n 6 May 1983, officials at the Joint Casualty Resolution Center (JCRC) in Bangkok, the lead U.S. government agency involved in the hunt for missing American servicemen at the time, informed the Special Office that a Vietnamese refugee residing in a refugee camp in Malaysia had recently told JCRC interviewers that in November 1978 she had seen more than 10 Caucasian prisoners carrying logs at the Dong Tien (pronounced Tee-in) lumber market in Dong Thap Province and that she had been told that these prisoners were Americans. Dong Thap Province, known as Kien Phong Province before the Communist takeover, is located in the Plain of Reeds region west of Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. (Authors’ map "Postwar Indochina;" DMA SRV Postwar Province Map.")

The refugee, a 29-year-old woman who had worked as a seamstress before fleeing Vietnam, had explained to JCRC interviewers that she and some relatives had gone to the market to buy lumber for a new house after her house had been confiscated by the Communists. She said that when she and her relatives arrived at the market she was surprised to see more than 10 Caucasian men carrying logs on their shoulders. She said she asked one of the Vietnamese who worked at the facility who the men were and the person replied that she should not ask, because they were American prisoners. She said that at that point she dropped the subject altogether and paid no more attention to the Americans. 1

…VM REFUGEE [NAME REDACTED] [A] FORMER TRACTOR OPERATOR, STATED THAT HE WENT TO VISIT RELATIVES WHO RESIDED NEAR THE DONG TIEN MARKET DURING LATE 1979.  SOURCE REMAINED THERE FOR TWO DAYS AND VISITED THE MARKET SEVERAL TIMES.  SOURCE DID NOT OBSERVE OR HEAR ABOUT ANY CAUCASIANS.  

…VM REFUGEE [NAME REDACTED] [A] FORMER ELECTRICIAN…, STATED THAT HE WENT BY THE DONG TIEN MARKET PERIODICALLY FROM LATE 1976 UNTIL 1980.  SOURCE STATED THAT HE HAD NEVER OBSERVED OR HEARD ABOUT ANY CAUCASIANS.

…VM REFUGEE [NAME REDACTED] [A] FORMER STUDENT/RICE FARMER, STATED THAT HE HAD TRAVELLED TO THE DONG TIEN MARKET PERIODICALLY FROM 1978 UNTIL 1985. SOURCE DID NOT SEE OR HEAR ABOUT ANY CAUCASIANS EXCEPT FOR SOME AMERASIAN CHILDREN. SOURCE STATED THAT HE OCCASIONALLY SAW AN AMERASIAN BOY…APPROX 14-15 YOA WHO TENDED BUFFALO IN XA PHU CUONG VILLAGE AKA KHU NAM (5) LOCATED ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE DONG TIEN CANAL…SOURCE STATED THAT THE VILLAGE WAS 17 KM EAST OF [THE DONG TIEN MARKET]. SOURCE RECALLED THAT THE YOUNG BOY WAS CAUCASIAN WITH BLOND OR LIGHT BROWN HAIR, APPROX 1.4 M TALL AND BLUE EYES. SOURCE ALSO RECALLED HAVING OBSERVED A BLACK AMERASIAN BOY…SEVERAL TIMES IN THANH BINH DISTRICT TOWN AT A MARKET CALLED "CHO THANH BINH." SOURCE STATED THAT THANH BINH WAS LOCATED ON A SMALL CANAL APPROX HALF THE DISTANCE FROM THE DONG TIEN CANAL TO TAN MY…. SOURCE RECALLED THAT THE BLACK AMERASIAN LIVED IN A HOUSE NEAR A CANAL SIDE GAS STATION AND THAT THE BOY’S FAMILY EARNED A LIVING MAKING COOKING POTS. SOURCE DESCRIBED THE BOY AS BLACK MALE, ABOUT 1.4 METERS TALL, APPROX 15 YOA AND HAVING BLACK CURLY HAIR.

