FITTS, RICHARD ALLAN
Remains Returned - ID Announced 03 January 1990
Name: Richard Allan Fitts
Rank/Branch: E5/US Army Special Forces
Unit: Command & Control North, MACV-SOG, 5th Special Forces Group
Date of Birth: 23 February 1946 (Weymouth MA)
Home City of Record: Abington MA
Date of Loss: 30 November 1968
Country of Loss: Laos
Loss Coordinates: 163852N 1062514E (XD515410)
Status (in 1973): Missing In Action
Category: 4
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: CH34
Refno: 1333
Other Personnel In Incident: Gary R. LaBohn; Michael H. Mein; Raymond
Stacks; Samuel K. Toomey; Klaus Scholz; Arthur E. Bader (all missing)
Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 01 April 1990 with the assistance
of one or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency
sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources,
interviews. Updated by the P.O.W. NETWORK 1998.
REMARKS:
SYNOPSIS: SSgt Richard A. Fitts was born on February 23, 1946 in Weymouth,
Massachussetts. He entered the Army in January,1966. In Vietnam, Fitts was
part of Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observation Group
(MACV-SOG) which was a joint service high command unconventional warfare
task force engaged in highly classified operations throughout Southeast
Asia. The 5th Special Forces channeled personnel into MACV-SOG (though it
was not a Special Forces group) through Special Operations Augmentation
(SOA) which provided their "cover" while under secret orders to MACV-SOG.
These teams performed deep penetration missions of strategic reconnaissance
and interdiction missions in Laos and Cambodia which were called, depending
on the country and time frame, "Shining Brass" or "Prairie Fire" missions.
On November 30, 1968, Sgt. Richard A. Fitts, Sgt. Arthur E. Bader, Cpl. Gary
R. LaBohn, SSgt. Klaus D. Scholz, Maj. Samuel K. Toomey, Cpl. Michael H.
Mein, 1Lt. Raymond C. Stacks were passengers aboard a Vietnamese Air Force
CH34 helicopter (serial #14-4653) as their team was being transported to
their reconnaissance mission area in Laos. Details of their mission was
classified at that time, and remains classified in early 1990. However,
information received from some of the family members indicates that the
mission was related to disarming an enemy munitions store. This same account
includes the informaton that Maj. Toomey was a chemical warfare expert.
Other information states that he was a communications officer. Toomey's
family identified his job as one that he could not talk about, but that he
was an "Advisor to the Special Forces."
The helicopter was flying at 4,000 feet when it was struck by 37mm
anti-aircraft fire, went into a spin, crashed in a mass of flames and
exploded. The helicopter crashed about 10 miles northwest of Khe Sanh, just
into Laos east of Tchepone. The crash site is in heavy jungle, near a
stream. From the time the aircraft was hit until the time it impacted out of
view, the helicopter was under observation and no one was seen to leave the
aircraft during its descent. No ground search was initiated because the
location was in a denied area. Later visual search indicated that the
pilot's hatch was open, and his helmet was seen 25-30 feet from the
helicopter, but no survivors or bodies were seen. All the personnel aboard
the aircraft, however, were not declared dead, but were were declared
Missing in Action, which was procedure when no proof of death existed.
When the war ended, and 591 Americans were releaesed from prison camps in
Southeast Asia, not one man who had been held in Laos was released. Although
the Pathet Lao stated publicly that they held "tens of tens" of Americans,
no negotiations occurred which would free them at that time, nor have any
occurred since.
In March 1988, the area in which the helicopter crashed was excavated by a
joint Lao/US technical team. Human remains consisting of 17 teeth and 145
bone fragments, none measuring over two inches, were recovered. The remains
were returned to the U.S. Army Central Identification (CIL) in Hawaii.
On January 3, 1990, it was announced that the remains of Richard Fitts had
been positively identified from the material recovered at the crash site.
That identification was determined by the government's conclusion that two
of the 17 teeth belonged to Fitts. Fitts' parents, after having an
independent analysis conducted on the teeth, felt assured that the teeth
belonged to their son, and subsequently buried them in Boston,
Massachusetts. The remaining 15 teeth and 145 bone fragments were said to be
unidentifiable.
