[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 172 (Thursday, November 2, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H11759-H11765]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Nethercutt). The Chair reminds Members 
that it is not in order in debate to specifically urge the Senate to 
take a certain action or to characterize Senate inaction.
  Mr. DORNAN. I knew that, Mr. Speaker, and it had slipped my mind.
  Then it is up to this Congress, both Chambers, to resolve in 
conference that no money for normalization with Hanoi, passed 
unanimously by voice vote in this Chamber with only Mr. Sam Johnson of 
Dallas, TX retired Air Force Colonel, 7-year prisoner in Hanoi, 
speaking for 2\1/2\ minutes. One objection from the other side by a 
fellow POW who had not undergone the severe torture and solitary 
confinement that a senior officer like Mr. Sam Johnson of Texas had 
undergone, and he only spoke for less than half a minute and said, I 
object, but did not call for a vote. That sits over on the Senate, that 
sits now in conference. The House is standing on its position.
  No. 4, we have passed my language on no abortion in military 
hospitals, not once, Mr. Speaker, not twice or 3 or 4 or 5, 6 times in 
this House, on authorization bills and appropriation bills, we have 
voted to protect the Dornan language on no abortions in military 
hospitals without a single military doctor, male or female, Navy, they 
covered the Marine Corps also, Army or Air Force, Pacific or Europe, 
Mediterranean, nowhere in the world has a doctor written to me as the 
chairman of military personnel and said, I want to perform abortions in 
the military. As a matter of hard fact, I fought this through 
subcommittee and full committee and sustained in debate my own language 
through six House recorded votes. I did this at the behest of men and 
women who wear the uniform of our services, who are medically trained 
doctors, and who are ob/gyn doctors that told me that in the military 
they defend life, they do not take life.
  That vote yesterday, again, I keep track of my own particular 
religious denomination, 41 people, Mr. Speaker, who put Roman Catholic 
after their name in their official congressional biographies, 
mercifully only 4 Republican Catholics and 37 on the other side of the 
aisle who put Catholic in their biography voted against stopping the 
killing by sucking out the brain tissue of a fully formed late stage 
fetus child after it is fully brought down the birth canal except for 
the head, and they 

[[Page H 11760]]

voted to allow that procedure to continue, that brutal procedure that, 
as Mr. Hyde said on the floor, would be damned if it was done to 
animals, animals without a soul, not made in the image and likeness of 
God. What an amazing vote that was on the House floor yesterday.
  I am going to remember it always with a little rhyme. The votes, 
including 15 Republicans, to maintain this barbaric procedure were 1, 
2, 3; 1, 2, 3, I only care about me. On the Republican side, it was 2, 
8, 5, I know when a baby is alive, 285 to 123. As I said in the well, 
probably the most important pro-life vote, and Members will lose their 
seats who voted wrong on that one, maybe only a handful, but it will 
pull down some people. And nobody who voted to end that barbaric savage 
inhuman process will lose their seat because of an ``aye'' vote 
sustaining Charles Canady of Florida's language.
  So the no abortions in military hospitals, why is that still being 
argued in conference?
  And No. 5, it relates to the statistics that I just gave on AIDS 
deaths, absolute plague based on human conduct, it is not some Ebola 
virus that we are trying to contain. It is spread by human God-given 
free will. The no HIV positive tested persons with the AIDS virus 
remaining on active duty.
  We have nobody left on military active duty, not a single person that 
any one of the services can tell me about who got it through a 
contaminated blood transfusion. It is all from one of 
three causes, all of them in violation of the Uniform Code of Military 
Justice. Rolling up your white, khaki or blue uniform sleeve and 
sticking a contaminated filthy needle in your arm. They die the most 
quickly because it is direct blood to blood contamination.

