have been more 
straightforward in the midst of a war.''
  Here he is calling it, in 1963, a month after Kennedy is dead, a war. 
A full-blown war. And his heart is not in it, but it took him 5 more 
hears to resign. Incredible. Four and a half.
  I could not fail to recognize the effect discouraging remarks might 
have on those we strove to support the South Vietnamese. He does not 
give them the time of the day all through this book, our allies. Some 
corrupt; most very brave dying for their country. As well as those we 
sought to overcome. The Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese.
  Now, get this Mr. Speaker. Bob McNamara: ``It is a profound, enduring 
and universal ethical and moral dilemma: How, in times of war and 
crisis, can senior government officials be completely frank to their 
own people without giving aid and comfort to the enemy?''
  So, Robert McNamara, in December of 1963, one month and 21 days after 
the tragic assassination of President Ziem and his brother, after they 
were sprayed with machine guns in the back of an American-supplied 
armored personal carrier, an M-13. A tragic, a beheading of a Nation 
under Communist assault from the north, he considers it a full war and 
talks about giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
  Well, if he did not want to give aid and comfort to the enemy, what 
about the demonstrators that he put up on the floor of his house, 
friends of his son, Craig, who never wore the uniform of his country. 
And he tries to weasel around that in here. This is McNamara who said, 
``We must not draft our college kids, because they are tomorrow.''
  Well, what about the college graduates from West Point, Annapolis, 
Air Force Academy, Texas A&M, North Georgia, Citadel, VMI? Or all of 
the ROTC units like mine at Loyola U. all around the country? What 
about those college graduates? What about the young farm kids who were 
going back to the family farm, but first were subject to a draft?
  What about the 100,000 young black men who had been denied a good 
education in all of the poor schools and ghetto areas around this 
country, where we lowered the school standard and the tests you had to 
pass to bring them in? What were they? Cannon fodder?
                              {time}  2130

  What about all the Hispanic-American families, particularly in 
California, which had such a family tradition for generations of 
joining the Marine 

