Perot Says U.S. Is Hiding News on Vietnam POWs

WASHINGTON Former presidential contender Ross Perot told a Senatepanel Tuesday he believes there are live prisoners of war being heldin Vietnam and suggested the U.S. government has covered up thematter.

Perot, during several hours of testimony, offered little newevidence to support the claim. However, a declassified documentreleased Tuesday by the committee spoke of the possibility ofprisoners being held in Laos in 1973.

The committee's ranking Republican asserted that the Vietnamesegovernment may have made an aid-for-POWs offer to the Reaganadministration in 1981.

"We have people left behind in captivity," Perot, a Texasbillionaire, told the Senate Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs.Based on a number of personal experiences, he said he believes thereare U.S. prisoners of war - dead or alive - in Vietnam, Laos and theformer Soviet Union.

"My purpose here is to provide a black-and-white statement thatwe left men behind and some could still be alive," he said. "Let'sstop covering it up, let's expose it."

Perot, who abruptly ended his presidential campaign in July,later refused to say there has been a conspiracy to keep secret thestatus of the POWs. But he repeatedly charged that U.S. officialsattempted to "rewrite history."

Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) became agitated whenPerot could not offer evidence to support his claims.

"Every member of the committee believes there are some generalquestions" about where there are live POWs in Vietnam, said Kerry."But we need evidence."

Perot said his statements are based on meetings with past andpresent U.S. officials, representatives of the Vietnamese governmentand hundreds of recently declassified "live-sighting" reports inwhich sources tell of seeing POWs.

Kerry countered that most of the sighting reports had beeninvestigated and that POWs were never found.

But Perot called into question the method in which the reportswere investigated. He said POWs would never be found under thecurrent method of making announced visits to places in which POWs arereported held.

"If you try to find one specific person in a one-block radiusand let me move them around, you won't find him," he said.

In the declassified March, 1973, document, Deputy Secretary ofState Lawrence S. Eagleburger, former acting assistant defensesecretary, wrote that the Laotian government was likely holding POWs.

"The LPF (Lao Patriotic Front) may hold a number of unidentifiedU.S. POWs although we cannot accurately judge how many," Eagleburgersaid in a memo to the secretary of defense. "The American Embassy,Vientiane, agrees with this judgment. . . . We still have the LaosMIA question unresolved."

Also Tuesday, Sen. Robert Smith (R-N.H.), the committee'sleading Republican, said the Vietnamese government may have made anoffer to the Reagan administration in January, 1981, to trade POWs for $4 billionin aid.

Smith based his statement on Senate investigators' interviewswith former Reagan aides. There have also been recent press reportsof a possible prisoner exchange in return for the aid.

"You don't ask for $4 billion unless you have something totrade," said Perot, when questioned about his knowledge of thepossible exchange.

Although Perot did not have direct knowledge of the proposedaid-for-prisoners swap, he said he had heard of a Secret Serviceagent who was familiar with details of the offer. Again, Perot wasevasive about details.