                              {time}  1815

  Heterosexual sex with prostitutes in an off-limits prostitution house 
where all of the prostitutes are infected with the AIDS virus, that is 
violation of orders of your commander and general understood orders 
under the UCMJ, and the third category that seems to drive this whole 
thing politically, having unprotected sex with strangers in some 
hideaway or men's room somewhere, high-risk sex with strangers that is 
homosexual, that it involves again transferring the AIDS virus. Why is 
that being demanded as a separate vote in the other Chamber when it has 
won overwhelmingly about four times in subcommittee, and committee and 
on the floor? So there are five things that I would like to see done on 
the other side.
  I will close, with whatever remarks I have, with the 22 questions of 
George Will, which I did not put in last night, to my friend and man of 
great character, Colin Powell, great character, but a little short on 
answers lately, and then I will resubmit again my 22 questions, and I 
added one, and to keep it to 22 I made it a two-part question on one 
aspect of foreign policy sanctions, and that was to heed the eloquent 
plea last night of my colleague from south Florida, Mr. Diaz-Balart, 
about the war criminal, human-rights criminal, first-degree murderer, 
savage, evil human being, Fidel Castro, who has left friends of his, 
let alone adversaries, rot in prison for a quarter of a century, some 
of them stark naked in solitary confinement for up to a decade, only 
inquiring about them every 5 or 10 years, and here he is the toast of 
the town in New York at a posh apartment on Fifth Avenue owned by Mort 
Zuckerman.
  I know Mort. I went to the gulf war, March 15, 1991, with him on the 
first Kuwaiti 747 to go back into newly liberated Kuwait. We saw the 
devastation together. He seems to be an intelligent person. Why would 
he host at his apartment a first-degree murderer?
  If some of us think O.J. Simpson is a first-degree murderer who 
savagely, brutally killed two human beings and got away with it, that 
is two, two. Castro has done that thousands of times over, and there he 
is with Canadian Peter Jennings, Diane Sawyer, the chronicler of 
Richard Nixon, an elegant lady and probably her husband, a talented 
stage director, with her. There is Dan Rather giving him a baseball 
bat, putting a baseball bat into the hands of a man who has ordered 
people to be beaten to death with baseball bats. What kind of insane 
Kafkaesque world do we live in?
  Two other little items, and then I will get into this missing-in-
action tragedy.
  A week ago, the first legislative day following the 800,000-plus-1 
march; I say ``plus 1'' because I was there as an observer, so I guess 
the helicopters counted me on their grids; my son, Mark Dornan, sent me 
a fax. Mark recently got a degree in history from UCLA. He did not know 
I was going to the march, and this was waiting for me in my fax machine 
when I got back here in--just outside the beltway. He says, ``Dad, why 
does Al Sharpton, the racist Farrakhan had not spoken of, why does Al 
Sharpton blast the political right when this march is all about 
Republican conservative ideals?'' Big question mark. ``I.e.,'' Mark 
writes, ``self-reliance, the family unit.'' He has Dan Quayle in 
quotes, in parentheses, afterward. ``No government cheese,'' It is a 
line he got from the comedy of the highly talented Wynans family of 
television fame. ``It is about stomping out crime. It is about striking 
sexist, violent rap lyrics, gangster rap. It is about strengthening the 
black economy,'' and most of all, my son tells me, ``Evoking the name 
of Jesus Christ and God's name, something a white politician is 
criticized for doing. Also, Dad, talk of sin and redemption. Are these 
black American men conservatives who don't know it yet?''
  I told Mark that I liked that fax so much I was going to put it in 
the Congressional Record. Done.
  One other item.
  One of my staff called the Council on Foreign Relations up in New 
York City, the island of my birth, 68th Street off Fifth Avenue. They 
are sending a delegation to Vietnam, to Hanoi, next week to lay the 
groundwork for a war criminal who has become a multimillionaire in the 
Federal payroll and the World Bank payroll which is tax-free where he 
drew over a quarter of a million dollars a year and all sorts of 
unbelievable perks for 13 years, right up until 1981, until Ronald 
Reagan forced him out, and I am speaking of Robert Strange McNamara. He 
is going back to Vietnam to tear open the wounds of all the missing-in-
action families and all the families of the 58,500-some young men, 8 
women, whose names are on the Vietnam Memorial wall, who I believe, 
quoting again President Reagan, were involved in a noble cause, 
that although it was a significant part of the melting down of the evil 
empire, they--well, they know the answers, they are all in heaven, but 
their families have never been able to find full mental peace because 
this country has not formally, at least since Ronald Reagan, ever 
acknowledged that every life lost in Vietnam was part of the twilight 
struggle that Kennedy talked about, the President who first sent our 
young heroes to Vietnam. The twilight struggle that would go on for the 
rest of this century ended much sooner than we thought it would when 
the wall came down on November 9, 1989. Kennedy said, paraphrasing 
Lincoln, the world cannot remain forever half slave and half free, and 
these young men died in Vietnam, some not so young. Those who gave 
their lives, 33,629 in combat, 53,000 overall in Korea, they also were 
the two major, very bloody, very hard-fought battlegrounds of what 
people still incorrectly say was a cold war won without firing a shot. 
How about all the four-engine and two-engine aircraft that--and U-2's 
that flew ferret missions on reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering 
missions all around the periphery, including the Arctic, the periphery 
of the evil empire? What about all of those people that disappeared 
into the mist of history?

  We just had a funeral. I do not know if the families wanted this 
funeral, a mass funeral up at Fort Meade which was National Security 
Agency headquarters, major listening post of the free world for an RB-
29, a World War II B-29 that was shot down over the Sea of Japan a few 
days after the cessation of fighting in Korea, and for years, decades, 
the family members were lied to, lied to. It was considered a necessary 
intelligence-world lie that the plane was lost in weather when all that 
time buried in the bowels of NSA and the archives of the Pentagon were 
the transcripts of the pilots' voices telling how MiG's were firing at 
them, closing in on them, and killing them.
  And that brings me, thinking about the war criminal, Robert, middle 
name 

[[Page H 11761]]

truly Strange--that is his real middle name, Robert Strange war 
criminal McNamara is off to Vietnam to bring pain to the families I am 
about to discuss.
   Mr. Speaker, I just left the Rayburn Room, as I mentioned, 
discussing with two primary family members and their friends a funeral 
that is going to take place next Wednesday. That will be November 8, 
the 1-year anniversary of this earth-shaking election last year. There 
will be a funeral at Arlington against the will of most of the family 
members where our Government is going to--my Government is going to 
bury--I wish that we had the camera capability--we could have it, if we 
wanted--to zoom in for a closeup that is available on any television 
show, program, in the 100 or so channels around this country, around 
the world, but this is too small a picture for any camera to pick up. 
But that is the sum total of human remains, a small group that you 
could hold in your two hands cupped together, of bone fragments, none 
of them any bigger than a few inches, and it could be all one person. 
The Pentagon is claiming that it is the remains of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 
8, 9, 10 people, and it is going to be a funeral with a single 
gravesite for this tiny amount of bone fragments. They will not do DNA 
on them. They claim it is too expensive. I thought there was no expense 
that we would not go to for our heroes from the Vietnam war, and all of 
these 10 men, they are all males, 
there are no females in combat positions on April 22, 1970, when this 
AC-130 Spectre; that is the name for gunships, Hercules gunships; 
crashed in Laos, and one man was returned from captivity, Eugene 
Fields. He has not been made available to the other 10 families.
  Not only that, in trying to avoid the unending pleas of the family 
members to discuss his recollections of his bailout and who was left on 
the--this big four-engine Lockheed C-130 and who was not left on it, he 
finally told one of the family members that he had been threatened that 
he would lose his retirement benefits as an Air Force retiree if he 
divulged to any family member any of his debriefing.
  I am adding legislation to the aforementioned POW-MIA Secretary of 
Defense Office for Missing Persons, legislation that no reprisals must 
ever be taken against anybody who wants to talk to family members and 
also that no source will ever be burned who gives information in a 
debriefing to ferret out every little fact surrounding the 
disappearance of one of our American fighting heroes.
  Now let me at this point, Mr. Speaker, give the 10 names of 8 regular 
Air Force folks and 2 reservists: Charlie B. Davis, Jr. He was a 
navigator or two navigators. His wife, Ginger, watching this special 
order closely; I will meet with her after this special order.

