Lifting the Embargo Is a Tragic Mistake : Vietnam: Ending sanctions without real results on MIAs makes us totally reliant on Hanoi’s ‘goodwill.’

The President’s announcement Thursday that he is lifting the trade embargo on Vietnam and establishing a political liaison office in Hanoi was done in the name of the prisoner-of-war, missing-in-action issue, but was, in reality, an attempt to reconcile a self-created dilemma of pledging principle to the issue with “a wink and a nod.”

At the heart of this dilemma is Hanoi’s continuing failure to cooperate fully with U.S. POW / MIA investigators.

Clinton has made several strong statements on U.S. policy toward Vietnam. The most important is a requirement that Hanoi make tangible progress in accounting for missing Americans before the Administration moves forward on the trade embargo. Last summer, the President outlined four criteria for judging the seriousness of Vietnam’s cooperation. These included repatriation of remains, provision of archival materials related to missing Americans, resolution of last-known-alive discrepancy cases and cooperation on resolving Laotian POW / MIA cases. No objective and informed observer can honestly attest that any of these criteria have been met.

Administration officials gave the Vietnamese government a list of 84 cases that they expected help on before they could recommend lifting the trade embargo. In each, U.S. officials believe that persuasive evidence exists that Hanoi knows what happened to the men. Accounting for these Americans would provide a concrete demonstration of Vietnam’s willingness to address some of the President’s stated concerns. It would also serve as a promissory note by the Vietnamese to proceed with the hundreds of cases beyond the 84 that they could easily resolve. Recent Administration statements suggest that Vietnam has made measurable progress in each of the specific areas.

Despite the Administration’s assertions, Hanoi’s record of stonewalling and cynical manipulation for more than 20 years cannot be ignored. It is demonstrated in the thousands of formerly classified documents on file at the National Archives. One finds in these files that the cooperation forced on the Vietnamese in recent years-- including their handing over internal documents and photographs--instead of clearing the record, demonstrates persuasively that they are still holding back evidence on hundreds more Americans.

The Vietnamese went to great lengths to keep track of enemy personnel who came under their control, alive or dead. All units had been instructed on procedures to follow in the event they killed or captured an American--including immediate notification to higher headquarters.

At aircraft crash sites, for example, teams carefully collected any artifacts. Items were catalogued, photographed and inspected for intelligence value. In some instances, Russian and Chinese intelligence specialists were also allowed access to the sites. Recovered materials were sent to regional storage sites or to Hanoi. Most of this material is still being held.

Dead Americans were similarly photographed and catalogued. Remains were often buried immediately at crash sites and locations of the graves recorded. A year or more later, teams recovered the remains, preserved them as they did for their own and reburied or stored them above ground in designated locations.

Throughout this process, detailed records were kept. Although over the years Hanoi has returned some of these remains, U.S. intelligence estimates that the Vietnamese could readily provide hundreds more. Cooperation is more than just a humanitarian gesture on Vietnam’s part; it is a crucial step in resolving the question of Americans who may still be in Indochina--the discrepancy cases. Unless U.S. officials can document more accurately who died, they cannot determine who may have survived but did not return.

Today, Vietnamese officials continue to hold back key documents they know are crucial to the accounting process, while providing a large volume of inconsequential materials to create the impression of cooperation and progress. Now the same officials, using words strikingly similar to those they have used for two decades, are again claiming that they hold no more American remains. As with the documents, these denials ring hollow. Vietnamese records and photographs provided since 1992 back up previous intelligence and diplomatic admissions that they continue to hold hundreds of remains, or can provide persuasive explanations why some remains may not be available.

Some in the Administration, apparently in an attempt to demonstrate progress, cite the repatriation of 67 individual remains this year as the third-highest since the end of the war. What they are not saying is that for the most part, these are fragmentary remains turned over by villagers and fragments from crash sites, some of which show previous excavation activity by Vietnam. Historically, only 10% to 20% of such remains are American. And it is a new process of counting.

To the best of our knowledge, Vietnam has not provided a single set of remains from the list of 84 MIAs given to them months ago. Until they do, it is not credible to assert that the President’s criteria on the repatriation of remains has been met.

While the Vietnamese have provided more than 21,000 documents, photos and artifacts since 1992, only 1% has pertained to missing Americans. The bulk of the information is on Americans returned from captivity in 1973 or previously accounted for during the war or subsequent repatriation. We should of course give Hanoi credit for the materials provided thus far, but volume can never substitute for quality.

On Laos, Vietnamese documents and information also hold the key, and they have not yet been provided.

In one year, the Clinton Administration has moved further and faster toward meeting Vietnam’s stated humanitarian, economic and political objectives and needs, provided more subsidies to Vietnamese officials for POW / MIA activities and given them more public praise on this issue than any preceding administration. Unfortunately, it has not persuaded Hanoi to share with us the vital information we know they still hold.

At the same time they were praising the Vietnamese, U.S. officials removed the National League of Families from the interagency process and abolished the POW / MIA interagency group. They have refused to provide the league with timely reports on joint activities or evaluations, even unclassified ones. More important, the Administration also eliminated league participation in negotiations in Hanoi. League participation in interagency deliberations was vitally important because of its members’ expertise, and their interaction with the Vietnamese was crucial in demonstrating our seriousness and solidarity in negotiations.

We believe that lifting the trade embargo and normalizing relations with Vietnam would be in the U.S. and Asian regional interest, and might have helped provide additional information on the POW / MIA issue, if serious negotiations had followed the President’s criteria. But lifting the trade embargo now without achieving real results is a tragic mistake. It will dash the hopes of the families who have been waiting so long for answers, place the Administration in the position of relying solely on Hanoi’s “goodwill” and risk eroding further the American peoples’ trust in government. What we need from our officials now is honesty, candor and negotiations, not hype.

The success or failure of Clinton’s decision will be easy to measure, based on the response from Hanoi on the President’s own POW / MIA criteria.