This page draws on declassified 1973 and 1985 U.S. government documents concerning Vietnam POW/MIA negotiations, posted online by the CIA in June 2015 after their release to a FOIA requester.
Status: Documented record, with PIP’s own framing and cross-references.
A formerly top secret 1985 White House report
A then-Top Secret White House history of the issue, written in 1985, recounts that Hanoi made clear as early as 1969 that the return of U.S. POWs would be linked to the payment of war reparations by the United States. The report summarizes POW/MIA negotiations during previous administrations, including the linkage of those reparations — secretly promised by the Nixon administration in 1973 — to the return and accounting of American POW/MIAs by Vietnam. For further detail on this link, including what PIP describes as a “tragi-comic” secret meeting in which the Vietnamese traded an incomplete list of POWs for an American promise of aid, PIP points readers to Lynn O’Shea’s book on the subject.
The 1973 Laos document
Alongside the 1985 history, PIP presents a declassified 1973 U.S. intelligence report describing what it calls the “ridiculously low” percentage of POW/MIAs from Laos accounted for in the process leading up to the ultimately failed attempt to exchange American aid for a full POW/MIA accounting. For the case of one of the missing servicemen referenced in that report, Air Force officer Morgan Donahue, PIP points readers to Jeffrey Donahue’s site documenting his family’s search for him in Laos.
PIP’s note
PIP observes that, even as these Vietnam-era records have been declassified, requests for Korean War POW/MIA documents more than 60 years old — PIP’s own focus — remain open, as do requests for many other Vietnam-era records. [Bethesda, 25 July 2015.]