                              {time}  1830

  She only received a statement, a final statement of death, on her 
Charlie just this last week. It was prepared 12 September, and I do not 
know what took it so long to get to Ginger Davis. I will come back to 
that.
  I just met the daughter of Charles S. Rowley, the senior navigator. 
The daughter, Patty, says she has had a terrible time trying to get to 
Eugene Fields, the one survivor who bailed out.
  At this point before I give the other names, I want people to be 
thinking about this who follow the special orders of this House, Mr. 
Speaker. Eugene Fields had a position back of the aircraft, and I was 
just on one of these AC-130 gunships in Brindisi, Italy; they have been 
flying hot combat missions, or they did on the night of August 30.
  I was there when they briefed to go into combat over Bosnia. Then 
they went in August 31 and alternately during the next 10 days into 
September. AC-130's flew hot combat missions for the first time since 
the gulf war, where we lost one, hit when the sun came up at daylight 
over Kuwait, crashed into the Mediterranean, and we recovered about 10 
of the 14 bodies. The rest disappeared out to the Gulf of Oman and the 
Arabian Sea.
  The back of the aircraft, a big airplane loaded with guns and 
firepower and hot ammo and flares and 105-recoilless millimeter shells, 
and Bofors Gun 40-millimeter shells, and lots of Gatling gun 
information, it is a flying munitions arsenal, and the parachutes are 
strategically placed around. They wear their harnesses with a quick 
snap-on. You do not care whether the chute is on your chest or back, 
you just want out of that burning airplane before it explodes in a 
massive fireball.
  He worked his way to the front of the aircraft, Eugene Fields, and 
could feel a tremendous draft. Then he saw what it was. There are no 
ejection seats. The bailout trap door behind the forward crew 
compartment where the pilot, copilot, and navigator sit, it was open. 
He looked into the flight deck and there was no pilot, no copilot, and 
hence, no navigators. They were all gone. He found his chute and he 
bailed out.
  He made it back, and yet all these family members are told that all 
the people on the flight, including all the other gunners and support 
people throughout this aircraft that had 11 crewmen on it, they all 
died in the crash. They gave Ginger her husband's dog tag. I am sorry, 
I forgot how Ginger told me she got this. I think it came from the 
Central Investigative Laboratory at Hickham Air Force Base in Hawaii. 
It is darkened beyond the polished silver, but it might take up that 
color just sitting on a shelf for 25 years. It is not bent. None of the 
letters are destroyed. Clearly, you can see blood type, positive; the 
religion; the full Air Force serial number; Davis, Charles B., no 
``junior.'' There is his dog tag. At one point that was hanging around 
Charlie's neck on a combat mission in the fight for freedom over Laos.
  They gave Ginger a story that seems incredible, that his sidearm was 
found by a very talented and skilled gentleman who ran the missing-in-
action POW office in Hanoi for 2 years, Bill Bell, that he found the 
sidearm of this Air Force officer in the War Museum in Hanoi. How did 
that 45 Colt automatic sidearm get from Laos up to the War Museum in 
Hanoi? What a painful fact for a family member to have to absorb in 
seeking to know the fate of Ginger's Charlie.
  Here is the report of casualty. It reads, at the bottom, in Remarks: 
``Under the provisions of section 555, title 37, U.S.C., and upon 
direction and delegation by the Secretary of the Air Force, the 
assistant Deputy Chief of Staff Personnel for military personnel finds 
this individual to be dead.'' He was officially reported as missing in 
action on 22 April 1970. He was continued in that status until 24 May 
1974, 4 years, 1 month later. ``The date of death is presumed to have 
occurred for the purpose of termination of pay and allowances, 
settlement of accounts, and payment of death gratuities, as stated in 
section 555, title 37, U.S.C. The remains of Colonel Davis were 
repatriated by the Laos Government, the Communist government, on 12 
November 1993, 2 years ago next week. ``Positive identification was 
confirmed by the Armed Forces Identification Review Board September 1, 
1995. Lump sum payment, $20,000,'' all these years later.
  Here are the other eight names. By the way, for a time line, Mr. 
Speaker, 22 April 1970, Lenin's birthday, by coincidence, was the first 
Earth Day. The lady who is now a billionaire, a billionaire, that is a 
thousand millionaires, several times over, because she is married to 
Ted Turner, she was out here on the West front, Jane Fonda, with her 
then husband, Tom Hayden, and I do not even think they were married 
then, and the Governor of California. No, it could not have been, 
because Ronald Reagan was still Governor. That was a few years later on 
this day, that was the first Earth Day, and a few Earth Days later when 
she had married Hayden, been to Hanoi, sat in the gun pits, she and 
Hayden, and then Gov. Jerry Brown, he served from 1974 to 1982 so it 
must have been Earth Day of 1975, they stood out there on that April 
22, never thinking at all about how many men had died on this 
particular April 22 day, and looked out across America and thought 
about how wonderful it was that the left would soon be in ascendancy in 
this country some day.

