Shareware Supreme Volume 6 #1/swsii.zip/swsii/010/CIVES.ZIP/CIVES.TXT

Text File | 1991-01-07 | 9KB | 178 lines

U.S. CIVILIANS STILL BEING HELD IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

SPECIAL TO U.S. VETERAN

By Tom Cartwright

While the National League of Families and the administration of President
George Bush tries to convince the American people that all possible is
being done to account for the 2,296 U.S. servicemen still missing and
unaccounted for in Southeast Asia from the Vietnam War, little is ever said
about the fact that at least 40 of these Americans are civilians, not
servicemen.

Practically forgotten by their countrymen, the missing American civilians
include some well known names and the stories of their capture and
subsequent treatment well illustrates a total disregard for human rights by
their communist captors.

The tragic tale of American civilian missing in Cambodia (called Kampuchea
by the Reds), a small nation that borders South Vietnam and was deeply
embroiled in the war, is a horror story at best. At least eight American
civilians are unaccounted for in Cambodia.

CIVILIANS IGNORED

Currently, the Bush administration is using the settlement of the Cambodian
civil war as a criteria for the improvement of relations with Vietnam. The
settlement of the issue of Americans still missing from the war has taken a
back seat to the civil war raging in Cambodia between Vietnam-backed forces
in control of the country's government and a coalition of rebel groups
backed by Red China and until recently by the United States government.
That rebel coalition includes the brutal Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, which
was responsible for the slaughter of millions of innocent Cambodians after
the nation's fall to communist forces in 1975.

However, while American servicemen still missing in Southeast Asia have
taken a back seat to the settlement of the Cambodian civil war, civilians
still missing in Cambodia are not mentioned at all.

On April 6, 1970, Sean Flynn, son of the late American actor, Errol Flynn,
and a companion, Dana Stone, were snatched from their motorbike by
communist forces while traveling from the city of Phnom Penh southeast on
Route 1 towards the South Vietnamese border.

At the time, Flynn, a free lance newsman, was on assignment for "Time"
magazine, and Stone was working for CBS News. There were reports three
years later that the newsmen were still alive. Later reports, unconfirmed,
indicated that they had been shot to death. In any case, the Reds have
never accounted for them, dead or alive.

Two years after the capture of Flynn and Stone, UPI reporter Terry Reynolds
and Alan Hirons, an Australian UPI reporter- photographer, were snatched
from their automobile on April 26, 1972, along the same Route 1, southeast
of Phnom Penh. Again, reports long after their capture indicated that they
were alive in captivity. The Reds have never accounted for them.

Well known and highly respected NBC News correspondent Welles Hangen was
taken from his car by Red troops along a highway southwest of Phnom Penh on
May 31, 1970. The communists have yet to account for him.

In May, 1970, only a month after the capture of Flynn, CBS News had more
bad news. George Miller, CBS acting bureau manager in Phnom Penh, George
Syvertsen, a staff correspondent working with Miller, Remek Lehki, a free
lance cameraman, and a Cambodian driver were brutally murdered by Red
forces along a highway southeast of Phnom Penh.

The bodies were in Khmer Rouge occupied territory, and CBS executives
contacted U.S. government officials with the request that the remains be
recovered. A recovery operation was refused.

HIRED MERCENARIES

Dave Miller, the then CBS bureau chief in Saigon, flew to Phnom Penh and
hired his own private army of about 25 Cambodian mercenaries who went into
the Red occupied territory and retrieved the remains.

So much, it might be noted, for U.S. government claims today that
independent POW-MIA rescue efforts are doomed to failure.

The worst horror story out of Cambodia concerns the fate of five Americans
who were taken as prisoners by the Khmer Rouge in 1978, three years after
the end of the Vietnam War. In two separate incidents off the Cambodian
coast, four Americans were snatched off their yachts by Khmer Rouge forces
under the butcher Pol Pot.

James W. Clark of Sepulveda, Calif., and a friend, Lance McNamara, also of
California, were taken as prisoners on April 21, 1978. Christoper Edward
DeLance of Hawaii and Michael Scott Deeds of California were taken off
their boat on November 7, 1978.

