Planning for hasty agent extraction. Da Nang, South Vietnam, December 1969. From left: Capt. David Carr, Commander, Reconnaissance Company, command and control of North, MACSOG; Brig. Gen. Donald "'Don" Blackburn, Office of the Secretary of Defense; Lt. Col. Ernest "Pete" Hayes, MACSOG liaison officer to the strategic Technical Directorate; Col. Clint Norman, General Blackburn's staff; Maj. George "Speedy" Gaspard, operations officer STRATA program.

Summer of 1967, MACSOG's messages to such teams as Hadley, then transmitting from North Vietnam and believed to be under hostile control, were dovetailed with the various deceptive programs.

As the bombing halt against the North took place in the spring of 1968, a special team of CIA and Defense Department officials arrived in Saigon to conduct a case-by-case security analysis of each team transmitting from inside North Vietnam. That summer, these officials concluded that all teams were under hostile control and had probably been so since shortly after their insertion.

During their security review, the visiting intelligence specialists also tried to compare individual styles of sending Morse code - the "fist" of team radio operators then transmitting from North Vietnam. They found that the tape recordings of the radio operator "fists" which had been laboriously made years earlier, had become so rumpled that it was no longer possible to correlate the tapes with the specific radio operators.

The team's conclusion even extended to the singleton agent known as Ares. MACSOG officers were chagrined at this judgment. They recalled the time in 1964 after the first American air strikes of 5 August, when Ares had proudly praised the air strikes and called for more and more to come and blast the enemy targets in North Vietnam. Considering that Ares was a double agent, although this was not known at the time, his calls for continued U.S. air strikes tell much more about North Vietnamese efforts to provoke such action at that juncture.

By April 1969, the radio operators recruited into the North deception operations were reported to be in isolation confinement Area B at Thanh Tri prison. There is some evidence that Hanoi substituted some of its own radio operators, obviously with the knowledge that no one in MACSOG or STD could tell that the switches had been made. Such boldness would have been attempted only if Hanoi had known about the tape mix-up coming out of the 1968 joint security analysis.

Preparation for Release

By the end of 1971, nearly all commandos were concentrated at three national-level prisons: Central Prison No. 1, outside Lao Cai City and close to the border with China; Tan Lap Prison, near Phy Tho in the Red River Delta southwest of Hanoi; and Haohn Bo Prison, in the hills inland from the northeast coastal town of Hon Gai. Singleton agents were spread around many of the other major prisons. The selection of prisoners transferred to each prison during 1971 was obviously well planned.

Among the first to leave Phong Quang that summer, the recruited radio operators were sent to Tan Lap and Hoanh Bo. Tan Lap also held many members of cross-border teams.

The last to leave Phong Quang were forty-seven commandos designated by the cadre as "those who could not be reeducated." They went to Pho Lu Prison, the popular name for Central Prison No. 1. Arriving at Pho Lu, they found their barracks in Camp K1 empty except for a half dozen inmates who were completing construction of a third barrack. Here, they met Lau Chi Chan, the frogman from team Cancer, whom they had first seen at Thanh Tri. Chan was now an inmate carpenter. Early in 1972, another major contingent of commandos arrived at Pho Lu from Quyet Tien. This brought its commando population to 167. The two commando groups were kept in separate barracks within the same compound, but they were separated by a wall and generally isolated from each other.

"You'll never guess what happened after you all left," began the wizened political prisoner, one of the "old timers" who had been at Quyet Tien for more than a decade.

"The commando section gave us an order to dig up the graves!"

Dig up graves. "What for?" came the only slightly curious question from one of the commandos.

That was the kind of thing the Ministry would do, the former commando thought to himself. What do you do when you need the remains of commandos and you have absolutely no idea where they are but you need bones to satisfy someone? You just go dig up anyone. Who would ever know the difference?

[Missing Text]

the heroes who had resisted the invaders in the past." The Lieutenant Colonel Xy was accompanied by a team of two dozen security service cadres, nearly all in civilian clothes.

For the next month, this team was fully committed to a prearranged training program. The cadre began by presenting a subject, and the inmates were told to prepare a written assessment of the material presented. The groups then met with a security cadre, who carefully led the discussion to the predetermined class objective. The presentation might last from a day, with the following day devoted to group discussions and individual critiques. All work was suspended during this period, which became known as the "hoc tap trao tra tu binh" (prisoner pre-release indoctrination).

At least four of the cadres from Xy's team were responsible for the political instruction; the remainder reviewed the inmates' files maintained by the prison staff. The information in each prisoner's file obviously was being evaluated to determine how the prisoners responded to the material presented.