  Here are the other crewmen, all involved in this mass burial of this 
tiny little bit of bone fragments, all 10 who will supposedly be 
honored at Arlington Cemetery next Wednesday:
  William L. Brooks, colonel; Donald G. Fisher, colonel.

[[Page H 11762]]

  This is not their rank at time of shootdown, but rank that built up 
while they were missing in action.
  John C. Towle, captain; Robert N. Ireland, chief master sergeant; 
Thomas Y. Adachi, senior master sergeant; Stephen W. Harris, tech 
sergeant; Ronnie L. Hensley, chief master sergeant; and Donald M. 
Lindt, senior master sergeant.
  Now listen to this letter, Mr. Speaker, dated 7 November, a year ago, 
1994. ``For the Commander, U.S. Army, CIL,'' Central Identification 
Laboratory, not investigation, Hickman Air Force Base, HI. I have 
visited it a dozen times. ``Proposed identification of,'' and they give 
the code name for this group, ``Group remains. Background and 
acquisition. On 22 April, 1970 Major William L. Brooks and First 
Lietenant John C. Towle were pilot and co-pilot, respectively, of an 
AC-130 A in a flight of three aircraft on a night-armed reconnaisance 
over Xekong Province, Laos.'' Also manifested on board the aircraft 
were Lt. Col. Charles Davis. Here are their ranks at time of shootdown: 
Lt. Col. Charles Rowley, Maj. Donald Fisher, they were all navigators. 
That is how important these night missions were, and to navigate this 
big aircraft so close to the ground to try and destroy trucks along the 
Ho Chi Minh Trail.
  ``Master Sergeant Bob Ireland was the flight engineer, Staff Sergeant 
Eugene Fields,'' he is the one who is one survivor that came out of 
captivity, Sgt. Thomas Adachi, Stephen Harris, and A1c. Donald Lindt 
were all gunners, Gatling gunners, Bofors gunners--I do not know if 
they had the Bofors-- 
and the recoilless cannon, and Sgt. Ronnie O. Hensley was the 
illumination operator, which also made the operation severely 
dangerous, loaded with big flares. If the flares were ever hit by 
ground fire, the plane turned into a flying torch.
  The aircraft was attacking antiaircraft positions approximately 2.5 
kilometers southeast of ``ban'', which means village in Laos, ``Ban 
Tanglou, when the pilot radioed that his aircraft had been struck near 
the tail by 37 millimeter antiaircraft fire.'' That is the kind of 
antiaircraft that Fonda was sitting in the gunpit with, radar-directed 
antiaircraft fire, effective day or night. It is made in Russia, by the 
way.
  ``Shortly thereafter the aircraft crashed and burned. Sergeant Fields 
was able to successfully exit the aircraft prior to its impact, and 
subsequently was rescued.'' I stand corrected. He was not returned as a 
POW, but he was rescued, so there was a very active rescue operation. 
``In his debrief, Sergeant Fields indicated that he had seen the 
aircraft impact, but had not observed any other parachutes.'' That is 
only half of the statement. ``Sergeant Fields did indicate, however, 
that he had not seen Sergeant Adachi at his crew station as he was 
bailing out of the aircraft, and speculated that Sergeant Adachi might 
have been able to also exit the airplane.''
  What about the prior story I told? It is not here. That is why I, as 
the chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel of the Committee 
on National Security, will have to, and if he is listening, or a 
relative or friend is listening, Mr. Speaker, I hope Sergeant Fields, 
Eugene Fields, retired, will please call me so I can help these 
families get to the truth. That is what this office I am trying to get 
set up out of the authorization bill this year with the Senate, this is 
what that will prevent, this type of suffering for these families for 
years.
  ``Search and rescue attempts detected no electronic beeper signals, 
and no other parachutes or signs of survivors were observed.'' Where? 
How extensive a search? This is a combat area, with 37-
millimeter antiaircraft guns firing. ``The incident was designated 
REFNO 1600. Colonels Davis, Rowley, Brooks, Fisher; Captain Towle, 
Sergeants Ireland, Adachi, Harris, Hensley, and Lindt, all, all 
subsequently promoted, are carried in the status of dead, body not 
recovered.''