[[Page H 6731]]
Corps? You know, all of our services used to reflect our religious 
background in our country. But the Marine Corps is about 33 percent 
Catholic, compared with a 24-percent population, because West Coast 
Hispanic families, generally Catholic, like the Marine Corps. What 
about all of them? Were they just cannon fodder? What about the honor 
graduates from West Point, the Naval Academy, and the Air Force 
Academy, who got a Rhodes Scholarship and went to what the skipper of 
the Kitty Hawk told me was the worst hate-America environment he had 
ever been in his life for 2 years, and he overlapped Clinton by a year 
at Oxford, except he went to class and graduated, while Clinton was 
ditching class, never went the second year at all, and did not 
graduate, 1 of only 6 in his class of 32 who did not graduate. What 
about all those people?
  Like the recent commander, that just made three stars, of the 1st 
Cavalry Division down at Fort Hood who graduated before Clinton got 
there, he was back in June of 1968 at Leavenworth, and then went to 
Vietnam and won two silver stars. Were they the best and the brightest, 
all of the aforementioned?
  What about all the Americans that went they got drafted said well, 
Uncle Sam wants me, it is an undeclared war, but my dad, my uncle, my 
older brother fought in Korea, and that was not a war, but a police 
action, according to President Truman, that was undeclared. But here is 
McNamara calling it a war. Aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war.
  Well, I have before me a letter, Mr. Speaker, from some of the 
greatest Americans that this country has ever had serve in uniform, our 
POW's in Hanoi. This is a group of leaders, the ones that were tortured 
the most, the ones that were tortured far more than others who have 
gone a different direction from them.
  This comes from the American Defense Institute, which is founded by 
Eugene Red McDaniel, acknowledged by all the POW's, I reread some of 
his periods of torture in here, and it is absolutely incredible that he 
survived, the tearing apart of his body, the infections, hardly a 
square inch of his body was not ripped. Red McDaniel founded this 
American Defense Institute, and here is a press release they put out 
with the names of 60 U.S. POW heroes on it.
  ``Former U.S. POWs oppose normalization with Vietnam, Alexandria, 
Virginia. In a letter sent to President Clinton today, the 10th of 
July, 60 former U.S. POWs, including Congressman Sam Johnson, 
Republican, Texas,'' Sam had hoped to be with me today, but he had a 
former engagement tonight. ``Lieutenant General John Peter Flynn, U.S. 
Air Force, retired.'' He was the highest ranking POW at the time he was 
shot down, senior U.S. colonel in the Air Force, and he rose to the 
highest ranks of any of the return POW's. Brig. Gen. Robinson Risner, 
one of my squadron commanders at George Air Force Base, shot down eight 
MiG's in Korea. When they got their hands on Robbie Risner, believe me, 
the torture he suffered was the torture of the damned. In his book, 
``The Darkness of The Night,'' I do not think that is the exact title, 
but it is close, his story of torture is, again, just medieval, and 
Capt. Red McDaniel. Red was the communications officer for the escape 
of Larry Atterbury and John Dromisi. Dromisi was beaten for 38 days. He 
could not move for 3 months, had to be fed by hand. And Larry 
Atterbury, 6 foot 3, his size gave them away in their overnight escape, 
when the sun came up and they were trapped on the bank of the Red 
River. He was stripped naked, four Vietnamese soldiers stood on the 
arms and legs, all of this with the approval of the politboru that we 
are going to recognize tomorrow at a White House Rose Garden cemetery, 
and they beat him until there was no flesh on his body, from his hair 
to the soles of his feet. He died after 8 days of constant scourging 
with long fan belt whips. They actually were fan belts.
  These officers, and 57 others from the Vietnam War, expressed their 
opposition to establishing diplomatic relations with Vietnam. ``Until 
you as commander-in-chief, Mr. Clinton, tell us Honoi is being fully 
forthcoming in accounting for our missing comrades.'' The letter was 
sent by Captain McDaniel, President of the American Defense Institute 
on behalf of the former U.S. POW's from Vietnam, concerned with recent 
reports that a White House announcement of the move is imminent. They 
invited my colleague, Sonny Montgomery, two star reserve general, 
combatant from World War II and the 12th Armored Division. He just told 
me that he would not go to such a ceremony, an honorable man, Sonny 
Montgomery.
  ``While we appreciate Vietnam's support for U.S. crash site 
recovery,'' no big deal, in letting us spend millions of dollars going 
out to crash sites that are 30 years old, ``And archival research 
efforts,'' pathetic, pathetic, entry level archival searches, the 
former POW stated, ``We know firsthand Vietnam's ability to withhold 
critical information while giving the appearance of cooperation.''
  Elsewhere in the letter the former POW's contend that Hanoi could do 
so much more to resolve many of the unresolved POW-MIA cases. I refer 
anybody watching on C-SPAN, Mr. Speaker, to the aforementioned 260-plus 
boxes of heroes' bones warehoused somewhere in the suburbs of Hanoi.
  ``Some of our fellow servicemen went missing during the same 
incidents which we survived.'' Two-seat F-4 Phantoms side-by-side, A-6 
Intruders. ``Some were captured and never heard from again. Some were 
known to have been held in captivity for several years and their 
ultimate fate has still not been satisfactorily resolved. Still others 
were known to have died in captivity,'' 97 of them, Mr. Speaker, and we 
still have yet to get an accounting on, what did Senator Kerrey say on 
``Meet the Press'' yesterday? He corrected me from 97 down to 89 I 
believe. A fine point. ``Yet their
 remains have not been repatriated to the United States.''