Barely a month later, on February 8, 1990, the Department of Defense
announced that the remainder of the crew had been positively identified and
would be buried, along with the Vietnamese crew, in a mass grave in
Arlington National Cemetery. Fitts' name was included on that tombstone
along with the other Americans because the Pentagon believed some of the
bone fragments belonged to Fitts. Thus, even though the remains were
scientifically unidentifiable, the cases were closed on these individuals.
Critics of the U.S. Government's identification of the entire crew of the
helicopter point to a similar incident some years ago. In 1968,
unidentifiable remains attributed to a group of U.S. Marines killed near Khe
Sanh on February 25, 1968 were buried in a mass grave in St. Louis. One of
the deceased was identified as being Marine Sgt. Ronald Ridgeway.
Five years later, Ridgeway was released from a Vietnamese prisoner of war
camp, giving rise to considerable speculation as to the validity of the
positive identification of the other remains buried in St. Louis.
There are still over 2300 Americans who remain prisoner, missing, or
otherwise unaccounted for in Southeast Asia. Nearly 600 of them were lost in
Laos. The U.S. Government, by early 1990, had received nearly 10,000 reports
relating to Americans missing in Southeast Aisa. Many authorities believe
there are hundreds of Americans still alive today, held captive.
In recent years, the numbers of remains returned from Vietnam and excavated
in Laos has increased dramatically. Government strategists happily point to
this as "progress" on the POW/MIA issue, although most of these remains are
still unidentified. Indeed, many families, having had independent studies of
the remains to assure accurate identification, now have answers to
long-awaited concerns about their loved ones. However, when remains are
positively identified, the U.S. Government closes the books and the search
for that missing man ends. Can we afford to close the books on an American
who may be alive waiting for his country to bring him home?
How many will serve in the next war knowing they may be abandoned?
-------------------------------------------------
U.S. Government Caught Robbing Grave of Vietnam Veteran to Hide Its
Mistake in Identification of Remains
For U.S. Veteran News and Report By Paul Warren
Johnnie Parrish always wondered whether that was really his brother, Army
Master Sgt. Frank C. Parrish, buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Cleburne,
Texas.
When the Army returned Sgt. Parrish's remains for burial in May, 1973,
more than five years after he was reported captured in a Viet Cong
ambush and summarily executed, Johnnie Parrish thought the forensic
evidence a bit flimsy.
The forensic "experts" had based their identification of Sgt. Parrish
on three pieces of evidence: (1) the remains had been found near where
Sgt. Parrish and his Vietnamese strike force had been ambushed; (2)
photographs of Sgt. Parrish supposedly corresponded with X-rays of the
skull, even though the skull had neither jawbone nor teeth; and medical
equipment like that which Sgt. Parrish carried was found near the
ambush site. "But my mother and dad and everybody else accepted,"
Johnnie Parrish told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Eventually, Johnnie
Parrish also accepted it, however reluctantly. "The thing that hurt me
is that in 1973, the Pentagon said to me, `You can accept or reject
it, but this is final. This is concrete proof,' and I didn't like the
attitude," Johnnie Parrish said.
Then, in early January this year, Johnnie Parrish drove from his home
in Joshua, Texas, to the Rose Hill Cemetery to attend a funeral
ceremony for an old friend. After the ceremony, Parrish decided to
visit the grave of his younger brother. What Johnnie Parrish discovered
at his brother's gravesite shocked and angered him. His brother's grave
had been opened and the remains removed.
Johnnie Parrish had accidentally stumbled onto a government-endorsed
grave robbery. The U.S. government was trying to hide a mistake it made
17 years earlier when it incorrectly identified the remains of Sgt.
Parrish. They were trying to hide it from the Parrish family and hide
it from the public. Without the proper permits, without telling anyone
in the family, the government had come in and robbed Sgt. Parrish's
grave and sent the remains to Hawaii. "Man, I am as mad as a wet toad,"
Johnnie Parrish said after viewing the desecrated grave, chastizing
employees at the Crusier-Pearson-Mayfield Funeral Home in Cleburne,
which handled Sgt. Parrish's burial and the exhumation of the remains.
Johnnie Parrish had been warned by the funeral home in December, 1989,
that the government may have made a mistake in identifying his
brother's remains. Parrish requested that he be kept informed of the
progress of the case and was promised by funeral home employees and an
unidentified government official that he would be. But the next thing
Johnnie Parrish heard about his brother's case was when he looked into
the empty grave.