The four men ended-up in the infamous Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh where
they were tortured regularly for months to extract false confessions from
them that they worked for the CIA. When the Pol Pot regime was finally
dislodged from Phnom Penh by a rival Red regime, loyal to communist
Vietnam, it was reported that the four Americans had been murdered by their
guards. Another American, Sokham Hing, a U.S. citizen of Cambodian descent,
was murdered at about the same time.

It has been reported, although never proven, that the Americans were
involved in drug smuggling. Nevertheless, they became part of Cambodia's
infamous "killing fields," and their remains have never been recovered.

4 MILLION DEAD

From April 12, 1975, to January 7, 1979, the Pol Pot regime was responsible
for the horrible murder of some four million Cambodians, about one-half of
the total population of the small nation.

For a number of years, veteran CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite conducted
a persistent effort to get an accounting of the American newsmen lost in
Cambodia, but unfortunately without results.

It has been said that the episode is considered by Cronkite one of the most
deeply felt tragedies of his life, losing not only his fellow newsmen but
his friends.

At least ten American civilians are still listed as missing in neighboring
Laos. Some are airmen who flew for Air America, an airline which was run by
the CIA and flew supplies to U.S.-backed guerrilla forces in Laos.

Laos was supposedly neutral during the Vietnam War, but the North
Vietnamese transported war materials along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which
passed through Laos, to communist forces in South Vietnam. U.S. forces
attacked the Red supply routes through Laos and Laotian forces were engaged
by the CIA to fight the communists and to interdict their supply lines
along the route.

Eugene H. DeBruin of Kaukauna, Wisc., was a crew member of a civilian C-46
transport plane that was shot down over Laos on September 5, 1963. He was
captured by the Red Pathet Lao forces and held in several make-shift jungle
prisons. In May, 1964, he escaped with four other survivors of the C-46
crash, but they were recaptured after only three days. In mid-1964, the
Pathet Lao published a photograph of DeBruin and other prisoners.

DeBruin again escaped with several other POWs in June 1966. Only one of the
group, U.S. Navy pilot Dieter Dengler, made good his escape.

U.S. officials state that DeBruin failed to survive the escape attempt.
However, the DeBruin family learned that he was recaptured and alive at
least until January, 1968, when he was taken away with other prisoners by
regular North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops.

MOST IN VIETNAM

Most of the missing U.S. civilians were taken as prisoners in Vietnam.

Three Americans who were involved in the treatment of lepers at a
leprosarium in South Vietnam were snatched by the Viet Cong and taken away
as prisoners on May 30, 1962, now nearly three decades ago. They included
Eleanor A. Vietti, a dedicated nurse, and two medical assistants, Archie
Emerson Mitchell and Daniel A. Gerber. The U.S. government officially
listed all three as known prisoners of war as recently as 1980.

Jack D. Erskine was captured by the Viet Cong on November 13, 1968. A year
later, sketches of Erskine in captivity were captured by U.S. forces from
the Viet Cong.

Richard Newell Cocheo of Brooklyn, N.Y., was captured by the Viet Cong on
Jan. 31, 1968, on the second day of the infamous Tet Offensive. The Viet
Cong attacked from three sides the city of Vinh Long and the house, which
Cocheo and his wife rented, was in the path of the Red assault.

A civilian engineer, Cocheo defended himself from the Viet Cong and
eyewitnesses reported that several Red soldiers were killed in front of the
house by the American. He surrendered to the Viet Cong only after his wife
had been killed. He was seen being led away as a prisoner by the
communists.

In May, 1968, Cocheo was seen in captivity, along with several captured
Vietnamese government officials, in the Viet Cong- occupied village of Tan
Giai. He was officially listed as a prisoner of war by the U.S. government
as recently as 1980.

Cocheo's mother, Mrs. Marjorie Acker of Brooklyn, was convinced her son
remained a prisoner of the communists and never gave up her search for
information about him.