Lieutenant Colonel Xy considered himself an accomplished poet and most literate individual with a deep understanding of Vietnamese classical writings. On his team was a young woman in her mid-twenties, a security professional whose shapely figure was poorly hidden beneath her slick black pajamas. She was also intimately familiar with Vietnamese classics, and it was not surprising that Xy worked quite closely with his protégé.

Fisher Boats on the sea of Moncay City, North Vietnam.
Close to Quang Dong City, China (1962)

As time went on, each inmate was called out for a personal interview with one of the visiting cadres. The officer faced the prisoners across a table, with the inenvitable cup of tea and small plate of cake. Some interviews consisted of little more than a file review. Others covered remarks critical of certain individuals under whom the prisoner had served while still in South Vietnam. The cadre emphasized that the prisoner, if released, has a responsibility to bring these problems to the attention of the proper authorities.

For some, the interview took on a menacing tone when the cadre informed the prisoner that he might be called on to "serve the revolution," if he was permitted to return home. For example, someone might come to visit and ask for help in "the struggle" to rid the country of the foreign invaders and corrupt officials. Such remarks carried a clear implication that the Communists might try to use the prisoners after their release. Anyone who sat through one of these interviews came away shaken.

Prior to the interviews, each inmate had to complete an updated personal history statement and attach a statement describing how he would conduct himself after returning to the South. The statement always ended with a request for repatriation.

For some prisoners, there was a third document. During their private interviews, selected inmates were asked to prepare a request to remain in North Vietnam.

The cadre explained that each document had a separate role of the ongoing peace negotiations involving Hanoi and its southern arm, the provisional revolutionary Government. For example, the document outlining how the prisoners planned to conduct themselves after release should be used to demonstrate that an individual wanted to be repatriated to South Vietnam. It would be used to support a request for repatriation through the provisional Revolutionary Government. The document expressing a desire to remain in North Vietnam would be used by the democratic Republic of Vietnam in discussions with the Saigon Government to explain why an individual was not being repatriated.

Regular Communist Army Viet Cong
City of Dien Bien Phy and Lai Chau (1954)

Everyone completed the first two documents. Some of the prisoners who were afforded the "opportunity" to prepare the third document completed it, but others did not. Those who refused to request that they remain in the North were not pressured to do so.

The first prisoners called for interviews senses that they were staged. Most came away with the impression that each interview had been tape-recorded to ensure an accurate record of the discussion. They passed on this impression to those waiting to be interviewed. As the other prisoners approached their interviews, they knew they had to be very careful about everything they said.

During the month or more of intensive political instruction, Lieutenant Colonel Xy was barraged with the same question: Will we be returned to South Vietnam, and when?

Xy studiously avoided any concrete answers. Instead, he tossed his head and laughed. The commandos also queried political instructors, but they were always noncommittal. One of the cadre put it this way:

"The state does indeed think of you and hopes that you will be able to return home. It is you who have attacked us. It is you who have invaded the North with the intention of overthrowing the government. You have all violated the laws of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. You actually should not be returned, but because of the humanitarian character of the State, the State will review each of your cases to determine if you can return to your families."

The political indoctrination and instruction at Pho Lu were matched by similar activities at Hoanh Bo prison. Here, the commandos faced a contingent of up to twenty cadres, including a female senior captain named Hoa, from the Ministry of Public Security under the command of a Lieutenant Colonel. On several occasions, Lieutenant Colonel Xy came to Quang Ninh and met privately with the staff working there. Included in the original contingent was a young company-grade officer, To Ba Oanh who was personally involved in the instruction and interview with each prisoner.

City Lai Chau

Senior Captain Hoa intimated that some commandos might be returned while others would not. She declined to say who and their prison commander, Sang, kept apart from such discussion.

During the personal interviews conducted by Hoa, she asked prisoners to discuss "openly and frankly" the treatment they received while in prison. One prisoner complained that prison staff at Quang Ninh had been beating the prisoners, to which she replied that "such acts are errors on the part of the prison commander which should be forgotten." She too asked prisoners to fill out requests to remain behind in North Vietnam.

The indoctrination at Quang Ninh began in October 1972 and lasted until at least December when B-52 raids caused the prisoners to be moved to a dispersed prison location a short distance away. Here, they heard about an American "progressive" named Nam who was at Hoanh Bo with a Vietnamese woman and two children.