The government began furiously backpedaling on the Parrish case when a
Pentagon informant leaked information to the U.S. Veteran News and
Report about the mixup of remains and subsequent attempts to cover up
the mistake through grave robbery. According to information obtained by
U.S. Veteran News and Report, the U.S. government obtained neither the
permit required for exhumation of the remains originally believed to be
those of Sgt. Parrish nor the permit necessary for transportation of
the remains. "The Army is under the impression that all necessary state
requirements would be met by the funeral home," said Major Lois Faires,
a spokeswoman for the Pentagon. Officials at the
Crusier-Pearson-Mayfield Funeral Home refused to comment on the case.
But Johnson County Clerk Robby Goodnight confirmed that neither the
exhumation permit nor the transportation permit had been obtained.
Faires said the mixup in remains was unusual. "This is extremely rare
that something of this nature occurred," she said. Faires told the Fort
Worth Star-Telegram that she knew of only one other case in which the
wrong remains had been sent for burial.
But Ted Sampley, chairman of Homecoming II, said he knows of at least
10 cases in which it has been proven that the wrong remains were sent
for burial. "And we don't know how many they have managed to hide,"
said Sampley.
Perhaps the most infamous case of an incorrect burial involves Marine
Sgt. Ronald Ridgeway, one of nine Marines the government thought it had
buried in a mass grave in St. Louis in 1968.
Ridgeway was a member of Company B, 1st Battalion, 26th Marines,
stationed at Khe Sanh on Feb. 25, 1968, when his unit was ambushed by
North Vietnamese regulars while on patrol just outside the base.
Although the ambush site was within view of the base, Ridgeway's unit
was pinned down by heavy fire and attempts to reinforce it were driven
back by the NVA. When the Marine units finally were able to break
contact and return to base, they had to leave their dead behind. It was
several days before the Marines could attempt to recover their dead
because of heavy enemy activity.
When they were finally able to get into the area, the Marines found
that repeated harassment and interdiction fires had badly scrambled the
remains of their fellow Marines. They recovered what they thought were
the remains of nine dead Marines, none of whom could be individually
identified.
Among them, according to the government forensic experts, was Ridgeway.
Those sets of remains were combined with the remains of nine Navy men
who had died in a separate incident and were interred in a mass grave
in St. Louis. But, on Jan. 28, 1973, nearly five years after he
supposedly was buried, Ridgeway was repatriated from a North Vietnamese
prisoner of war camp.
Ridgeway had come back from the dead, much to the chagrin of the U.S.
government. Although the relatives of seven of those Marines believed
buried in St. Louis found little hope in Ridgeway's return, the wife of
one of them, Ruth Brellenthin, thought it entirely possible that her
husband, Lance Corporal Michael Brellenthin, might have escaped with
Ridgeway.
For five years the government refused to give Mrs. Brellenthin
information about Ridgeway's whereabouts so she could question him
about the incident. When she finally found him on her own, it was 1978,
10 years after the ambush. Ridgeway told her he had not seen Michael
Brellenthin during or after the ambush. But an intelligence report
obtained by Mrs. Brellenthin indicated that in late February, 1968,
approximately 20-30 U.S. POWs were sighted near Khe Sanh.
According to the report: "Source observed several of the PWs wearing
`strange caps.' He described this cap as olive drab in color and made
of cloth. Caps described resemble the USMC fatigue cap." Yet, the U.S.
government continued to state unequivocally that LCpl. Michael
Brellenthin had been killed in action because Ruth Brellenthin could
not prove otherwise.
Although the government lacked evidence that Michael Brellenthin was
dead, its assumption that he was dead outweighed Mrs. Brellenthin's
assumption that he might be alive. "The attitude of the government on
these cases," said Sampley, "is that if you can't prove that the
remains are not of a particular individual, then they must belong to
the individual the government says they belong to."
Even if individuals are able to prove that remains can not be
positively identified as belonging to a specific person, the government
will not accept that as proof. The only opinion it values in forensic
cases is its own.
The case of Air Force Lt. Col. Thomas Hart is a specific example of
this. Hart's AC-130 aircraft was shot down in Laos in 1972 with 16 crew
members aboard. In 1985, the government told his wife, Anne Hart, that
it had found her husband's remains during a crash site excavation in
which she had participated.
