Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., says his trip to Vietnam bolstered his belief that the Pentagon didn't properly investigate whether any American servicemen were left behind when the war ended.
Smith, a longtime critic of Pentagon assertions that there is no proof that American prisoners of war were abandoned in Vietnam, said Tuesday he visited three camp sites the Defense Intelligence Agency has said did not exist.Two congressional subcommittees Wednesday take up the issue and its effect on relations with Vietnam. The Clinton administration has removed objections to international loans for Vietnam, but is seeking more progress on the issue of Americans missing in action before it ends the trade embargo and normalizes relations with Hanoi.
Smith said his visits to the three sites during Congress' July 4 recess corroborated information supplied by men who claimed to have seen American POWs after the war. The Defense Intelligence Agency denied the camps existed and questioned the credibility of the sources, Smith noted.
One of those sources, former Marine and POW Robert Garwood, accompanied Smith to Vietnam and led him to buildings on a lake where Garwood, in previous testimony, said he had seen Americans after the war.
Garwood stayed in Vietnam after the war - the Vietnamese say as a virtual free man. Garwood returned to the United States in 1979 and was convicted in a 1981 court-martial of collaborating with the enemy.
Smith said it was "preposterous" that a single senator could locate the lakeside camp that the Defense Intelligence Agency failed to find with aerial photographs and several investigations.
The Pentagon refused comment at this time.