A fundamental starting point for any evaluation of the Soviet GRU document is to recognize that the Pentagon's database on Vietnam POWs/MIAs rests heavily upon information supplied by those former prisoners who returned to the United States in 1973 during Operation Homecoming. If, as the GRU document states, there was a separate prison system, of which the returnees knew nothing--and keeping them in ignorance would have been precisely the point of holding people separately--then the Pentagon database cannot be used for a conclusive evaluation of the GRU document. This is true not only for quantitative data (numbers of prisoners, numbers of each rank) but also for qualitative data (the mixing of ranks, special training, and other characteristics of the prisoners). The frequent refrain of Pentagon officials--that "nobody who came back reported this"--is therefore simply beside the point. Furthermore, the challenge to the quality of Pentagon intelligence by Russian sources must be taken seriously. After all, the Soviet military intelligence was politically and physically much closer to the Vietnamese Communists in 1972 than was its American equivalent.

Does this mean that the Russian document is completely accurate? Not at all. General Quang may have been misled by his subordinates on many aspects of the POWs. Some of the names in the document were garbled. The ranks and level of training of the prisoners may have been inflated, which could reflect incompetence or attempts by lower level commanders and interrogators to impress superiors. Again, prisoners may have misinformed interrogators in order to secure better treatment for themselves. And there is the previously discussed problem of a hurried translation.

Nevertheless some key factual aspects of the document have already been confirmed. As the document predicted would happen, three prisoners were released within days. The document's claim that prisoners were placed in one of three political categories was reported long ago in Admiral Stockdale's prison memoir In Love and War. This political categorization did not entail physical separation, though some, not all, in the "reactionary" category may have been kept in a separate camp system. We know that some of those who returned in 1973 had been held separately, unknown to the other returnees, until the very last moment. This confirms the possibility of a separate camp system holding hundreds of others. And the assertion that some prisoners had undertaken cosmonaut training is confirmed by the case of now Admiral Robert Harper Shumaker, a Navy flier shot down in 1965 and returned in 1973.

More important is the correlation of Hanoi's negotiating stance, as enunciated by Quang, with the secret negotiating position of the Vietnamese Communists at the time. Recently declassified cables, and the testimony of Dr. Henry Kissinger, confirm this.

There are three factual claims made by the document which are matters of contention: Was Quang a lieutenant general in 1972, as the document claims, or was he at that time only major general, as the Vietnamese Communists claim? Did Quang hold the position of deputy chief of staff, as the document claims, or was he serving in that capacity only during 1959-60 and from 1974 on, as the Vietnamese Communists subsequently claimed? And was a 23rd plenum of the Vietnamese politburo held in 1972 as the document claims, or was it held in 1974 as the Vietnamese Communists have subsequently claimed? These are matters about which the independent evidence is mixed.

The former U.S. Embassy Saigon's 1972 report on the membership of the Central Military Committee lists Quang as deputy chief of staff, while a biographical report from Vietnam dated November 1992 lists him as holding a field command but not the deputy chief of staff position. Yet he could have held both positions. There were always several deputy chiefs of staff, and some of these also held field commands. The failure of the 1992 North Vietnamese publication to list Quang in a deputy chief's position may simply reflect the post's lesser significance relative to the field command.

As for Quang's rank of lieutenant general, this was what he was described as in another Russian document, purportedly based upon a June 26, 1972 report by Quang to the politburo and having nothing to do with the POW issue. This suggests that if there was an error, it was a genuine error by the Soviet case officer or Vietnamese agent, and had nothing to do with either the issue of prisoners or an attempt to deceive.

Finally the question of whether there was a 23rd politburo plenum in 1972 or in 1974 as the Vietnamese subsequently claimed is also a minor issue, and arises from a reference in a section of the document dealing with issues unrelated to the American POWs. There was a 21st plenum in 1972, and either the Vietnamese agent or the Soviet case officer may have misheard the word "21st" for "23rd."