When the political indoctrination at Pho Lu was concluded in November 1972, there was an improvement in overall living conditions, and each commando began to believe that he would be returned to the Republic of Vietnam under the terms of the Paris peace talks, now near settlement. The prison staff was more flexible in dealing with the inmates. The air was one of restrained optimism. No one, including the prison staff and the Ministry of Public Security cadre, ever said officially that the commandos would or would not be repatriated, but each commando began to believe that repatriation exchange was just a few months away.

On 27 January 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed and the mutually agreed upon ceasefire went into effect. Each commando at Pho Lu read a copy of the Accords provided by the cadre. The prisoners focused on the part that clearly implied they would be going home, in spite of the cadres hesitancy in replying to their repeated inquiries. They each singled out the specific phrase:

"Hien tai ai co lien quan den cuoc chien tranh o Vietnam thi deu duoc trao tra."

This was diplomatic language in a straightforward manner that "all those involved in the Vietnam War will be repatriated." The commandos now expected return home.

City Son La

They were sent back to K1 in February 1973 and issued sewing machines, with orders to make new clothing. Apparently, they were to have the clothes prepared quickly. The sewing machines worked twenty-four hours a day. Some prisoners cut out pieces from the cotton material, white for short-sleeves and dark for trouser, while others sewed them together. Enough clothing was made for each prisoner to receive two new sets of clothes, a small bag for carrying the clothes, and a hat. The items, all made in the same size, were taken away as they were finished and placed in the prison depot "to be issued at the appropriate time." The cadre frequently came around to inspect the work and kept repeating "This is your clothing. Make it carefully."

Weeks later, in the midst of the ongoing prisoners exchange, the commandos searched for just one cadre who would tell them when and how they would be sent back to South Vietnam. They could not ask the prison commander, Major Ngo Ba Toan, because he seldom came into their area, so they finally questioned Lieutenant Xy, chief of the Education section, and his deputy, Senior Sergeant Hao Lieu, their blunt response set the prisoners back on their heels.

"No way!" they said laughingly, "No way! there is no way that any of you are going to be exchanged. No way! If you look carefully, you'll find that there is not one single period or comma in the whole Accords which covers any of you. There is nothing, absolutely nothing. You're not even mentioned. Show us one place, just one place, where any of you are mentioned, just one place."

"But-but-there's the reference to the return of anyone who had been involved in the war - we were involved - we were participants! The Accords do apply to us!"

Lieutenant Xy just shook his head and laughed again. The commandos were devastated.

For an hour or two each night, the loud speakers in the barracks played broadcasts from the People's Army radio station. The prisoners listened intently to descriptions of the cease-fire and accounts of prisoners being exchanged, although, ever so slowly. Then the broadcasts recounted groups of prisoners being exchanged across the Thach Han River. It was always the same small group of South Vietnamese POWs returning home, while three or four times as many North. When they heard references to American POWs going home, they thought this was a clear signal that their turn would come before long. They were all aware that members of cross-border teams and the singletons had been transferred elsewhere. This seems to imply that prisoners were organized into like groups for repatriation.

As the prisoner exchanges dragged on, the inmates at Pho Lu sensed that the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was returning the prisoners slowly, like a fisherman playing out a line, as it watched and waited, perhaps assessing whether it might have to return the commandos if someone insisted.

Mountain chain on the sea coastal town of Moncay,
north Vietnam, close to China. (Day Nui).

The commando's apprehension was heightened by the fact that former officers of the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces captured at Hue City during the 1968 Tet Offensive, were still being held in the K1 punishment cells, where they had been since 1927. Did that mean that the North was going to keep back some prisoners as some type of bargaining chip? But why? And still they waited…

They were essentially correct about the likelihood of political prisoners. The commandos, all convicted of espionage, were considered by Hanoi to be a special category of political prisoners. Perhaps Hanoi never intended to release them unless, of course, Washington was willing to address tens of thousands of prisoners in South Vietnam that Hanoi and its provisional Revolutionary Government were calling “political prisoners being detained by the Thieu Government,” with the demand that they be released. Washington had no desire to be drawn into any such accommodation.

Beginning in February 1973, American prisoners held in the North Vietnam were turned over to American officials at Hanoi and flown to Clark Air Base in the Philippines for preliminary intelligence screenings and physical checkups. U.S.A. Army Major headed the team of debriefers from Saigon that flew to Clark to process returning American civilians, other teams of debriefers, representing each of the military services, also arrived.

The questions they were to ask returning POWs were defined by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the same agency that, in 1965, had urged support of MACSOG's mission and argued that its agent teams inside North Vietnam were producing valuable intelligence information. The priority intelligence requirement now was identification of Americans accounted for or still in captivity.