SOURCE…STATED THAT HE HAD HEARD THAT THE AMERICAN FATHERS OF BOTH AMERASIAN BOYS HAD RETURNED TO THE U.S. AT THE END OF THE WAR. SOURCE OPINED THAT NEITHER OF THE TWO BOYS WOULD BE MISTAKEN FOR A U.S. PW BUT CONCEDED THAT IF SOMEONE FROM OUTSIDE THE AREA WAS PASSING THROUGH IT WAS POSSIBLE, ESPECIALLY IN THE CASE OF THE CAUCASIAN BOY IN XA PHU CUONG….3 

Senate investigators found that, incredibly, Bell’s report had provided Tourison sufficient information to enable him to resolve the seamstress’s sighting. Tourison’s conclusion, handed down on 14 May 1987, was included in his final, official evaluation of the case entitled, "DIA Evaluation of PW/MIA Information Provided By Vietnamese Refugee Source 1792." The salient points of the document are as follows:

… DETAILS:  Source 1792 was imprisoned during 1977-78 on charges of harboring former South Vietnamese military who had not registered with the new Communist authorities.  After her release from prison in mid-1978 she found her house had been confiscated; she went to the Dong Tien Market to buy lumber (for a new one).  While at the Dong Tien Market she stated that she saw over ten Caucasian males carrying logs.  A worker in the vicinity told the source the Caucasians were American prisoners.  The source paid no further interest to the purported prisoners….  

ANALYSIS:  The Joint Casualty Resolution Center located and interviewed four [sic] former residents of Dong Thap Province who located the Dong Tien Market.  These same sources visited the market at the time of the sighting and neither saw nor heard of any individuals there such as Source 1792 described….One of the sources noted that there were two young Amerasian children, the sons of two U.S. Soldiers, (the fathers of these two boys, a Caucasian and a black, had returned to the U.S.) who frequented the market area.  He speculated that someone from outside the area could possibly confuse them with U.S. PWs.  …

EVALUATION:  DIA does not accept the report offered by Source 1792 as a factual representation of an actual event.  The source may have seen several Amerasian children but there is nothing to support her claim she saw American prisoners.  

DATE OF EVALUATION:  14 May 1987

VO-PW CATEGORY:  Non-U.S., Eurasian/Amerasian/Asian 4

And there it was. The seamstress had told U.S. officials she had seen more than 10 Caucasian men carrying logs on their shoulders at the Dong Tien lumber market in late 1978 and that she had asked an employee of the market who the men were and the employee had replied that she should not ask because they were American prisoners; Tourison, after conducting a four-year "investigation," had officially ruled that she had seen two Amerasian buffalo boys, both about four and one-half feet tall, both about 15 years old, one half-Caucasian, the other half-Black.

Established procedures dictated that after an analyst handed down his final evaluation of any given case, he would then brief the case in detail and defend his findings before one or more of the following groups: the management of the Special Office; the POW/MIA Interagency Group—the "IAG"—whose principal members, NSC Director of Asian Affairs Lt. Col. Richard Childress, USA, National League of Families Executive Director Ann Mills Griffiths, and representatives from the Defense and State Departments and other agencies, ran the Administration’s day-to-day POW effort*; and/or the Interagency Committee on Indochina PW/MIAs—the "IAC"—and its review panel made up of the Chairman, who was a flag rank military officer from DIA, and representatives from the Department of Defense, the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (OJCS), the Department of State, the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the individual uniformed military services. Once the analysts’ findings were approved by one of these three groups, the case was officially deemed "Resolved" and the final, approved evaluation would be entered into DIA’s super-secret official roster of all POW/MIA intelligence reports, a computer print out-type document known internally as the "SI (pronounced "Sigh") Report".

This document, the SI Report, contained the following information about each intelligence report received by DIA: (1) case number, (2) type of sighting, i.e., firsthand (F/H) or hearsay (HSY), (3) brief information about the sighting, (4) the date of the sighting (DOS), (5) the location of the sighting by latitude/longitude and/or UTM grid coordinates, (6) the location of the sighting by country (VN, VS, LA, CB), (7) a letter code denoting the agency or organization that provided the intelligence to the Special Office, (8) the status of the investigation of the case and (9) a space for IAC comments. (See sample page of SI report.) Due to space limitations, items (5), (7) and (8) are omitted from SI entries presented in the the text that follows.