  Paragraph C: ``On 18 January a United States-Lao Peoples Democratic 
Republic joint investigation team surveyed the crash site, interviewed 
purported witnesses to the incident. One of the informants reported 
seeing dead or badly burned bodies at the crash site. Personal records 
were recovered from the surface. Some of the records subsequently could 
be correlated with the REFNO-16 aircraft and the site was recommended 
for recovery.
  ``In March of 1993 a joint task force full accounting,'' that is the 
JTFFA, ``archival research team reported finding material relating to 
the incident in the Central Armed Forces Museum in Hanoi, Vietnam.''
  Again, this proves again, for the millionth time, Mr. Speaker, that 
North Vietnam, Hanoi, the Communist government, still in power, had 
access to all of the crash sites along the Ho Chi Minh trail, including 
all of those inside Laos. President Nixon was absolutely wrong when, 
after the last freedom flight left Hanoi on March 27, 1973, and he 
said, ``All the prisoners from Laos are home,'' that was not a fact. My 
best friend, David Hrdlicka, was there; CIA civilian Eugene D. Brown 
was there; Charlie Shelton, who has been shot down, a father of five, 
his wife was a friend of mine until she tragically died, Marian 
Shelton, he was shot down on his 33d birthday, 29 April, 1965. My pal, 
Dave Hrdlicka, was shot down 18 May of 1965.
  They were known to be prisoners in Laos right up through this period 
when Nixon tragically said they were all accounted for, and we have all 
the memos now that they were not accounted for. All those people in the 
Nixon administration, including some who went to jail for other lying, 
they knew they had a hot potato here and they were trying to just sweep 
it all away; get rid of the war, so that he could continue on in his 
second term without a hostage crisis on his hands.
  So this material turns up in the Central Armed Forces Museum in 
Hanoi, which I visited, and with the gentleman from California, Mr. 
David Dreier, reached through one of the cases and rolled tightly an 
American flag so we would not have to look at the Stars and Stripes 
upside down, in a museum case, in a Communist museum, where they think 
they won a war, where they never won a battle and never had air or 
naval supremacy, and just bled off their teenaged kids down to 12 and 
13 years of age against McNamara's designed firepower, without any plan 
for victory. I have been in that museum, and we took pictures of some 
material that had yet to be turned over to us, proving that there were 
last known alive cases not resolved.
  ``Among the items was a receipt for two .38-caliber revolvers.'' I 
stand corrected again. I told the family members I would make some 
mistakes, because I have not had a chance to go over these in detail an 
hour ago. They were not .45's, they were Smith and Wesson revolvers, 
.38 caliber, purportedly from a C-130 aircraft shot down by troops, 
``Station 35, group 559.''
  That is North Vietnamese people inside a nation that was then a 
member of the U.N. Laos and Cambodia were members of the U.N. from the 
early 1960's, late 1950's, and here was a Communist country that was 
not a member of the U.N. violating their sovereignty.
  ``Group 559,'' Hanoi, Communist union, ``in Truongson Province.''

                              {time}  1845

  A geographic reference to the Ho Chi Minh Trail region in southern 
Laos. One of the serial numbers listed on the receipt correlates to a 
revolver issued to Colonel Fisher. Again, I stand corrected, another 
one of the four navigators, not Charlie Davis, as I had said.
  Paragraph E: On September 1, 1993, the Vietnamese Government provided 
JTFFA with the record of enemy aircraft shot down from 1965 to 1975, 
which indicates that nine pilots died in the shootdown of an AC-130 
that closely matches the date, it was just off 1 day.
  In October 1993, this is paragraph F, the recovery team begins the 
excavation. Identification tags for Colonel Brooks, Davis, Rowley, 
Sergeants Ireland, Hensley, and Adachi, the individual staff Sergeant 
Fields thought may have exited the aircraft, and Sergeant Lindt, were 
recovered from among thousands of pieces of AC-130 aircraft wreckage.
  In addition, approximately 1,400 bone fragments and human teeth were 
recovered; 1,400 sounds like a lot, but when you put them all together, 
they are so tiny, I repeat, you could hold them in two hands in a small 
sack. That is what will be buried next Wednesday at Arlington.

[[Page H 11763]]

  Paragraph G: The skeletal and dental remains were escorted by a 
representative of the recovery team to the SIL at Hickam on November 
15, 1993, where they were assigned a processing number, it gives the 
number.
  Section 2, summary of findings. JTFFA analysts concluded the recovery 
site was the location of a nonsurvivable crash of an AC-130. Proper 
assembly serial number and identification media found the recovery 
links. They go through the anthropological analysis, indicates that the 
skeletal remains consist of human cranial, post cranial bones of at 
least one male adult who suffered parimortem trauma consistent with an 
air crash and subsequent fire. It talks about the fragmentation and 
charring of other remains, and then it gives some dental remains 
consisting of four intact, unrestored human teeth, and it describes 
them and their location in the jaw, but they could not link them up 
with any one person.
  While consistent with one or maybe more of the individuals 
associated, none of the teeth could be individually associated. The 
size and condition of the remains precludes identification through the 
use of metroclondrial DNA. Given the current state of that technology, 
the families want more reassurance in that area, and then here is the 
recommendation, section 3.
  It is not currently possible to positively associate the skeletal or 
dental remains with this crash with any specific individual. However, 
based on wreckage analysis that indicates the crash site was that of 
the AC-130 involved.
  It goes on to say that including the identification tag for the one 
individual that the Staff Sergeant Fields speculated may have 
successfully exited the aircraft, and here is our problem, Mr. Speaker. 
Did Sergeant Fields, who feels under threat, tell family members that 
he could see none of the people on the flight deck in the aircraft as 
he was exiting?
  A demonstrable chain of custody, key words in any missing person, 
chain of custody for both the remains and the personal effects and the 
laboratory analysis, which indicate that the recovered remains are for 
more than one individual who suffered trauma, it is reasonable to 
assume that the skeletal and dental fragments designated are the only 
remains recoverable, and on that they list all of the people, and this 
has led us to this funeral ceremony coming up.