Unfortunately, the DIA office responsible for American POWs and MIAs, then headed by U.S. Navy Commander Charles Trowbridge, had no record of losses for MACSOG's contract Vietnamese agents. DIA was primarily interested in Americans, not foreign nationals, and there were no questions from DIA about any Vietnamese covert operatives who might still be prisoners. Within weeks of the repatriation of the last American prisoner on 1 April 1973, Commander Trowbridge was facing pressure to reduce his staff. Overhead imagery of the wartime prisoners was cancelled except for a select few in the Hanoi area, and the focus at the Pentagon soon shifted to a review of the status of Americans still listed as missing and the slow process of declaring them dead based on presumptive findings of death. Even if the commandos were confirmed to be alive, they would be considered a problem for their own government, not Washington.

River in a mountain pass, Mountain Auto

Among the civilians repatriated during Operation Homecoming were Larry Stark and Bob Olsen, the two prisoners confined in the room next to Le Van Ngung, Nong Van Hinh and Moc Tai in Area B, Thanh Tri prison. Whatever they told their debriefers, it did not make a ripple in American interest regarding the fate of the nearly four hundred commandos then languishing in Hanoi prisons.

South Vietnamese Air Force Lieutenant Nguyen Quoc Dat, a hero to the commandos who met him briefly when he arrived to their prison in the panhandle, was also remembered by American prisoners held with him at Hoa Lo. On their release, many Americans demanded that something be done for him and U.S. officials were able to secure his release. Also released was Phan Thanh Van, the C-47 pilot shot down over Ninh Binh on 1 July 1961, but others who survived the crash had long ago died in prison.

In April 1973, the Joint Casualty Resolution Center (JCRS) in Saigon headed by its first commander, Brig. General Robert Kingston, submitted to the North Vietnamese its first priority list of Americans unaccounted for and of foreign nationals in whom the United States had an interest. Not one commando Nam appeared on that list or any subsequent list of Americans, Vietnamese and other nationals later presented by JCRC to Hanoi 's representatives. General Kingston's new command meant a return to an organization that he had served in the war, but it was in a different form. At that time, what became the JCRC was part of MACSOG and was known by the cover name of Joint Personnel Recovery Center (JPRC), Kingston previously had been operations officer for the agent teams that went into North Vietnam during mid-1967.

In his new position, General Kingston found to his horror that JCRC's computerized database of names of captives and unaccounted for Americans was literally a nightmare: the loss locations for many American cross-border casualties had been entered incorrectly. In his messages to Washington about the inaccurate data, Kingston never mentioned that his database did not include any names of the hundreds of contract agents launched by MACSOG and last recorded as captives.

Not every commando was retained in North Vietnam . For example, nine of the ten Vietnamese from team Illinois , who were captured in Laos with Lance Cpl. Frank Cius and Major Sergeant Ronald Dexter, were repatriated by the Vietnam People's Army and turned over to the Republic of Vietnam at a prisoner's exchange point on the Thach Han River. Among these was Nguyen Van Chien, Dexter's team interpreter. The tenth Vietnamese member of the team, Ha Van Son, had displayed a “belligerent attitude” and he was not repatriated.

American debriefers working for Colonel William LeGro's Intelligence Division at the Saigon-based Defense Attache Office located and interviewed by Nguyen Van Chien and several other team members. They wanted to learn the fate of Dexter and the crewmen of a Chinook helicopter shot down over Laos . Nguyen Van Chien told them that, north of Thanh Hoa City , Dexter had been bludgeoned to death by the PAPSF guard escorting them to Hanoi.

Communist Army Operation, Mountain Auto.

Nguyen Van Chien asked about his back pay, based on his employment contract, that he was due. The debriefers panicked. The Defense Attache Office sent a hurried message to the DIA in Washington that Chien and the others would not talk unless they received their back pay. The message noted that Chein's debriefing had been terminated when he became a bit hostile over the back pay issue.

South Vietnamese officials also interviewed Nguyen Van Chien and the other team members, who identified the commandos with them in prison and those last known alive. None had been repatriated. Then Chien and the other repatriated prisoners went home. The war was over for them.

Nguyen Van Chien? A team repatriated in 1973? Sure, I remember. They asked for their back pay. They owed it. They signed contracts. Unfortunately, MACSOG was gone. There was no money, anywhere. But the Americans got some money somewhere, and paid them off as was provided for under their contract.

What about the commandos who weren't repatriated? I asked. “I'm not sure,” he said.