James R. Schlesinger, defense secretary and CIA chief during the Nixon administration, said Monday the Pentagon knew that American airmen were alive in Laos at the end of the Vietnam War and were not returned.
Schlesinger told the Senate Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs that downed airmen were contacted on the ground in Laos by U.S. forces. But during peace negotiations with North Vietnam, U.S. officials were given only a list of 10 prisoners in Laos."It is evident that the Laotians gave no true accounting of the Americans who had been taken in Laos," Schlesinger said.
Asked directly if the United States left men behind, Schlesinger said, "As of now, I can come to no other conclusion. That does not mean that there are any alive today."
Schlesinger speculated that some may have been summarily executed. And the committee chairman, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said others may have been killed in combat on the ground or simply died of exposure in the jungle.
The issue of prisoners in Laos was complicated because the CIA was directing a secret war against communist insurgents and it was never clear whether negotiations with the North Vietnamese on POWs would lead to the release of Americans held by Laotian guerrillas.
Schlesinger was CIA director in 1973 and became defense secretary that summer shortly after the Paris peace accords with North Vietnam were announced.
Secret documents secured by the committee show that Nixon considered everything from paying North Vietnam reparations to launching more air strikes as a way to bring home missing Americans.
Eventually, the administration simply advanced the argument that all of those listed as missing were dead.
Going into Monday's session, Kerry said the hearing was not a search for culpability on the part of Nixon administration officials.
"It's a mistake to do that 20 years later. We just have to understand how did we get here."