Mr Francis Peters
4115 South Nine Mile Road
Allegany, New York
Dear Mr Peters,
Thank you for your January 24, 1999 e-mail
to President Clinton requesting information
United States Government efforts to account for Army Captain Peter
J. Russell who is
unaccounted for from the Vietnam War.Your letter was forwarded to our
office because it is the
Department of Defense(DOD) agency that is responsible for accounting
for Americans missing from our nation's wars, and we are pleased to reply.
Captain Russell and three other crewmen were lost lost on August 1, 1968, when their UH-1C helicopter crashed in extremely bad weather over South Vietnam. Extensive search and rescue efforts were conducted but were unsuccessful in locating the missing aircraft or its crew. Three years later, however, United States forces located the wreckage of their helicopter and located the remains of one of the crewmen. The search team believed the other three crewmen survived the crash, treated their wounds, and departed the area. Regrettably, no signs of Captain Russell and the two other men were located, and returning American POW's did not report seeing the three men or hear their names mentioned in North Vietnamese prison system or in the jungle prisons of South Vietnam and Laos.
Since gaining access in 1988 to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia for the purpose of investigating cases of Americans missing from VietnamWar, DOD personnel have conducted 12 investigations into this loss incident. Despite our efforts, all three men remain unaccounted for. If you would like to learn more about Captain Russell and our efforts to account for him, his records are available to the public at the Library of Congress. Since 1992 our office has provided the Library with more than 860,000 pages and photographs from declassified documents relating to the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue for public review. You can access the Library's POW/MIA database through their Internet web site at: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pow/powhom.html.
Our office receives numerous letters from concerned
citizens like you who, through an internet site have adopted an American
who is or was missing as a result of the Vietnam War.
Most letters demand to know what the government is doing to account
for specific servicemen.
Some also contain phrasing that implies the United States Government
abandoned many of our men at the end of the war, and is doing nothing to
find their remains.These allegations are wrong and grossly understate our
efforts to obtain the fullest possible accounting.
From 1991 to 1993, the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIAs held hearings to address the question of whether or not American POWs were knowingly abandoned in Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War. The answer they derived to that question is "clearly no." They also concluded that there was "no compelling evidence that proves any Americans remain in captivity in South East Asia." Nevertheless, some people continue to speculate that American POW's are being held captive in Southeast Asia and other countries where the United States has engaged in war. We take all reports seriously and investigate them to the fullest extent possible, however the Government has yet to uncover credible evidence that Americans are in captivity as POW's anywhere in the world.
I hope this information is helpful and serves to illustrate that we have not forgotten our missing comrades. If you would like to learn more about our worldwide efforts to account for the more than 88,000 Americans who are missing from our nation's wars since World War II, I recommend you visit our intranet site at www.dtic.mil/dpmo.
Sincerely.
Charles W.Henley
Legislative and External Affairs
Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office