  Now, look at these pieces of evidence that the families have given to 
me. Here is finally an unclassified former secret document that I was 
given tonight, and here is a narrative. This, I believe, is of one of 
the F-4 pilots, we will find out. The two accompanying aircraft were 
Air Force fighters, two men each. PAC Air Force Major Webber advises 
the following: AC-130, let me get a date on this. No, it is blocked 
out. Maybe it is somewhere else on here.
  AC-130, cross sign Ablib, 1954 that is the year it was manufactured, 
1625, 16 special operations squadron out of Udorn, one of our five 
major air bases in Thailand. It says that Ablib reported he had been 
hit and was going to RTB, recovery, probably in the Confenon. A report 
came from an escort aircraft, cross sign Killer II that the crew was 
bailing out. Shortly after that beepers and voice contact, beepers and 
voice contact, totally contradicting the final official reports.
  I cannot see because of blacked out ink what this says. With at least 
1 of the 13 crew members on board. Was that Sergeant Fields? Killer II 
advised the crew members to dig in for the night. Voice contact was 
made with number 12 man who reported he has burns. Did Sgt. Eugene 
Fields have burns? This is not a Surprise Package aircraft. Code 
unknown to this former Air Force officer.
  This AC-130 was put in as a substitute for Surprise Package because 
of maintenance on Surprise Package, probably another backup aircraft of 
that type. The date on this, when somebody looked at it, is December 
27, 1973, a year-and-a-half after the incident. This is out of 
Saravane, Laos, and I cannot find a date on here. It says date, time, 
location. Date, 21. This is April 21, and the time is 1359 eastern. So 
this is the date of the report. I am sorry, the report is the 23d of 
the next day.
  Now, there is another piece of evidence, and I will go over all of 
this with the families as soon a my special order is finished.
  This is a forensic anthropology report. With all of the aging 
criteria taken into consideration, a rough age range of 25 to 40 years 
is suggested for all of the remains.
  Let me just close with the one line out of this. They give a race 
assessment, Mr. Speaker, a stature assessment, a trauma assessment, and 
conclusions, and it is still so vague that the families are asking 
before there is a funeral next Wednesday, could they not put it off to 
all of the family members, and they work together as a group now, to 
get their questions answered through the full cooperation of the 
Pentagon and the Missing In Action Office over there, and all have a 
chance to talk to Sergeant Fields so that they could go to a funeral 
ceremony like this, so that I could go to it with them, and enjoy, 
memorialize the sacrifice of this great Air Force crew.
  Mr. Speaker, I will return to this issue when we come back next week.
  Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the aforementioned articles.

              [From the Wall Street Journal, Aug. 3, 1995]

                     How North Vietnam Won the War

       What did the North Vietnamese leadership think of the 
     American antiwar movement? What was the purpose of the Tet 
     Offensive? How could the U.S. have been more successful in 
     fighting the Vietnam War? Bui Tin, a former colonel in the 
     North Vietnamese army, answers these questions in the 
     following excerpts from an interview conducted by Stephen 
     Young, a Minnesota attorney and human-rights activist. Bui 
     Tin, who served on the general staff of North Vietnam's army, 
     received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on 
     April 30, 1975. He later became editor of the People's Daily, 
     the official newspaper of Vietnam. He now lives in Paris, 
     where he immigrated after becoming disillusioned with the 
     fruits of Vietnamese communism!!
       Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?
       Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will 
     to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said, ``We don't need to 
     win military victories, we only need to hit them until they 
     give up and get out.''
       Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's 
     victory?
       A: It was essential to our strategy. Support for the war 
     from our rear was completely secure while the American rear 
     was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to 
     world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of 
     the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like 
     Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and 
     ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the 
     face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, 
     wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference 
     that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that 
     she would struggle along with us.
       Q: Did the Politburo pay attention to these visits?
       A: Keenly.
       Q: Why?
       A: Those people represented the conscience of America. The 
     conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, 
     and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost 
     because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost 
     the ability to mobilize a will to win.
       Q: How could the Americans have won the war?
       A: Cut the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos. If Johnson had 
     granted [Gen. William] Westmoreland's requests to enter Laos 
     and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the 
     war.!!
       Q: Anything else?
       A: Train South Vietnam's generals. The junior South 
     Vietnamese officers were good, competent and courageous, but 
     the commanding general officers were inept.
       Q: Did Hanoi expect that the National Liberation Front 
     would win power in South Vietnam?
       A: No. Gen. [Vo Nguyen] Giap [commander of the North 
     Vietnamese army] believed that guerrilla warfare was 
     important but not sufficient for victory. Regular military 
     divisions with artillery and armor would be needed. The 
     Chinese believed in fighting only with guerrillas, but we had 
     a different approach. The Chinese were reluctant to help us. 
     Soviet aid made the war possible. Le Duan [secretary general 
     of the Vietnamese Communist Party] once told Mao Tse-tung 
     that if you help us, we are sure to win; if you don't we will 
     still win, but we will have to sacrifice one or two million 
     more soldiers to do so.
       Q. Was the National Liberation Front an independent 
     political movement of South Vietnamese?
       A. No. It was set up by our Communist Party to implement a 
     decision of the Third Party Congress of September 1960. We 
     always said there was only one army in the war to liberate 
     the South and unify the nation. At all times there was only 
     one party commissar in command of the South.

[[Page H 11764]]