Mrs. Hart was immediately skeptical, especially when the government
said it had identified 13 of the 16 crewmen. Mrs. Hart decided to have
her own analysis done on the seven tiny fragments of bone, which could
be held in one hand, the government said constituted the remains of her
husband.
Dr. Michael Charney of Colorado State University, who has nearly 50
years of experience in anthropology, analyzed the bone fragments. "It
is impossible," Charney wrote in his report, "to determine whether
these fragments are from LTC Hart or any other individual, whether they
are from one individual or several, or whether they are even from any
of the crew members of the aircraft in question."
Mrs. Hart refused to accept the remains and sued the government,
challenging its identification procedures. Mrs. Hart's challenge
produced additional criticism of the Army's Central Identification
Laboratory (CIL) in Hawaii and the the techniques it uses in
identifying remains.
Some scientists, including Charney, charged that CIL deliberately
misinterpreted evidence in order to identify remains. They said that
the Army consistently drew unwarranted conclusions about height,
weight, sex and age from tiny bone fragments. "These are conclusions
just totally beyond the means of normal identification, our normal
limits and even our abnormal limits," said Dr. William Maples, curator
of physical anthropology at Florida State Museum.
Among the egregious errors cited by Charney was a piece of a pelvic
bone that the laboratory mistakenly said was part of a skull bone and
was used to identify Chief Master Sgt. James Ray Fuller, who was on the
same AC-130 aircraft as Hart. Procedures at CIL were revamped shortly
after that, but there continues to be concern about the accuracy of its
work.
There are recurring charges that the U.S. government, in an effort
hastily account for as many missing men as possible, is stretching the
bounds of credibility when it comes to identifying remains.
One such case involves Sgt. Richard Fitts. Fitts was a passenger on a
Vietnamese Air Force CH-34 helicopter near Tchepone, Laos, on Nov. 30,
1968.
The crew of the helicopter was Vietnamese. The American passengers were
part of a team assigned to Command and Control North, MACV-SOG, U.S.
Army Special Forces. The mission was classified then and remains
classified.
Other Americans aboard the aircraft included Sgt. Arthur E. Bader, Cpl.
Gary R. LaBohn, SSgt. Klaus D. Scholz, Major Samuel K. Toomey, Cpl.
Michael H. Mein and 1st Lt. Raymond C. Stacks.
The helicopter was hit by 37mm anti-aircraft fire and crashed in flames
near a stream in heavy jungle. No ground search was initiated because
it was in a denied area. No survivors were seen.
In March, 1988, the crash site was excavated by a joint Lao/U.S.
technical team and human remains consisting of 17 teeth and 145 bone
fragments, none measuring over two inches, were recovered.
On Jan. 3, 1990, the U.S. government announced that the remains of
Fitts had been identified and returned to his parents. That
identification was determined by the government's conclusion that two
of the 17 teeth belonged to Fitts. They were buried in a separate
casket in Boston, Mass.
The remaining 15 teeth and 145 bone fragments were said to be
unidentifiable. But on Feb. 8, 1990, the Pentagon announced the
remaining Americans had been identified and would be buried, along with
the Vietnamese crew, in a mass grave in Arlington, Va.
Fitts' name was included on that tombstone along with the other
Americans because the Pentagon believed some of the bone fragments
belonged to Fitts. "What it amounts to is a mass burial, sort of like
what Stalin did," said Sampley. "If you can't prove it's a particular
individual, just say the remains are unidentified. Don't just stick a
name on it."
But that's exactly what the government did in the case of Master Sgt.
Frank Parrish in 1973. According to Faires, it was decided that the
remains belonged to Parrish because they were of a Caucasian of about
the same age and medical equipment was found nearby. "There was nothing
forensically (proving) it wasn't Parrish," said Faires.
Parrish had been accompanied on the fatal patrol by another Special
Forces team member, Sgt. 1st Class Earl R. Biggs. The Pentagon says his
remains were returned earlier. But the family of Sgt. Biggs must now be
wondering, just as Johnnie Parrish wondered 17 years ago about his
brother Frank, whether it was actually Sgt. Biggs it buried.
As for the remains that were interred in Sgt. Parrish's grave, what
little is known about them, according to government documents, is that
they belonged to an individual who was held prisoner for several years
before being executed.
Was that Biggs? Was it Parrish? Or, was it one of the more than 2,000
men still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia?
