uring the spring of 1983, Hendon was reviewing intelligence files in his Pentagon office (See An Enormous Crime, Chapter 22) when he read for the first time the classified version of a CIA Field Intelligence Report (FIR) dated 16 March 1977 that quoted Indonesia’s ambassador to the SRV, Ambassador Hardi, as reporting to his government that Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Minister Phan Hien (pronounced Fon HEE un) and other SRV officials with whom he had had contact recently told him that the SRV continued to hold American POWs and that these POWs posed a problem to the opening of diplomatic relations between the SRV and the U.S. The source of the CIA report was described in the FIR as a "generally reliable source with excellent access to high-level Indonesian Government officials."
Given the solid sourcing and the critical nature of the intelligence and its timing—President Carter’s personal envoy Leonard Woodcock and members of his commission charged with determining the fate of the POWs and MIAs were in Hanoi for crucial, life-or-death talks with Phan Hien at the time—plus the fact that Woodcock had returned to the U.S. after his talks with Phan Hien and had immediately informed Carter that no POWs remained alive—had made Hendon wonder: what had Woodcock done with this remarkable and remarkably timed piece of intelligence? Had it influenced his strategy in his negotiations with Hien? Had he confronted Hien with it? If so, what had Hien said in reply? And with that crucial intelligence in his possession, how could he possibly have informed the president upon his return that no POWs remained alive?
In an effort to find out the answers to those and other questions, Hendon asked Special Office personnel for the complete working file on the CIA report. When his request was denied, he met with Charles Trowbridge, the Special Office’s Deputy Chief to ask about the report. The powerful, chronically-negative Trowbridge had worked at the Special Office during the war and since Operation Homecoming had served as its number two man. He and Hendon were oil and water—Trowbridge the secretive, "share-nothing" career bureaucrat; Hendon the outspoken young congressman who made no attempt to hide his contempt for what was going on at the Special Office. What had DIA done about this crucial intelligence? Hendon asked Trowbridge. Nothing, Trowbridge replied. What had DoD, State and/or CIA done about it? He didn’t know, Trowbridge said. Given its solid sourcing, remarkable contents and equally remarkable timing, this is a very explosive report, perhaps one of the most important pieces of intelligence received about living POWs in the entire postwar era; one surely worthy of congressional investigation, Hendon told Trowbridge. I’ll look into it and see what I can find out, Trowbridge said. 202
On 26 September 1983, several months after Hendon had resigned his position at the Pentagon and returned to North Carolina to attempt to reclaim his old congressional seat, CIA notified DIA and the other addressees of the original Hardi/Phan Hien 16 March 1977 FIR—which by now had been on the books for over six and one half years—that the FIR "has been determined to be a fabrication" and "the information in the memorandum should be disregarded and all references to the report should be removed from computer listings and file holdings." 203