       Q. Why was the Ho Chi Minh trail so important?
       A. It was the only way to bring sufficient military power 
     to bear on the fighting in the South. Building and 
     maintaining the trail was a huge effort, involving tens of 
     thousands of soldiers, drivers, repair teams, medical 
     stations, communication units.
       Q. What of American bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail?
       A. Not very effective. Our operations were never 
     compromised by attacks on the trail. At times, accurate B-52 
     strikes would cause real damage, but we put so much in at the 
     top of the trail that enough men and weapons to prolong the 
     war always came out the bottom. Bombing by smaller planes 
     rarely hit significant targets.
       Q. What of American bombing of North Vietnam?
       A. If all the bombing had been concentrated at one time, it 
     would have hurt our efforts. But the bombing was expanded in 
     slow stages under Johnson and it didn't worry us. We had 
     plenty of time to prepare alternative routes and facilities. 
     We always had stockpiles of rice ready to feed the people for 
     months if a harvest were damaged. The Soviets bought rice 
     from Thailand for us.
       Q. What was the purpose of the 1968 Tet Offensive?
       A. To relieve the pressure Gen. Westmoreland was putting on 
     us in late 1966 and 1967 and to weaken American resolve 
     during a presidential election year.
       Q. What about Gen. Westmoreland's strategy and tactics 
     caused you concern?
       A. Our senior commander in the South, Gen. Nguyen Chi 
     Thanh, knew that we were losing base areas, control of the 
     rural population and that his main forces were being pushed 
     out to the borders of South Vietnam. He also worried that 
     Westmoreland might receive permission to enter Laos and cut 
     the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
       In January 1967, after discussions with Le Duan, Gen. Thanh 
     proposed the Tet Offensive. Thanh was the senior member of 
     the Politburo in South Vietnam. He supervised 
     the entire war effort. Thanh's struggle philosophy was that 
     ``America is wealthy but not resolute,'' and ``squeeze tight 
     to the American chest and attack.'' He was invited up to 
     Hanoi for further discussions. He went on commercial fights 
     with a false passport from Cambodia to Hong Kong and then to 
     Hanoi. Only in July was his plan adopted by the leadership. 
     Then Johnson had rejected Westmoreland's request for 200,000 
     more troops. We realized that America had made its maximum 
     military commitment to the war. Vietnam was not sufficiently 
     important for the United States to call up its reserves. We 
     had stretched American power to a breaking point. When more 
     frustration set in, all the Americans could do would be to 
     withdraw; they had no more troops to send over. Wow!
       Tet was designed to influence American public opinion. We 
     would attack poorly defended parts of South Vietnam cities 
     during a holiday and a truce when few South Vietnamese troops 
     would be on duty. Before the main attack we would entice 
     American units to advance close to the borders, away from the 
     cities. By attacking all South Vietnam's major cities, we 
     would spread out our forces and neutralize the impact of 
     American firepower. Attacking on a broad front, we would lose 
     some battles but win others. We used local forces nearby each 
     target for frustrate discovery of our plans. Small teams, 
     like the one which attacked the U.S. Embassy in Saigon would 
     be sufficient. It was a guerrilla strategy of hit-and-run 
     raids.
       Q: What about the results?
       A: Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise. Giap 
     later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though we 
     had gained the planned political advantages when Johnson 
     agreed to negotiate and did not run for re-election. The 
     second and third waves in May and September were, in 
     retrospect, mistakes. Our forces in the South were nearly 
     wiped out by all the fighting in 1968. It took us until 1971 
     to re-establish our presence, but we had to use North 
     Vietnamese troops as local guerrillas. If the American forces 
     had not begun to withdraw under Nixon in 1969, they could 
     have punished us severely. We suffered badly in 1969 and 1970 
     as it was.
       Q: What of Nixon?
       A: Well, when Nixon stepped down because of Watergate we 
     knew we would win Pham Van Dong [prime minister of North 
     Vietnam] said of Gerald Ford, the new president, ``he's the 
     weakest president in U.S. history; the people didn't elect 
     him; even if you gave him candy, he doesn't dare to intervene 
     in Vietnam again.'' We tested Ford's resolve by attacking 
     Phuoc Long in January 1975. When Ford kept American B-52's in 
     their hangers, our leadership decided on a big offensive 
     against South Vietnam.
       Q: What else?
       A: We had the impression that American commanders had their 
     hands tied by political factors. Your generals could never 
     deploy a maximum force for greatest military effect.
                                                                    ____


               [From the Washington Post, Oct. 29, 1995]

                     22 Questions For Colin Powell

                          (By George F. Will)