The government says it doesn't know and has sent the remains back to
Hawaii for further identification. Who knows what unsuspecting family
they will be sent to next for burial?
Sgt. Frank Parrish was buried for the second time in Rose Hill Cemetery
in January, 1990 in a simple ceremony. There was no honor guard this
time to salute him, no grieving widow to accept the flag that covered
the coffin.
The Army says Sgt. Parrish's widow, who has since remarried, refuses to
comment on the mixup, but that is an excuse the government conveniently
hides behind when it is trying to avoid publicity about an embarrassing
incident.
The families of Biggs and Parrish bore their grief 17 years ago when
they were told their men had died. Now, that grief has been compounded
by inexcusable Army inefficiency.
The families will forever be burdened with the question of whether or
not the remains they buried actually were those of their loved ones.
Paul Warren is a veteran journalist who has covered the POW/MIA issue
extensively.
[nwk0729a.txt 07/29/91]
The MIA Mystery
Hoping Against Hope
NEWSWEEK July 29, 1991
Tom Morganthau with Todd Barrett in Chicago, Clara Bingham in
Washington, John Taliaferro in Los Angeles, Frank Washington in Detroit,
Ginny Carroll in Houston, Debra Rosenberg in Boston and bureau reports
A Generation After Vietnam, the Families Refuse to Give Up--Despite a
Trail of Hoaxes and Broken Dreams
A generation after Vietnam, a blurry photograph reopens the MIA mystery
that has left families with their lives on hold
This is a story about anguish, hope and longing--and what may be an
unspeakably cruel hoax. It began in 1966 and led, last week, to the
public release of a blurry photograph of three middle-aged men standing
in a wooded setting. One of them, the man in the middle, holds a
cryptic sign marked with what may be a date: May 25, 1990. The man on
the left seems to be U.S. Air Force Col. John Leighton Robertson,
missing over North Vietnam since Sept. 16, 1966. The man in the middle
looks like air Force Maj. Albro Lynn Lundy Jr., missing over Laos since
Dec. 24, 1970. The man on the right resembles U.S. Navy Lt. Larry James
Stevens, missing over Laos since Feb. 14, 1969. Because of the
photograph, the families of the three men are utterly convinced that
Robertson, Lundy and Stevens are alive and in captivity somewhere in
Southeast Asia.
This photograph has reopened the last and most painful chapter of the
war in Vietnam--the hoped-for final accounting of 2,273 missing
Americans whose fates have never been established beyond reasonable
doubt. Many in the nationwide POW/MIA movement do not believe the U.S.
government has done all it can to settle those sad accounts, and some
accept elaborate conspiracy theories purporting to explain why five
different American presidents and their administrations have allowed the
mournful uncertainties to persist. The mere fact that every war
produces large numbers of missing men--there are still almost 79,000
MIAs from World War II and just over 8,000 from Korea--is no
consolation, and there are those who firmly believe that hundreds of
American POWs are still being held by the Laotians or the Vietnamese.
The 20-year history of doubt, grief and hoping against hope has left
hundreds of MIA families with their lives on hold. Some, like Colonel
Robertson's wife, Barbara, and his daughter, Shelby Robertson Quast,
have never accepted that their missing men may be dead. "We are always
aware of his birthday, anniversary and shoot-down date," says Shelby.
"He never died in this household." Barbara Robertson still keeps fresh-
made chocolate-chip cookies--her husbands's favorite--in the fridge.
The linen sheets the Robertsons received as a wedding present are ironed
and waiting to be put back on the bed. Shelby, equally convinced that
her father is coming home, has worn her father's wedding ring for the
past 19 years; last week she gave it back to her mother, and Barbara
Robertson put it on. "When I saw that photo," said Shelby, "I felt like
I had my father's life in my hands."
Johanna Lundy (cover photo) got the word from her 31-year-old son Albro,
a Los Angeles trial attorney. "Mother," he said, "how are you feeling?
Are you sitting down? Because I have evidence that my father is alive
in Southeast Asia." Mrs. Lundy told him to stop: she wanted to see the
photograph herself. At first, she said, she was not sure it was really
her husband, but the eyes, the mouth and the hairline "absolutely" meant
it had to be Al Lundy. Johanna Lundy is not one of those who has left
her life on hold. When her husband was reported missing, she says, she
took stock of herself and realized that "all I knew how to do was read,
argue and have babies." She went to law school, during the summers and
at night, and today has her own law practice. Deeply religious, she
says she has come to accept her grief; she is now trying to throttle
back her soaring hopes. "I'm not making a decision," she says. "I
would have to touch him to know that he's alive for sure."
