A former KGB agent denied Monday that he questioned American prisoners of war in Vietnam several years after the Vietnam War ended.
The former agent, Oleg Nechiporenko, said in an interview on NBC's "Today" show that he only interviewed a single American in 1973, the year the North Vietnamese released American POWs.Nechiporenko was interviewed sitting next to Oleg Kalugin.
Kalugin, a former KGB major general, said last week that at least three American prisoners were questioned by Soviet agents in Vietnam in 1978. He said Nechiporenko was the source for his information.
There have been persistent reports that some of the 2,273 Americans missing in the Vietnam War were kept as prisoners after the war. But U.S. officials say no one has produced any proof that any Americans were not released when the North Vietnamese sent 591 POWs home in 1973.
Kalugin's claim that two CIA agents and an Air Force officer were interrogated by the KGB after the war was disputed by the Russian foreign intelligence service and the CIA last week.
The CIA said Friday that one of its agents captured in Vietnam may have been questioned by a KGB officer but that the agent was released with other Americans in 1973. A second CIA agent captured in April 1975 and released the following October was not interrogated by the KGB, the agency said.
U.S. military involvement in the war ended in 1973, but the South Vietnamese continued to fight the communists until Saigon fell in April 1975.
The news agency Tass quoted a spokeswoman for the Russian foreign intelligence service as saying Friday that KGB files indicated an American POW suspected of being a CIA agent was contacted once in Vietnam in 1973. There are not other indications in the files of Americans being questioned by Soviet officials in Vietnam, the spokeswoman said.
Asked Monday if he spoke to any Americans in Vietnam, Nechiporenko said: "Yes. Not Americans, but one American. One American only, in '73."
When asked if he spoke to any Americans after that, he said, "No."
Kalugin said that when he met with Nechiporenko two or three months ago, the former agent said he had met with American prisoners.
"And when I said, `One?', he said, `No, there were several,' " Kalugin said. He said Nechiporenko would not say how many but that he "mentioned an Air Force pilot."