On 4 June 1987, Tourison presented the facts of the seamstress’s sighting; the steps he and Bell had taken to investigate her sighting and his official findings to the IAC Review Panel. The panel, headed by the DIA’s Brig. Gen. James W. Shufelt, USA, voted to accept Tourison’s official determination that the seamstress had seen two 4’7" tall Amerasian buffalo boys, one half-Caucasian and one half-Black - and not more than 10 American prisoners, all Caucasian - carrying logs at the Dong Tien lumber market in Dong Thap Province in November 1978. With that, Case #1792 was officially declared "Resolved" and the final, approved evaluation entered into the SI Report as follows:

The analyst’s case file was then returned to the Special Office and locked away with the files of the other "Resolved" cases. There, barring an Act of Congress or a direct order by the President of the United States, it would remain, forever off limits to everyone, even members of the U.S. House and Senate with jurisdiction over the POW issue.

* Reagan/Bush and Bush/Quayle administration officials would later testify that after mid-1983 the IAG was charged with the responsibility of overseeing "the overall U.S. Government effort on POWs" and that members of the group met "about once a week" to carry out their responsibilities. ("responsibility:" "POW/MIA’S, REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON POW/MIA AFFAIRS, UNITED STATES SENATE, January 13, 1993, p.272; "once a week:" statement of Hon. Carl Ford, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, before the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, in OVERSIGHT HEARINGS: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, POW/MIA FAMILY ISSUES, AND PRIVATE SECTOR ISSUES, HEARINGS BEFORE THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON POW/MIA AFFAIRS, UNITED STATES SENATE, DECEMBER 1-4, 1992, p.204). These officials would also testify that all deliberations of the IAG were conducted in strict secrecy and that after mid-1983 no official minutes were taken at any IAG meeting or proceeding. Lt. Col. Richard Childress, USA, the NSC representative on the IAG from 1983-1988, would later testify that he and the other members considered the keeping of such minutes "a waste of time;" Carl Ford, a DoD representative during the Bush Administration, would testify that the members of the IAG were a close-knit group who knew one another well and that as a result they didn’t "need to write anything down." ("waste of time:" "POW/MIA’S, REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON POW/MIA AFFAIRS, UNITED STATES SENATE, op. cit., p.273; "need to write:" OVERSIGHT HEARINGS: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, POW/MIA FAMILY ISSUES, AND PRIVATE SECTOR ISSUES, HEARINGS BEFORE THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON POW/MIA AFFAIRS, UNITED STATES SENATE, op. cit.). Senate investigators would discover that in spite of the fact that no official minutes or records were kept by members of the IAG after mid-1983, insight into (1) how Griffiths and her fellow IAG members dealt with the intelligence on live POWs; and (2) how she and the group felt about the Special Office analysts and the work they performed could be gained by examining various statements Griffiths herself had made. In 1985, she had declared in a memorandum to a fellow POW/MIA family member that "I can and do [as a member of the IAG] see all relevant POW/MIA information to enable active participation in the policy-making process, negotiations, technical level meeting preparation and monitoring the activities of the intelligence community through full access to complete case files…." (NATIONAL LEAGUE OF FAMILIES OF AMERICAN PRISONERS AND MISSING IN SOUTHEAST ASIA, MEMORANDUM TO PATRICIA ALOOT, FROM: (initials AMG) Ann Mills Griffiths, Executive Director, SUBJECT: ACCESS TO CLASSIFIED INFORMATION, DATE: NOVEMBER 14, 1985, from files of Elizabeth Stewart, Esq.). Later, in 1992, Griffiths told the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs that "IAG members…monitored a wide variety of POW/MIA related actions, [including] intelligence collection and analysis…;" that the IAG had "an extremely good" working relationship with DIA; and that she considered the analysts at the Special Office to be "very dedicated people… a very professional group…." (OVERSIGHT HEARINGS: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, POW/MIA FAMILY ISSUES, AND PRIVATE SECTOR ISSUES, HEARINGS BEFORE THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON POW/MIA AFFAIRS, UNITED STATES SENATE, DECEMBER 1-4, 1992; “monitored:" p.194; "extremely good," "dedicated:" p.237).

[NEXT: (2) The English-Speaking Caucasian Prisoners Reportedly Seen in 1982 Inside a Jungle Prison Near Cua Rao in Nghe Tinh Province in Northern Vietnam.]