The Robertson-Stevens-Lundy photo, and others like it, have electrified
MIA families from coast to coast. It has also set off a macabre
political controversy in Washington. This controversy essentially pits
the Defense Department and the State Department against the true
believers of the POW/MIA movement and their supporters on Capitol Hill.
It hinges on thousands of case files, "sighting reports" from Vietnamese
and Laotian refugees, and grisly bits of 20-year-old human remains. It
feeds on the hopes and bitterness of MIA families, many of whom think
the U.S. government has been incompetent, callous and deceitful in its
long years of dealing with them. It will soon lead to Senate hearings
on the POW/MI issue, and it has now forced administration officials,
including Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, to stop basking in the glow
of Operation Desert Storm and turn their attention to the unhealed
wounds from Vietnam. "The suggestion that somehow we're not
aggressively working these cases simply isn't a valid one," Cheney said
last week. "I can absolutely guarantee that if we had any evidence that
there was an American POW still alive in Southeast Asia, and we knew
where he was, I'd have thousands of volunteers lined up outside my
office door to go get him."
MORE PHOTOS: The problem is that no one can absolutely guarantee there
are no Americans being held in Southeast Asia. The Vietnamese
government, which is eager to improve relations with the United States
and which is now cooperating with the 14th in a long series of joint
efforts to find and identify the remains of missing U.S. servicemen,
insists that it released all 591 surviving U.S. POWs in 1973. But that
still leaves Laos and Cambodia. Speculation within the POW/MIA movement
has long tended to focus on Laos, and some zealots, like former POW
Eugene (Red) McDaniel, maintain that hundreds of Americans are being
held in five separate POW camps by the Pathet Lao. It was McDaniel who
gave the photograph of the three men to the press last week; among many
others, he is trying to force the POW/MIA cause back onto the national
agenda. "We are going to keep going until we get this issue out in the
open," he said. "There are more [photographs] coming."
Sure enough, more photos surfaced in St. Louis--and on NBC's "Today"
show--last Friday. These photos depict a balding Caucasian man with a
strong resemblance to Navy Lt. Daniel Vernor Borah Jr., who was shot
down near the city of Quang Tri, Vietnam, in 1972. Like the families of
Robertson, Stevens and Lundy, Borah's parents, Betty and Dan Borah of
Olney, Ill., now believe their son is alive. The Borahs had long since
given their son up for dead and were immensely skeptical of the many
stories about POW survivors. Then, late last year, they were contacted
by a circuit judge in Nashville, Tenn., named Hamilton Gayden. Gayden
showed them 17 different photographs of the Caucasian man, whom he said
was being held as a slave worker somewhere in Laos. "Is this your son?"
he asked the Borahs. They studied the photos closely and answered yes.
Gayden has his own pipeline to the shadow world of Asian political
intrigue--a Laotian refugee named Khambang Sibounheuang, who works in
Gayden's office as a court officer. Khambang says he has close ties to
the Laotian Resistance movement operating out of Thailand. Last July,
Khambang says, the Resistance sent a team into Laos to check out rumors
that Americans were being held in a Pathet Lao prison camp. They found
the camp and bribed the guards to allow them to shoot a roll of
photographs of Borah.
There is, unfortunately, an element of deja vu in all of this. Khambang
Sibounheuang has been involved with other mysterious photographs of
missing Americans in the past. In 1987 he was featured in a Life
magazine article about a photo of a skinny Caucasian man who might have
been Air Force Lt. Col. Charles Stoddard Rowley Sr. Rowley, who was
shot down over Laos in 1970, has never been found. Rowley's son Chuck,
who dealt with Khambang, says he no longer believes "100 percent" that
the photograph is authentic and no longer knows whom to trust. But,
Rowley also said, Khambang seemed sincerely interested in helping to
find his father, and that "the Laotians" got angry when he offered
$50.00 to help defray their expenses.