The only incontrovertible and strange error in the Russian document--the conflation of a General Ngo Dzu with politician Truong Dinh Dzu into a nonexistent "General Ngo Dinh Dzu"--is minor. It does not appear in the section of the document dealing with the American POWs. Read carefully, Quang seems to be speaking about the politician first and the general later. The error, likely made by the Soviet GRU translator, more familiar with generals than civilians, is perfectly explicable if we assume an audio tape source.

We must distinguish between what data was primary and what was secondary in the report. The most basic facts are that a senior North Vietnamese general told his politburo that they were holding hundreds more American prisoners than the number they had told the world about; and that the Hanoi politburo planned to use these prisoners as a device to extract military, political and economic concessions from the United States. These are matters of clear meaning which are not easily subject to linguistic ambiguity or error.

This central aspect of the document is given contextual support by an examination of the entire file in which it was located. It is very clear from reading all of the Soviet military intelligence reports emanating from Vietnam in 1972 that the Easter Offensive of that year was a serious military failure for North Vietnam. Hanoi had become pessimistic about its ability to win militarily. That is why holding back prisoners was important--the communists needed the American prisoners as a bargaining chip.

Hanoi almost certainly held back hundreds of prisoners in 1973. The most controversial aspect of the document, Quang's claim to be holding 1205 Americans, has been independently corroborated.. In 1971 a North Vietnamese military doctor, Dang Tan, who defected to the South, told the U.S. government that North Vietnam was holding hundreds more prisoners than they had acknowledged. In 1979 a Vietnamese communist defector named Le Dinh told the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) that in the mid-1970s his colleagues had spoken of holding seven hundred American prisoners to be used as a "strategic bargaining asset."

Why, then, has this card never been played subsequently? Perhaps all the prisoners were executed in 1975 or some time later, after the unexpected collapse of South Vietnam seemed to make such a bargaining asset unnecessary. It is at least possible that some prisoners are still being held as the very last card, in case the attempt to gain normalization through investment offers to American businesses does not sway Washington.

Back in Washington

An objective evaluation of the accuracy of the information in Soviet GRU document is of fundamental importance for the formulation of American policy towards Vietnam. The view that the document must be taken seriously has been endorsed by Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Pipes, Adam Ulam, and Samuel Huntington. All are distinguished scholars, with either extensive knowledge of Soviet affairs, or extensive experience in dealing with Moscow, or both. Although nobody of their intellectual caliber has taken an opposing view, from the very beginning the Clinton administration has not handled the issue issue with the appropriate seriousness.

My first inclination after discovering the document in January was to give a copy of it immediately to the New York Times. On reflection I quickly concluded that as some prisoners might still be alive and their lives at risk, I was morally obliged first to inform the United States government. To this end, immediately upon my return to the United States on January 31 I contacted a Congressional staffer whom I knew well, and sought his assistance. He faxed a letter to the chief of staff of the NSC, Nancy Soderberg, on February 1, and followed up with a phone call to her on February 3. But in spite of this staffer's high personal reputation, no one from the NSC contacted me until after I had, more than one week later and in frustration, brought this matter to the attention of the office of the secretary of defense through the personal efforts of Professors Richard Pipes and Samuel Huntington of Harvard.

On February 9 I was finally contacted by Deputy NSC Adviser Samuel "Sandy" Berger who agreed to meet me. He asked if I would give him a copy of the document. I suggested that we discuss it. At our meeting on February 11 I explained to Berger that I did not want the document to reach the bureaucracy as I feared that it would either be leaked or treated in a negatively biased way, because it ran counter to everything the relevant bureaucrats had been saying on this matter for over twenty years. But I provided Berger with the names of three "authenticators" of the document--Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Pipes, and Mark Kramer, all Russian-literate scholars who were familiar with Soviet documents in general and who had read this one in particular. (The first was also a former national security adviser to the president, the second a former member of the NSC staff, and the third a young scholar whom NSC chief of staff Soderberg knew personally and had consulted many times). Moreover, I emphasized that this document was the beginning of the story, not the end. The fate of these men could only be determined through other Soviet documents, located in other Russian archives to which I currently had no access. I said that I wanted to pursue this story in Moscow with the U.S. government's help.

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