Keeping the Promise: The Story of MIA Jerry Elliott, a Family Shattered by His Disappearance, and a Sister's 40-Year Search for the Truth

Author:Donna E., Elliott
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: L&R Publishing
Published: 2010-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Cell in Lao Bao Prison, 2003

Chapter nineteen

Whitewash

It was late 1998 before I could afford a computer and log onto the Internet from my home. I backtracked and researched in detail the actions of the U.S. Senate Select Committee (SSC) on POW/MIA Affairs. What I gleaned from online resources, although not surprising, was certainly disheartening.

The SSC, tasked with finding Americans missing from World War II, the Korean War, and the Cold War, formed in October 1991. Senator John Kerry [D-MA] was Chairman, and Senator Robert Smith [R-NH] Vice-Chairman. SSC members had the unprecedented opportunity to answer one question: Were American prisoners left behind in Southeast Asia?

The stakes were high; at risk were the lives of any living POWs, and the faith of the American public in its government. Prior to creation of the Committee a poll taken by the Wall Street Journal found that sixty-nine percent of Americans believed U.S. servicemen were still being held against their will. Of those polled, three-fourths felt the U.S. Government was not doing enough to bring the prisoners home.

The SSC had fifteen months, access to both classified and unclassified documents, and two million dollars to conduct their investigation. The SSCs short lifespan left no time for “a learning curve.” Staffers Jon Holstine, William LeGro, John McCreary, and Harold Nicklas were convinced that there were live POWs left behind and were dedicated to the resolution of questions about American’s POW/MIAs.

Robert Sheetz, Chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s POWMIA Office, provided statistics on the number of live sightings received by DIA from 1979 to August 1992, for a total of 1,426 firsthand live sightings, with one hundred eight unresolved. Committee investigators identified nineteen reported sightings of American POWs in and around Son La, North Vietnam area. Nine were first-hand reports; ten were hearsay, with thirteen of the sightings reported in the mid-to-late ‘70s.

In 1976, a year after the end of the war, one U.S. POW was reportedly seen cutting bamboo, another source spotted a group of sixty to seventy POWs on a soccer field, and six American’s reportedly had been forced to work as slave labor. In 1977, a report surfaced which claimed twenty-four foreigners under guard were spotted; another statement documented a sighting of forty to fifty Americans in a camp, and a hearsay report which indicated Americans were about to be moved also came to light. In 1978 and ‘79, there were four sightings of groups of thirty to fifty POWs in the Son La area.

Individuals who claimed to have worked as guards or as prison trustees in the Viengxay area of Laos made thirty-five post-war reports of American POWs between the 1970s and 1986. Generally, the reports cited small numbers of American prisoners held separate from other prisoners, although three reports from the ‘80s cited more than two-hundred POWs.

In the Oudamsai region of northern Laos there had been thirty reported sightings of American POWs following the end of Operation Homecoming in 1973 up to 1989, generally by Lao prisoners on work details or providing services to one of the five prisons in the area.

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