Gayden says he has dramatic new proof of the existence of U.S. POWs
inside Laos--including further evidence on John Leighton Robertson and
Larry James Stevens. The material allegedly includes hair samples, a
handprint and a thumbprint, as well as crude maps showing the locations
of the Laotian POW camps and a mysterious coded document that appears to
list 20 or more POWs. He says Larry James Stevens recently sent a
message through Laotian intermediaries warning that he feared for his
life. The POWs, Gayden also says, are fearful that the CIA will try to
kill them if they emerge from Laos, and he says one of them has asked
the U.S. government for assurance that they will be protected if they
do.
NO PROOF: Much of this, of course, is the stuff of conspiracy theories.
What is lacking is hard proof that even a single MIA is still being held
alive in Southeast Asia. A skilled technician can doctor or fake still
photographs with ease (page 22), which means that none of the current
photographic "evidence" can yet be taken as proof. Although there are
some believers, most government experts are bone-weary and deeply
skeptical of uncorroborated photos from unknown sources in Asia, like
the one that seems to show Robertson, Stevens, and Lundy. "I'm looking
at a picture of three fat, happy campers with trimmed mustaches and nice
haircuts," says Sedgwick Tourison, a former analyst with the Defense
Intelligence Agency. "I've seen hundreds and hundreds of POWs, and I'm
not looing at a picture of three 'prisoners' here. I don't know what
I'm looking at."
The Dia has copies of the Robertson-Stevens-Lundy picture and is trying
to evaluate its authenticity. Is it a fake, or not? We may never know,
says Pentagon spokesman Edward Lundquest, because the copies in question
are third- or fourth-generation prints from a missing negative. DIA
meanwhile will send 100 copies of the photo to U.S. officials in Hanoi
to see if any Vietnamese can be found who recognize the men, a process
that may take many months. The photos of Lieutenant Borah, meanwhile,
are now the subject of a public dispute between DIA and Republican Sen.
Robert Smith of New Hampshire. Smith has accused DIA of suppressing
news of the Borah picture; DIA says Smith has repeatedly refused to let
DIA officials see it. "The acceptance of any one piece of evidence as
gospel is fanaticism," Lundquest says, summing up the endless MIA
disputes. "Some of the people who do that are fanatical."
DOG TAGS: Worse yet, MIA families and government sources alike say
there have been many attempts over the years to bilk hopeful relatives
with tantalizing bits of evidence and Rambo-style expeditions to
Southeast Asia. Government experts are positive that Vietnamese con men
have become expert at manufacturing dog tags with the names of MIAs on
them. They also say that fully 372 of the 1,483 MIA-sighting reports
since 1975 were outright fabrications. "Over the years we've found that
when people come up with what they claim is information, they're either
looking for money or they're Asians trying to get refugee status or get
members of their families out of Indochina," says Tony Shine, a New
York insurance executive whose father, Air Force Lt. Col. Anthony Shine,
was lost over the Laotian border in 1972.
Another MIA relative, George Brooks of Newburgh, N.Y. is still bitter at
being "scammed" for $28,000 by a swashbuckling former Green Beret who
promised to go to Laos and Vietnam to search for MIAs. "We had this
secret operation going and we were going to bring men back. Then at
2:30 a.m. a radio station called and said, did I know....the operation
has failed? My heart went right down to my shoes," Brooks said. "I got
[expense records] from one of his people, and the math didn't add up,"
Brooks, who is a director of the National League of Families of American
Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, also said a Laotian he met in
Asia wanted $20,000 to find his son Nick, a Navy aviator who was shot
down over Laos in 1972. That time, at least, Brooks didn't bite.
Susan Scott of Troy, Mich., is chairman of the board of the Nation
League of Families and a POW/MIA activist almost from the time her
brother, Air Force Capt. Douglas D. Ferguson, was lost in 1969. "My
kids don't ever remember a time when I wasn't involved in this, and
they're grown now," Scott says. "My brother-in-law was killed in
Vietnam. My brother is missing...It had a major impact on my mother,
[and] my sister-in-law paid a very heavy price. She has some real
feelings about remarrying, some guilt feelings about that. We all pay a
different price." Scott says MIA families never really give up hope.
"That flame," she says, "never, ever really goes out."
Other families, like Maureen Dunn of Randolph, Mass., and her son Joseph
Dunn Jr. are still trying to bury the dead. Mrs. Dunn's husband, a Navy
pilot, was shot down by Chinese fighters over the South China Sea in
1968; his body was never recovered. Last week Joseph Dunn Jr. flew to
Shanghai for a face-to-face meeting with the two Chinese pilots who shot
his father down. He may get leads to help determine if his father's
body ever washed ashore, or he may not. But if nothing else, his mother
says, Joe Jr. can look out at the sea where his father went down and
say, "I came to get you."