  The former POW's expressed their concerns that many of the ``reports 
from U.S. and Russian intelligence sources maintain several hundred 
unidentified American POWs were held separately from us during the war 
in both Laos and Vietnam and were not released by Hanoi during 
Operation Homecoming in 1973.'' Several hundred. I have never held out 
hope for more than 40, Mr. Speaker. But what do I know compared to 
these POW's? And called on Clinton to ``Send a clear message to Hanoi 
that America expects full cooperation and disclosure on American POWs 
and MIAs before agreeing to establish diplomatic and special trading 
privileges with Vietnam.''
  Since February 2, 1994, Mr. Speaker, when we relaxed all the trade 
sanctions, we have gotten back exactly eight remains of Americans, and 
it cost us thousands of dollars to identify them, because the remains 
were mixed in with animal bones and several hundred Asian sets of 
remains. Just no care at all, sending us boxes of this, as though they 
were cooperating, when they have got this warehouse. Unbelievable. 
Eight.
  We averaged 21 a month under Reagan's 8 years, 24 remains a month 
under George Bush's 4 years, and now we are down to 8 since February 2 
a year ago under Clinton? And that is called prodigious diligence by 
the Post? Substantial by Senators Kerrey and McCain? And what did I say 
was the word last year, unprecedented, superb this year? Horrible.
  That was the press release. Here is the letter.
  It says, in closing, the press release brought out the biggest parts 
of the letter, and I will insert the whole letter into the Record, an 
open letter to President Clinton.
  The last paragraphs say, ``America deserves straightforward answers 
if Vietnam really wants normalized diplomatic and economic relations. 
If Vietnam truly has nothing to hide on the POW-MIA issue, then why 
have they not released their wartime politburo and prison records on 
American POWs and MIAs? Why have they not fully disclosed other 
military records on the POWs and MIAs?''
  We have had senators go over there, I am sorry to say, Mr. Speaker, 
and not ask these direct questions. The politburo records are a key, as 
are the prison records. Now, they kept accurate records like the 
gestapo in World War II. And yet we have Members, elected to the U.S. 
Congress, that make excuses for them. ``Oh, with the humidity over 
there, the records have all, you 

[[Page H 6732]]
know, mildewed and they have been lost and they have been shuffled 
around.''
  We did not believe that when we brought German war criminals to trial 
and to execution. They were obsessive about keeping records. I have 
just seen declassified top secret records from 1968, the same year that 
McNamara is in the Caribbean vacationing and skiing at Aspen while 
these men are being tortured to death in Hanoi and beaten. That very 
year I saw a reference that we picked up through NSA listening, where 
they referred to our prisoners as ``golden rubies.'' I remember having 
a priest who was captured, a Vietnamese Catholic priest, tell me after 
he had escaped from the Ho Chi Minh Trail, being taken north, one of a 
handful that were lucky enough to escape, he said they kept referring 
to prisoners as ``pearls,'' as a string of pearls. That they watched 
our men when they would come down in a parachute, try to shoot it out 
and kill two or three villagers, and then take the man captive and not 
even beat him, just shoo the villagers off. There would be two or three 
dead people there.
  Ted Guy told me the other day how he killed two farmers coming at him 
with machetes and he was captured. He went through several beatings 
later and 4 years of solitary. But the soldiers were under orders, 
these pilots are worth their weight in gold. The survivors from the 
dozens that died in the slimy camps in the south, ``march them north'' 
they said in 1967 and 1968, because the POW's have taken on an 
absolutely supreme monetary value.
  That is why they still talk about Nixon's disgraceful offer of $3.25 
billion to get them to sign on the dotted line after the Paris peace 
accords and the 18 days of December B-52 raids, only to write off every 
prisoner in Laos. Remember, Mr. Speaker, 499 Americans missing in Laos, 
and not a single one ever came home.
  The last two paragraphs of the POW letter is, ``We would only be 
compounding a national tragedy if we normalized relations with Hanoi 
before you as commander-in-chief can tell us Hanoi is being fully 
forthcoming in accounting for our missing comrades.''
  Compounding a national tragedy. If there are a million Americans, or 
more than that, watching tonight, Mr. Speaker, I want them to hear 
those words ringing in their heads tomorrow around noon eastern time, 
if we reward the war criminals and the war criminal JOP in Hanoi with 
the final insult, betraying 1.5 million Vietnamese casualties, half a 
million or more, 700,000 United States wounded, and those 58,747, 
roughly, names on the Vietnam Wall.
  ``Perhaps more than any other group of Americans, we desire to put 
the war behind us, but it must be done in an honorable way.'' And that 
sentence is underlined. It must be done in an honorable way.
  ``We, therefore, ask you to send a clear message to Hanoi that 
America expects full cooperation and disclosure on American prisoners 
and missing in action before agreeing to establish diplomatic and 
special trading relations with Vietnam.''
  Sincerely, John Peter Flynn, Lieutenant General, Air Force, retired. 
Robbie Risner, I repeat, my squadron commander at my last base of 
assignment, Brigadier General. Our own courageous Gary Cooper here from 
Dallas, Sam Johnson, Member of Congress. Eugene Red McDaniel, John A. 
Alpers, Baugh, Speed, Baldock, Beeler, Boyer, Black, Brown, Carey, 
Burns, DiBernado, Lieutenant Colonel, Marine Corps, horribly tortured. 
Franke, Goodermote, Jensen. James Hickerson, Navy, married my good 
friend Carol Hansen, who lost her handsome young Marine Steve Hansen.
                             {time}   2145

