Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
By JOHN DIAMOND
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Navy Lt. John Kerry knew he had no business steering his Mekong River patrol boat across the border into Cambodia, but orders were orders.
A quarter-century later, Sen. John Kerry says newly declassified documents have convinced him fellow servicemen captured on such trips were left behind at war's end.
Kerry, D-Mass., announced this week at hearings of the Senate Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs he chairs that as many as 133 U.S. servicemen may have been left behind, either as unrecorded fatalities or prisoners of war, when the Vietnam War ended in 1973.
This conclusion that the government failed to account for all its soldiers, sailors and fliers did not come easily for the 48-year-old senator. Through two decades of political activism since he returned from Vietnam, first as an opponent of the war, then as a lawmaker, Kerry has remained studiously neutral
on the POW-MIA question.
Veterans groups and researchers of varying credibility raised allegations and published photographs suggesting that Americans might still be languishing in Southeast Asian stalags. Bereaved family members pleaded with lawmakers to rescue loved ones they were convinced were still alive. Kerry said only that
there was evidence that needed to be explored.
"I've always said there's evidence. But I'm not going to draw any conclusions about this until we do a sound, sensible job," Kerry said in an interview. "This conclusion was drawn from documents which no one saw 10 years ago."
But for Kerry, who spent six violent months commanding a patrol boat on the Mekong River, there's always been a ring of truth to allegations of abandoned Americans. By Christmas 1968, part of Kerry's patrol extended across the border of South Vietnam into Cambodia.
"We were told, `Just go up there and do your patrol. Everybody was over there (in Cambodia). Nobody thought twice about it," Kerry said. One of the missions, which Kerry, at the time, was ordered not to discuss, involved taking CIA operatives into Cambodia to search for enemy enclaves.
"I can remember wondering, `If you're going to go, what happens to you,"' Kerry said.
Kerry was wounded three times, received three Purple Hearts, the Silver Star and the Bronze Star. After his Navy tour ended in 1969, Kerry co-founded Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
Declassified documents released at the hearings show that the government altered its intelligence information to hide the fate of U.S. pilots and soldiers downed in secret missions to Cambodia and Laos during the war. The concealment extended to listing a casualty as "killed in action, body not recovered," when, in fact, the remains had been found.
"What I'm saying is that when the government announced all the POWs are home and when the government said the MIAs are dead, that was not true," Kerry said. "There was a list of people that we had evidence of being captives whom we should have accounted for then, not 20 years later."
Some of the missions were routine cross-border actions, not sanctioned as part of the official U.S. war effort. Others were "black ops," secret operations far into Laotian and Cambodian territory.
Historian Stanley Karnow, author of "Vietnam: A History," said in a telephone interview that secret ground and air raids into Laos and Cambodia continued throughout the Vietnam War in violation of treaties. Cambodian air raids intensified under President Nixon beginning in 1969, leading up to the U.S. invasion of Cambodia in April 1970, Karnow said.
The military's falsification of records created a lasting problem in sorting out the killed, captured and unknown.
"The lists are so screwed up frankly that it's very hard to patch it together," Kerry said.
Kerry emphasizes that he has no evidence that any U.S. serviceman remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia. Nor does he speak of any Rambo-like rescue mission. Rather, the next step is a methodical and continuing unfolding of the facts.
"It's not a good story but it's important that we understand it and it's important that we put the conspiracy theories behind us if we can," Kerry said. "But we're not there yet."