The eerie part is that a least a few MIA families have been lucky enough
to get irrefutable evidence of their missing relatives many years after
the end of the war. Take Nell Gantt, of Huntsville, Texas. Mrs Gantt,
whose son Curtis was lost in a C-130 gunship over the Ho Chi Minh Trail
in 1972, still hears him "screaming to me in my dreams." In 1985, 13
years after his plane went down, Gantt's wedding ring--inscribed
"Forever Love, Sue" by his wife--was returned by two reporters who had
purchased it from a Thai citizen. The Thai said he, in turn, had bought
it from a Laotian refugee who found it in the cockpit of the C-130
wreckage--but when the crash site was excavated in 1986, there was no
trace of Gantt. "One thing has kept me alive--my son," Mrs. Gantt says.
"Even though it's been 19 years, I know he could still be alive over
there."
Or take the Fitts family of Boston. S/Sgt. Richard Fitts was a Green
Beret who disappeared in Laos in 1968--a soldier in the secret war for
Indochina. Walter Fitts and his wife, Rosella, fought the U.S.
government for years, trying to get information about their son; because
the mission was classified, Walter Fitts says, "we were stonewalled
wherever we turned." In March 1989, a search team excavated the site of
the helicopter crash in which Richard Fitts was killed--and found him.
On Jan. 12, 1990, Richard Fitts was brought home to Boston for a hero's
funeral attended by Gov. Michael Dukakis and more than 5,000 ordinary
citizens. Afterward, some of Fitts's remains--along with those of six
of his comrades--were buried in Arlington National Cemetery; the rest of
his remains are in a local cemetery and his father visits the grave
every Sunday to talk to his son. "After 23 years," Walter Fitts says,
"I have a lot of talking to do."
THIS IS MY LIFE: What infuriates Walter Fitts and many other MIA
activists in the fact that their own government has often concealed or
botched the known facts about the missing. Kathryn Fanning of Oklahoma
City has been fighting the government since 1985 over a set of human
remains that Defense Department investigators say are her husband's.
Because the identification is largely circumstantial, she doesn't
believe them, and she has refused to consent to a burial. She has spent
six years, and at times gone deeply into debt, trying to drum up support
for her case. "People ask me why don't I get on with my life," she
says. "This is my life." Dorothy Marian Shelton's husband, Air Force
Col. Charles E. Shelton, is the last American who is officially listed
as a POW in Southeast Asia. Mrs. Shelton, a longtime leader in POW/MIA
groups, took her own life in October 1990, after years of battling the
government on POW/MIA issues. She was buried in Arlington cemetery as a
gesture of respect and because, in a sense, she, too, was a victim of
the war.
Eleanor Gregory of Shrewsbury, Mass., has been searching for her brother
since 1966, when he was reported missing in action. In 1970, she says,
she was told for the first time that he was a POW in Laos and felt that
the government has "lied from day one." In 1981 Gregory placed an ad in
Soldier of Fortune magazine asking for information about her brother.
One source said he had been captured; another told her how to demand her
brother's records from the Defense Department. What she got was heavily
censored--but she also discovered that her brother's Army ID card had
somehow turned up 17 years after his disappearance. "I feel in my heart
that my brother was alive when the war ended." Gregory says, "He was
my baby brother. You know you'll never forget."
Given the enormous emotional stakes involved, the one thing everyone
fears is that the new photographs will turn out to be a hoax. The
POW/MIA movement has been riding a roller coaster of alternating hope
and despair for 20 years: a disappointment now, when hope is at an all-
time high, could crush the movement and turn many of its members into
emotional wrecks. "I hope to God it's true," says George Brooks. "But
if its not [whoever produced the photographs] should be hung. They are
the cruelest people in the world." There is no doubt that there will
more mysterious photos, more fragmentary evidence and more allegations
of a 20-year cover-up. But everyone, even the most dedicated conspiracy
theorist, knows there is only one way you prove or disprove the MIA
dream. That is to go into the jungles of Southeast Asia and find a
missing American--if, after all these years, there is one.
[distributed through the P.O.W. NETWORK]