  I took their little son, now Jim Hickerson's stepson, Todd, up in the 
Goodyear blimp to use it as an excuse to talk about the POW's on my 
television show in 1970. That is 25 years ago. Todd is now 30, flying 
F-18's in the U.S. Navy. Graduate from Annapolis. James Young. Charlie 
Plumb, who gives inspirational speeches all over this country, Captain 
Plumb, U.S. Navy. Larry Friese, Julius Jayroe, Bruce Seeber, Konrad 
Trautman, most of them in this book. Larry Barbay. I will give the 
reporters all these names, Mr. Speaker. Ron Bliss, Arthur Burer, James 
O. Hivner, Gordon Larson, Swede Larson, who told the press at a press 
conference at an air base in South Vietnam, why do you fly, colonel, 
they said? He said, I fly to stop the supply of arms and materiel, 
bayonets coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail so that these young drafted 
18- and 19-year-olds will not face this brutal Communist attempt at 
conquest of Vietnam. I fly to stop those materiel supplies from killing 
our young men down in South Vietnam. He was shot down that afternoon. 
Swede Larson, name carved in a wall, snuck out of the camps, turned up 
a prisoner years later. His family never gave up hope praying for 
Swede. Robert Lewis, master sergeant, U.S. Army, another heroic POW; 
Jim Lamar, colonel. At one time the four colonels were isolated from 
everybody else. He was one of the first of the four Air Force colonels, 
Armand Myers, Terry Uyeyama, colonel, U.S. Air Force. I think he is 
from Hawaii. Richard Vogol. Ted Guy who testified before my committee 
last week, horrible beatings, 4 years in solitary confinement, just 
like Congressman Johnson. Paul Galanti hit the cover of Life Magazine, 
sign behind him, clean and neat, all that orchestrated stuff. Laird 
Guttersen, another Air Force colonel, one of the heroes, I worked 
closely with his wife, as I did with Sam Johnson's wife. Larry Stark, 
civilian, captured during the Tet offensive, captured while McNamara 
was skiing in Aspen. So was Michael Benge, walked up the Ho Chi Minh 
Trail all the way up to Hanoi. Marion Marshall, Richard Mullen, another 
great Irishman suffered severe torture. Phil Smith, William Stark, 
Captain Stark, another great Navy guy. David Allwine, Bob Barrett, Jack 
Bomar, another one of the Air Force colonels, Larry Chesley. Sam 
Johnson just pointed out to me tonight, Larry Chesley was his 
backseater in his F-4. Chelsey was the first one to get a book out 
after they came back, 7 years in Hanoi. Being a very junior officer, he 
was not tortured like Sam, badly, slapped around but nothing severe. 
And the Mormon church, I remember, helped him publish his book quickly. 
Came out in the summer of 1973, 2 years before Saigon fell. That was 
the first of 19 books like this that I have read cover to cover.
  I am just now rereading Sam Johnson's fabulous motivational and 
inspiring book. Robert Stirm, C.D. Rice, Bernard Talley, Paul Montague. 
Leo Thorsness, my friend, Medal of Honor winner. I walked precincts for 
him up in South Dakota when he had George McGovern on the ropes and 
then came the Watergate collapse, Nixon's resignation, less than 90 
days before the election. And Leo got 47 percent; 4 years later he runs 
for the House, goes to bed a winner and wakes up, loses by less than 
100 votes. I remember coming to our big conference over there. What a 
great Congressman he would be. Went on to become a State senator in 
Washington. Tremendous daughter that I worked with, tremendous wife, 
Gay Lee.
  Robert Lerseth, Ray Vodhen. Ray Vodhen, one of our first men 
captured, F-8 crusader pilot, 8 years in captivity almost. Richard 
Tangeman. John Pitchford, another colonel, I worked with his wife, 
another Shirley, I believe, just like Shirley Johnson, Sam's wife. 
Steven Long, Brian Woods, Dale Osborne.
  Steven Long, what a story. I met Steven Long the day he came back and 
first hit the United States. Then I saw him a couple years ago, to 
refresh my memory. He was shot down on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Captured 
by Pathet Lao and then immediately turned over to the North Vietnamese.
  They took him inside a cave in Laos that he said was so massively 
cavernous that they had three floors in the cave made with bamboo, 
solid bamboo flooring. And every now and then a person would come by 
with one of these little Dutchboy hats on that the Pathet Lao wore. And 
he would say, North Vietnamese? And they would say no, no, Pathet Lao, 
Pathet Lao. But there was very few of them. He said the cave was filled 
with North Vietnamese.
  Troops moving south. He was moved within 24 hours on his way to the 
Hanoi prison system. The tragedy about--let us see what rank he retired 
as. The tragedy with--colonel, U.S. Air Force, so he had a full career.