       Colin Powell, his literary life completed, has gone to 
     earth with advisers to ponder a political life. These 
     advisers, for whom he is a ticket to the circus and who 
     therefore will urge him to run, should quickly help to equip 
     him with answers to questions like:
       During Nelson Rockefeller's 14 years as New York's 
     governor, the top income tax rate more than doubled and state 
     and local taxes more than tripled. Not surprisingly, the 
     growth of private-sector jobs was four times faster in the 
     nation as a whole than in New York, which experienced a 1,000 
     percent increase in welfare spending. The state had fewer 
     than 400,000 welfare recipients when Rockefeller became 
     governor but had 1.4 million when he left. You call yourself 
     a ``Rockefeller Republican.'' Why?
       You say you are in the ``sensible center.'' Does that mean 
     people to the right of center are not sensible?
       Your friend Bob Woodward, the reporter writes that after 
     you watched the Conservative Political Action Conference 
     convention on C-SPAN you said to a friend, ``Can you imagine 
     me standing up and talking to these people. What is it about 
     ``these people'' that makes talking to them hard for you to 
     imagine?
       Reviewing your book in the New Republic, Nicholas Lemann 
     notes that in 600 pages you do not ``display the tiniest hint 
     of wanting fundamentally to shake up the political system, or 
     any system.'' Are you fundamentally content with the status 
     quo?
       Which parts of the Contract With America do you consider 
     ``a little too hard, a little too harsh, a little too 
     unkind''?
       You call yourself ``a fiscal conservative with a social 
     conscience.'' Who else would you describe that way? How would 
     your social conscience express itself in fiscally 
     conservative politics?
       Talking with students before a San Antonio speech you said, 
     in the context of a question about the balanced-budget 
     amendment, ``I hate fooling with the Constitution.'' Does 
     that mean you oppose the amendment?
       In a Jan. 31 story about one of your public appearances, 
     the New York Times reported that your ``ideas sometimes seem 
     so inclusive as to be contradictory,'' giving as an example 
     the fact that ``while discussing `the need to recreate the 
     American family,' he said, gesturing to a person in the 
     audience who had criticized the military's policy on 
     admitting homosexuals, `It doesn't even have to be a two-
     gender family.' '' Could you elaborate?
       You opposed lifting the ban on gays in the military, citing 
     the military's unique nature and mission. However, in 41 
     states it is legal to fire a person because of his or her 
     sexual orientation. Should it be? If not, should there be a 
     federal law making discrimination regarding sexual 
     orientation akin to racial discrimination in hiring and 
     housing?
       Who lied, Anita Hill or Clarence Thomas? Who more closely 
     resembles your idea of the ideal Supreme Court justice, 
     Thomas or Earl Warren? Should Robert Bork have been 
     confirmed?
       You favor some forms of affirmative action. What about the 
     federal program of racial set-asides for minority ownership 
     of television and radio stations, under which you and some 
     partners acquired a Buffalo television station? To Henry 
     Louis Gates Jr., who was writing about you for the New 
     Yorker, you said, ``But it's black owned. If you got a bunch 
     of white guys with a brother fronting for them, get rid of 
     it. That doesn't serve any purpose for us.'' What public 
     purpose is served by government granting to affluent 
     investors racial entitlements to communications media?
       As president, would your budget include money for public 
     television and the arts and humanities endowments?
       You object to the use the Bush campaign made of Willie 
     Horton in the 1988 campaign. Do you know who first raised the 
     issue of Horton and the Massachusetts furlough program? 
     (Hint: He raised it during the Democrats' New York primary 
     and is now vice president.) What exactly was objectionable 
     about citing Horton and his rape victim as a consequence of 
     that prisoner-release program?
       After the O.J. Simpson verdict you said, it is a racist 
     society. All you have to do is listen to Mark Fuhrman.'' Does 
     that mean most, or a great many, Americans resemble Fuhrman. 
     Or that racism is the principal impediment to African 
     American advances? Prof. Glenn Loury of Boston University, a 
     leading African American intellectual, has said that if with 
     a magic wand you changed the color of the skin, of the people 
     on Chicago's south side or in south-central Los Angeles you 
     would not appreciably change their life prospects. Do you 
     disagree?
       There, Twenty-two questions. Twenty-two more, on request.
                                                                    ____


                 Twenty-Two Questions for Colin Powell

       1. General, do you oppose the use of U.S. ground troops in 
     Bosnia?
       2. Should the debt ceiling be raised without a specific 
     plan to balance the federal budget?
       3. Should the $500 child-tax credit be a part of this 
     year's budgetary plans to help ease the financial pressures 
     on the American family?
       4. Should the Consumer Price Index be lowered in order to 
     reduce payments to federal beneficiaries?
       5. Should agricultural policy be fundamentally changed in 
     order to adhere more to free market principles?
       6. Should capital gains tax cuts be made?
       7. Should U.S. troops ever be placed under foreign/U.N. 
     command officers and NCOs and if yes, should Congress place 
     strict limits on such command and control arrangements?
       8. Should women be allowed into combat? Can they opt out on 
     eve of deployment where 

[[Page H 11765]]

     raping and torture of POWs is common practice?
       9. Why didn't you resign as Chairman of the JCS in protest 
     over President Clinton's policy of lifting the ban against 
     homosexuals in the military or the equally offensive 
     cancellation of the regularly scheduled pay raise for active 
     duty soldiers?
       10. After supporting the Bush Base Force Plan, why did you 
     then support the Clinton Bottom-Up Review defense plan which, 
     by some accounts, is under funded by as much as $150 billion?
       11. What would you do with regards to the growing threat of 
     ballistic missiles including specific programs such as Navy 
     upper-tier and the 24 year old ABM Treaty with the melted 
     down Evil Empire?
       12. Should foreign aid to the former Soviet Union 
     (including our DoD funding) be conditioned to ensure Russia 
     actually dismantles offensive nuclear, biological, and 
     chemical weapons programs?
       13. Should dual-purpose technology be transferred to 
     communist China while China proceeds with dramatic military 
     buildup?
       14. Should human rights and democratic principles be 
     heavily considered in granting Most-Favored-Nation trading 
     status to totalitarian nations like China or Vietnam? Should 
     we keep sanctions against Fidel Castro's oppressive regime?
       15. Should the United States have diplomatically recognized 
     Vietnam while questions remain unanswered by the communists 
     in Vietnam about what they know concerning Americans still 
     listed as POW/MIA, such as extensive Politburo and Central 
     Committee records?
       16. Should Clinton have been allowed to financially bail-
     out Mexico without congressional approval or oversight?
       17. Should the nations of Poland, Hungary, the Czech and 
     Solvak Republics be allowed into NATO? If so when? Why not 
     Poland in 1996?
       18. Should Chile be allowed to join as a member of NAFTA?
       19. Should partial-birth abortions be outlawed? And, except 
     for life-of-the-mother, 
     what about banning all abortions in military facilities?
       20. Should groups that receive federal money be allowed to 
     lobby Congress for further funding, i.e. the AARP?
       21. How should the U.S. better protect its sovereign 
     borders to illegal immigration and enforce U.S. laws?
       22. Should Hillary Clinton be subpoenaed to testify in 
     regard to her phone conversations with Maggie Williams and 
     Susan Thomases the morning of July 22, 1993, the day that 
     Bernard Nussbaum blocked investigators from properly 
     searching Vince Foster's office?
       P.S. Can you tap your friends in the National Security 
     Community for believable cost figures on Haiti and Bosnia 
     through September 30, 1995?

                          ____________________