Son La: Caucasian prisoners reported under guard, 1976-1979

Vietnam · Son La province · 1976-1979 · Never resolved

Status: 19 reported sightings of Americans in captivity, nine of them firsthand, compiled by Senate investigators. The Defense Intelligence Agency attributed most such reports to fabrication or to other foreigners. One 1979 report of 40 to 50 Caucasians under guard was still under active investigation when the Senate committee issued its final report in January 1993. No American has been identified.

Former South Vietnamese prisoners held in camps in Son La province in the late 1970s reported seeing groups of foreign prisoners under guard, some of them numbering in the dozens. The Pentagon explained most of the reports away. It could not explain all of them.

What was reported

Son La lies in the mountains of northwestern Vietnam, about 100 kilometers west of the Yen Bai prison where the American Marine Robert Garwood was held. From 1976 to 1978 the North Vietnamese Army ran a series of detention camps there for former officers and soldiers of the South Vietnamese army.

Senate investigators identified 19 reported sightings of Americans in captivity in and around the Son La area, nine firsthand and 10 hearsay, concentrated in the mid-to-late 1970s. As the committee summarized them:

1976: one man reported cutting bamboo; 60 to 70 prisoners reported on a soccer field; six reported working.
1977: a report of an imminent prisoner movement; a report of 24 foreigners under guard; a report of 40 to 50 Americans in a camp.
1978-1979: four reports of groups of 30 to 50 prisoners.
After China invaded Vietnam in February 1979: only scattered reports of individuals or small groups.

The 1979 sighting

One source reported seeing 40 to 50 Caucasians, under guard, bathing in a stream alongside a road in Son La province in 1979. The Senate committee reported in January 1993 that this sighting “remains under active investigation.” PIP has not found a published result of that investigation.

What the Defense Intelligence Agency said

Robert Sheetz of the Defense Intelligence Agency testified that DIA had received 30 reports about the possible presence of U.S. prisoners from people held in the Son La area in the late 1970s. Of those, DIA judged 18 to be fabrications and correlated 12 to other kinds of foreigners, such as Swedish development workers or Soviet advisers. DIA correlated a number of the resolved Son La sightings to Garwood himself.

What the Senate minority found

Two members of the committee, Sens. Bob Smith and Charles Grassley, did not accept many of DIA’s final evaluations. Their cluster-map analysis of live-sighting reports found what they described as logistic and administrative relationships among camps in northwestern Laos and northwestern Vietnam, and evidence of a possible second set of camps in Vietnam from which no prisoners returned. They reported that signal intercepts and alleged distress signals coincided with a cluster of live-sighting reports. Their conclusion: “the intelligence indicates a strong possibility that Americans remained alive until 1989; however, we cannot prove it.” The passage PIP has reviewed does not say which cluster the signals fell in.

What remains unresolved

If there really were 40 to 50 Caucasians under guard in Son La in 1979, who were they?
What the committee’s active investigation of that sighting found.
Whether DIA’s correlations to Swedish workers and Soviet advisers were matched to the dates and places in each report.
Whether the minority’s signal intercepts and distress signals fall in the Son La cluster.

Request for information

Please contact us if you can help with any of the following.

Accounts from former prisoners, guards or residents of the Son La camps from 1976 to 1980 of foreign prisoners held there: who they were, how many, and where they were taken.
Accounts of the 1979 sighting of 40 to 50 Caucasians under guard beside a road in Son La province.
Where foreign prisoners in northwestern Vietnam were moved after China invaded in February 1979.

DIA wrote off most of the Son La reports as fabrications or as sightings of Swedes and Soviets, but not all of them. If Caucasian prisoners were under guard in Son La after the war, were they Americans Hanoi never returned? Foreigners of another nationality? Or a story that spread among the South Vietnamese prisoners?

Write to contact@powinvestigativeproject.org. We treat every approach in confidence.

Sources

Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, final report, January 1993, chapter on intelligence, “Son La” and the minority views.

Tiếng Việt

Sơn La, 1976–1979: những nhóm tù nhân người phương Tây bị canh giữ

Các điều tra viên Thượng viện Mỹ đã ghi nhận 19 báo cáo về người Mỹ bị giam giữ ở vùng Sơn La vào cuối thập niên 1970. Trong đó có một báo cáo năm 1979 cho biết đã thấy khoảng 40 đến 50 người da trắng bị canh giữ, đang tắm ở một con suối cạnh đường. Chưa ai trong số này được xác định danh tính.

Nếu quý vị từng bị giam, làm việc hoặc sống gần các trại ở Sơn La trong những năm 1976–1980 và từng thấy tù nhân nước ngoài, xin liên hệ với chúng tôi. Chúng tôi chỉ đề nghị hồi ức cá nhân; xin đừng gửi tài liệu thuộc bí mật nhà nước. Quý vị cũng có thể nhắn tin mã hóa qua ứng dụng Signal, tên người dùng PIP.21. Chúng tôi không công bố tên người cung cấp tin nếu không được phép. Email: contact@powinvestigativeproject.org