[[Page H 6733]]

  The tragedy is that Nixon, through Kissinger and
   Ambassador Larry Eagleburger and current Assistant Secretary for 
East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Winston Lord, whom I met with one of my 
sons in Beijing in 1988, as I was getting ready, at my expense, Mr. 
Speaker, to ride the Trans-Siberian Railroad, these three in Paris, in 
ascending importance, Winston Lord, Larry Eagleburger, and Kissinger 
made a tragic mistake. They demanded that Laos, which had a seat in the 
United Nations then, as did Cambodia, Vietnam did not, they demanded 
that Laos return all their prisoners.

  And they told me to my face, in one of my four visits to Laos, that 
we have tens of tens of American prisoners, Scot Petroski said that in 
front of Carol Hanson, now Carol Hickerson, and three of the other 
wives who have never remarried. They could not find the second hero. He 
told the five of us, I have tens and tens, and tens of prisoners, over 
100 prisoners, and we will return them when you negotiate directly with 
the Pathet Lao Communists here in Luang Prubong or down in Vien Chong 
in the Mekong. And, of course, Kissinger said, you will return all 
prisoners through Hanoi. That is what we negotiated with the people who 
have the hegemony over the whole area, the ones that Clinton wants to 
normalize with tomorrow.
  The tragedy is that Kissinger kept bombing Laos after January 27, 
1973. We bombed for 4 days. then all February. That was not a leap 
year, 28 days. then all March, all April, all 31 days of May, all June, 
all 31 days of July and almost up to the end of August. For 8 months we 
kept bombing Laos and telling them, but return your American prisoners 
through Hanoi. And Laos told us to go to hell. And do you know what, 
there is a certain logic to Laos saying, you stop bombing us and we 
will give your prisoners back. Kissinger won the Nobel Prize, Le Duc 
Tho refused it because he said, I am not through fighting yet, and he 
did not. Two years later, without ever receiving the $100,000 or so 
from the Nobel Prize, up to $300,000 now, he just kept fighting.
  To Kissinger's credit, the money he took, because he did take that 
prize, he gave that money to the families who had missing in action 
heroes so that their children could use Kissinger's award money for 
college scholarships. An honorable thing that not many people know 
about. I want Kissinger to come before my chairmanship and my military 
personnel committee. I will not have to subpoena him. I want him and 
Larry Eagleburger and Winston Lord to explain to me how they wrote off 
Steven Long, colonel of the U.S. Air Force, retired, as a Laotian-held 
prisoner.
  I remember standing in Brentwood, CA, not 100 yards from where Nicole 
Simpson and Ron Goldman were murdered, at a news rack in front of the 
Westward Ho market. I am standing there looking at a headline that 
says, all prisoners were returned from Laos. Nixon wins, it said, all 
Laotian-held prisoners returned. Not Dave Hrdlicka, not Eugene DeBruin, 
not Charlie Skelton who was shot down on his 33d birthday, father of 
five, his oldest son now a Franciscan priest, already ordained 20 years 
or so.
  I said not the four, the people from the plane shot down along the 
trail of late 1972. This is not what they are talking about. They are 
talking about people held inside the Hanoi prison system who were 
captured, like Long, on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, pulled into those caves 
and sent off to the Hanoi system, to Dogpatch, to the Plantation, to 
New Guy Village or to the dreaded hellhole of Wallow. They were held 
there, all 10 of them.
  There was one exception, Ernie Brace, a CIA Air American crewman, 
captured, the rest of his crew was killed. He was taken to Dien Bien 
Phu, which is right on the border between Laos, just inside North 
Vietnam. He was held there for 3 weeks. Then taken to Hanoi. And the 
first person who tapped him up on the wall was young John McCain, now a 
U.S. Senator.
  So except for 3 weeks with Ernie Brace, all of the 10 were held in 
the Hanoi prison system. Bottom line: Not a single American hero 
returned from Laos. And before somebody nitpicks, yes, there was Dieter 
Dengler, who had been an Eastern Airlines pilot up to its collapse and 
probably retired, maybe still flying. Dieter Dengler escaped with the 
young Air Force lieutenant, Dean something, watched Dean totally, 
cleanly beheaded right in front of him by a farmer with a machete and 
got up and ran until his body was slashed from all the vines and 
staggered into a small encampment in south Laos, an absolute wreck. 
That was an escape case.
  And then the pilot of one of these 89th Squadron perk flights out of 
Andrews that took a Lester Wolff CODEL into Moscow. I am sitting with 
him in the Ukrainia Hotel. He tells me how he was shot down in an old
 V-10 in Laos. His backseater, I can still remember the call sign 
Shoebox. They were being beaten in a small hootch by Pathet Lao 
Communists who could not speak English. They were screaming back at 
him, taking the Lord's name in vain, why are you yelling at us, what 
are you beating us for? We can--cannot speak English. And they take the 
master sergeant Shoebox outside. And all of a sudden they hear 
helicopters fly over. And he says, he hears Shoebox, a blood-curdling 
scream. And they untie him from this bamboo pole inside the hootch. He 
still had a pole through his arms. And they drag him outside, and he 
sees Shoebox stabbed in the lower abdomen and cut all the way up to his 
throat, his intestines coming out. He said his legs went to jelly under 
him. He collapsed on the ground.

  They picked him up and dragged him along, his legs dragging in the 
ground. Then all of a sudden the helicopter makes another low pass and 
they run off into the jungle and leave him there. He gets his footing 
back, stands up and runs into the jungle. The bamboo pole through his 
arms is hitting the trees and he thinks he is going to break his neck 
with a whiplash until finally the bamboo pole collapses and he puts it 
in front of him like wings and runs through the woods and comes into a 
clearing in the woods.
  As he is telling me this in this filthy hotel in Moscow, built in the 
late 1940's, Gothic looking, ugly looking, one of the seven sisters, 
tears are running down his face, telling me how the helicopter comes 
down low over him and then climbs up over the tree line and he breaks 
down crying like a baby.
  He says, all of a sudden four people pounce on him and he begins to 
fight. And he says it reminds me now in retrospect like one of these 
cartoons in the comics in the newspaper where you just see a ball of 
activity with arms and legs and fur coming out of it. And he said, all 
of a sudden he is punching these guys in the face. All of a sudden he 
is aware of a downdraft and they lift him up in the air and throw him 
on a helicopter and climb in after him, and they were friendly Laotian 
forces, an insert team that helped rescue this Air Force colonel, name 
forgotten to me, flying our 707 into Moscow.
  He said the copilot, like in the movie, turns around and says, do you 
want a beer? And he said they took him back.
  Never have seen this story reported anywhere, checked it out, found 
out it was true. That is one of the air escape cases from Laos. But he 
was never recorded a prisoner. There was one man shot down after 
January 1973 that Senator Cranston intervened on his behalf. We got him 
back sometime in 1974 or early 1975.
  I know all the exception cases, so do not anybody write me who is 
watching on C-SPAN that I do not know what I am talking about. I am a 
bloody expert on this issue for 30 years. That is why I have every 
right to say, it is a treachery to normalize relations with the war 
criminals in Hanoi, to tell dictatorships all over the world that you 
do not ever have to have an election. There is no election planned in 
Vietnam and they have told us there never will be. Castro, for over 
three decades, has never had an election and never will have until God 
takes him out. He will have his cells filled with political prisoners.
                              {time}  2200

  China, what are they doing to American Harry Wu? They will not even 
let us meet with him, violating every diplomatic code. North Korea, in 
concert with Iran, trying to send them New Dawn missiles, the 
capability to strike not just Israel but to strike into Europe, into 
NATO countries, cover all of Turkey with missiles. It is unbelievable 
that we should rationalize we are playing China off against Vietnam. We 
tried to play Iraq against Iran.

[[Page H 6734]]

  Mr. Speaker, I will close with this. Ask the 148 families of 
Americans who lost our men in the Gulf war, or the 99 British and 
French and allied people who lost men. Ask them if they think it was 
good to play the Iraq card against Iran. It is going to be a 
disgraceful day in our history tomorrow.
  Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record a press release from the 
American Defense Institute and a copy of a letter to President Clinton:

                               The American Defense Institute,

                                    Alexandria, VA, July 10, 1995.
     Former United States POW's oppose normalization with Vietnam
       Alexandria, VA.--In a letter sent to President Clinton 
     today, 60 former U.S. POWs--including Congressman Sam 
     Johnson, (R-TX); LtGen John Peter Flynn, USAF (Ret); BG 
     Robinson Risner, USAF (Ret); and Captain Red McDaniel, 
     USN(Ret)--from the Vietnam War expressed their opposition to 
     establishing diplomatic relations with Vietnam ``until you, 
     as Commander in Chief, tell us Hanoi is being fully 
     forthcoming in accounting for our missing comrades.'' The 
     letter was sent by Captain McDaniel, President of the 
     American Defense Institute, on behalf of former U.S. POWs 
     from Vietnam concerned with recent reports that a White House 
     announcement of the move is imminent.
       ``While we appreciate Vietnam's support for U.S. crash site 
     recovery and archival research efforts,'' the former POWs 
     stated, ``we know first-hand Vietnam's ability to withhold 
     critical information while giving the appearance of 
     cooperation.''
       Elsewhere in the letter, the former POWs contend that Hanoi 
     ``could do much more'' to resolve many of the unresolved POW/
     MIA cases.
       ``Some of our fellow servicemen became missing during the 
     same incidents which we survived. . . Some were captured and 
     never heard from again. . . Still others were known to have 
     died in captivity, yet their remains have not been 
     repatriated to the United States.''
       The former POWs expressed their concern that many of the 
     ``reports from U.S. and Russian intelligence sources that 
     maintain several hundred unidentified American POWs were held 
     separately from us during the war, in both Laos and Vietnam, 
     and were not released by Hanoi during Operation Homecoming in 
     1973. . . have yet to be fully investigated'' and called on 
     the President to ``send a clear message to Hanoi that America 
     expects full cooperation and disclosure on American POWs and 
     MIAs before agreeing to establish diplomatic and special 
     trading privileges with Vietnam.''
       Attached is a copy of the letter and the list of the former 
     POWs.
                                                    July 10, 1995.

       An Open Letter to President Clinton From Former U.S. POW's

     Hon. William J. Clinton, President of the United States, The 
       White House, Washington, DC.
       Dear Mr. President: As former U.S. Prisoners of war during 
     the Vietnam Conflict, we are writing to request not to 
     establish normal diplomatic relations with Vietnam until you 
     can certify that there has been full disclosure and 
     cooperation by Hanoi on the POW/MIA issue. While we 
     appreciate Vietnam's support for U.S. crash site recovery and 
     archival research efforts, we know first-hand Vietnam's 
     ability to withhold critical information while giving the 
     appearance of cooperation. We were all subjected to such 
     propaganda activity during the war, and we would be the least 
     surprised if Hanoi was continuing to use similar tactics in 
     its dealings with the United States.
       Of particular concern to us are the several hundred POW/MIA 
     cases involving our fellow servicemen who were captured or 
     lost in enemy-controlled areas during the war, yet they still 
     have not been accounted for by Vietnam. We understand that 
     much of the fragmentary information provided by Vietnamese 
     officials to date indicates they could do more to resolve 
     these cases.
       Some of our fellow servicemen became missing during the 
     same incidents which we survived. They have not been 
     accounted for. Some were captured and never heard from again. 
     They have not been accounted for. Some were known to have 
     been held in captivity for several years and their ultimate 
     fate has still not been satisfactorily resolved. They have 
     not been accounted for. Still others were known to have died 
     in captivity, yet their remains have not been repatriated to 
     the United States. They have not been accounted for.
       Finally, we remain deeply concerned with reports from U.S. 
     and Russian intelligence sources that maintain several 
     hundred unidentified American POWs were held separately from 
     us during war, in both Laos and Vietnam, and were not 
     released by Hanoi during Operation Homecoming in 1973. Many 
     of these reports have yet to be fully investigated.
       American deserves straightforward answers if Vietnam really 
     wants normalized diplomatic and economic relations. If 
     Vietnam truly has nothing to hide on the POW/MIA issue, then 
     why have they not released their wartime politburo and prison 
     records on American POWs and MIAs? Why have they not fully 
     disclosed other military records on POWs and MIAs?
       We would only be compounding a national tragedy if we 
     normalized relations with Hanoi before you, as Commander in 
     Chief, can tell us Hanoi is being fully forthcoming in 
     accounting for our missing comrades.
       Perhaps more than any other group of Americans, we want to 
     put the war behind us. But it must be done in an honorable 
     way. We, therefore, ask you send a clear message to Hanoi 
     that America expects full cooperation and disclosure on 
     American POWs and MIAs before agreeing to establish 
     diplomatic and special trading privileges with Vietnam.
           Sincerely,
         John Peter Flynn, Lt Gen, USAF(ret); Robinson Risner, 
           Brig Gen, USAF(ret); Sam Johnson, Member of Congress; 
           Eugene ``Red'' McDaniel, CAPT, USN(ret); John A. 
           Alpers, Lt Col, USAF(ret); William J. Baugh, Col, 
           USAF(ret); Adkins, C. Speed, MAJ, USA(ret); F.C. 
           Baldock, CDR, USN(ret); Carroll Beeler, CAPT, USN(ret); 
           Terry L. Boyer, Lt Col, USAF(ret); Cole Black, CAPT 
           USN(ret); Paul G. Brown, LtCol, USMC(ret); David J. 
           Carey, CAPT, USN(ret); John D. Burns, CAPT, USN(ret); 
           James V. DiBernado, LtCol, USMC(ret); F.A.W. Franke, 
           CAPT, USN(ret); Wayne Goodermote, CAPT, USN(ret); Jay 
           R. Jensen, Lt Col, USAF(ret); James M. Hickerson, CAPT, 
           USN(ret); James F. Young, Col, USAF(ret); J. Charles 
           Plumb, CAPT USN(ret); Larry Friese, CDR, USN(ret); 
           Julius Jayroe, Col, USAF(ret); Bruce Seeber, Col, 
           USAF(ret); Konrad Trautman, Col, USAF(ret); Lawrence 
           Barbay, Lt Col, USAF(ret); Ron Bliss, Capt, USAF(ret); 
           Arthur Burer, Col, USAF(ret); James O. Hivner, Col, 
           USAF(ret); Gordon A. Larson, Col, USAF(ret); Robert 
           Lewis, MSgt, USA(ret); James L. Lamar, Col, USAF(ret); 
           Armand J. Myers, Col, USAF(ret); Terry Uyeyama, Col, 
           USAF(ret); Richard D. Vogel, Col, USAF(ret); Ted Guy, 
           Col, USAF(ret); Paul E. Galanti, CDR, USN(ret); Laird 
           Guttersen, Col, USAF(ret); Lawrence J. Stark, Civ; 
           Michael D. Benge, Civ; Marion A. Marshall, Lt Col, 
           USAF(ret); Richard D. Mullen, CAPT, USN(ret); Philip E. 
           Smith, Lt Col, USAF(ret); William Stark, CAPT, 
           USN(ret); David F. Allwine, MSgt, USA(ret); Bob 
           Barrett, Col, USAF(ret); Jack W. Bomar, Col, USAF(ret); 
           Larry J. Chesley, Lt Col, USAF(ret); C.D. Rice, CDR, 
           USN(ret); Robert L. Stirm, Col, USAF(ret); Bernard 
           Talley, Col, USAF(ret); Paul Montague, Civ; Leo 
           Thorsness, Col, USAF(ret); Robert Lerseth, CAPT, 
           USN(ret); Ray A. Vodhen, CAPT, USN(ret); Richard G. 
           Tangeman, CAPT, USN(ret); John Pitchford, Col, 
           USAF(ret); Steven Long, Col, USAF(ret); Brian Woods, 
           CAPT, USN(ret); Dale Osborne, CAPT, USN(ret).
           

                          ____________________