Distraught, I finally went in to see my private physician, Dr. James Zini. I told Doc either something was terribly wrong with me, or I was going crazy. I’d been his patient for three years prior to the wreck; Doc knew me well. He referred me to Dr. Gary Souheaver, a neuropsychologist in Little Rock. After a brain MRI and a battery of written and oral tests, I was impressed when Dr. Souheaver was able to tell me, instead of ask me, exactly where I had hit my head. He also described some of the problems I was experiencing. His clinical impression was “Mild Organic Brain Syndrome,” which involves memory, judgment, intellectual function, and emotional adjustment. I didn’t want to be brain damaged; I wanted back control of my life. I looked fine, acted normal; at least most of the time. Because I initially exhibited no visible handicap, everyone believed I was okay. I wasn’t.
In the middle of an argument with Louis about being alone while he hunted or tracked game with his friends every night, I started to rage like a screaming banshee. This behavior was very much out of character for me. I usually skirted confrontation unless unavoidable. I hated feeling out-of-control. The intense, tangled emotions I vented frightened even me. Our relationship couldn’t endure the role changes my injury demanded. The marriage was soon over. After my automobile insurance paid my car loan off, I had a few thousand dollars left, but no marriage, no job, no car, and no home. I was a brain-damaged sparrow with clipped wings.
Homeless, I bounced between friends for a few months while a carpenter framed a one-room cabin on the land. I moved in before the windows were set in place. Although I fought red-wasps, and my mattress rested on the plywood floor, I had the basics: water, electricity, ice chest, and a hotplate. In the middle of the hot summer, almost one year post-injury, I crammed my scaled-down possessions into the tiny space. My focus was recovery. I called the cabin my little hospital room with a kitchenette. It was only 16’ x 32’, but it was my space. I had a safe place to heal under the two big oak trees that overlooked the pasture. At last, I felt as if I was home.
I began to recuperate somewhat, get out of the house more, but being mobile forced me into interactions with people. The more active I was, the more I seemed to forget. Worried, I began to question family and friends about my behavior when I realized a memory lapse had occurred. The only oddity anyone could pinpoint was that I became more animated than usual during these episodes. I talked faster and louder, uncharacteristically used my arms and hands in broad gestures to supplement my speech.
I couldn’t carry on a conversation with more than one or two people in a room; at times, it was as if they spoke a foreign language. Small talk was a skill from the past, I felt socially inept. Regretfully, I couldn’t remember the names of many previous acquaintances. This problem was so bad I tried to slip in and out of stores to avoid people who knew me. Although their face might look familiar, I couldn’t remember who they were, or how I knew them. From time to time, people would take offense; they rightly assumed I should have recognized them. Chances were if I didn’t know them well before the wreck, I couldn’t recall their name without prompts until I encountered them several times post-injury.
To avoid awkward situations or hurt feelings, I often attempted to explain I had mild brain damage. I wanted people to understand I didn’t intentionally act inappropriately. I stopped my explanations because inevitably someone would counter with a dismissive remark such as “Oh, everyone forgets.” No, no they do not. They don’t forget so much information everyday that they are exhausted from the struggle to remember merely the simple things that add quality to life.
My brain wouldn’t crunch numbers, they seemed to free fall in my mind before I could write them down correctly, much less compute them in my head. I often found myself in front of a store counter, suddenly unable to comprehend the numerical dollar value of the bills in my hand. It was difficult enough to keep the check register balanced, writing checks on the fly was out of the question. I solved this dilemma with the use of a single credit card. Every day was a quest for survival, every outing a major event. I constantly got lost, suddenly disoriented in what should have been familiar places, even with directions or maps. I often arrived for appointments on the right day, wrong time. Alternatively, sometimes I was on time, but a day early, or a day late. People declared that in opposition to the U.S. official clock, I lived on “donnatime.” I’d entertained myself as a child by reading, but now I was unable to read a paragraph in a book, close my eyes, and remember anything I had just read. I felt trapped, useless, and discarded. I realized through trial and error that physical, mental, or emotional stress triggered memory lapses. This was something I would have to learn to cope with. It wasn’t going to go away.
One colorful morning in October 1992, at Wayne’s invitation, I was to join him, his wife Cindy, and his youngest daughter, Samantha, to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Moving Vietnam Wall. It was a miniature of the actual Memorial in Washington, D.C. My first time to see the Moving Wall, I anticipated taking my niece, Janet, with me. Although in elementary school, she was very interested in the Vietnam War, and had always asked thoughtful questions about the POW/MIAs.
The phone rang; Randy called to tell me Uncle Bouler had died during the night. Ill at seventy-three, his demise was somewhat expected, but his death still hurt. A strong tie to Mama, Daddy, and Jerry, he was one of the few people left in my life who shared the same memories. Ultimately, I decided there wouldn’t be a better place to grieve Uncle Bouler than a veteran’s memorial. At Ft. Steer, I immediately told Wayne about Uncle Bouler’s passing. They had grown fond of each other over the years. My friend tried to console me, but well-meant platitudes didn’t work for me anymore. I had lost too many people to find comfort in mere words. Wayne helped me to find Jerry’s name on panel 35E. Under the circumstances, I’m sure he expected me to cry, but all I felt was anger and loss. How could a name on a wall make me feel better? I didn’t know if my brother’s name even belonged on a memorial honoring those killed in Vietnam. Where in the hell was Jerry anyway?
I began to think about what the future held for me. I decided I should return to school. I didn’t own a computer, but I longed to learn how to use one so I could research Case 1000 on the internet. My insurance caseworker arranged a vocational evaluation at a neurologic rehabilitation center. While a patient at the center, the divorce became final. I was truly on this bizarre trip alone. Evaluated by a neuropsychologist led transdisciplinary team, they informed me there were many barriers to overcome. I thought they would tell me something I didn’t already know.
It was difficult, if not impossible, to focus on the POW/MIA issue at this time in my life. Without enough attention span to comprehend a thirty-second commercial, I couldn’t even enjoy television. News reports on the Senate POW/MIA hearings only upset me when I tried to watch and understand. The POW/MIA issue went on the backburner. My inability to search for Jerry, skeptical political investigations, not to mention the twists and turns in my own life, troubled me a great deal. I could do little to remedy the situation. No one understood; how could they? Because of an invisible wound, I felt alone and forgotten. When I linked the emotional similarities to what my brother might be feeling somewhere on the other side of the world, I realized I wasn’t ready to give up on Jerry...not yet.
Cell in Lao Bao Prison, 2003
Chapter nineteen
Whitewash
It was late 1998 before I could afford a computer and log onto the Internet from my home. I backtracked and researched in detail the actions of the U.S. Senate Select Committee (SSC) on POW/MIA Affairs. What I gleaned from online resources, although not surprising, was certainly disheartening.
The SSC, tasked with finding Americans missing from World War II, the Korean War, and the Cold War, formed in October 1991. Senator John Kerry [D-MA] was Chairman, and Senator Robert Smith [R-NH] Vice-Chairman. SSC members had the unprecedented opportunity to answer one question: Were American prisoners left behind in Southeast Asia?
The stakes
were high; at risk were the lives of any living POWs, and the faith of the American public in its government. Prior to creation of the Committee a poll taken by the Wall Street Journal found that sixty-nine percent of Americans believed U.S. servicemen were still being held against their will. Of those polled, three-fourths felt the U.S. Government was not doing enough to bring the prisoners home.
The SSC had fifteen months, access to both classified and unclassified documents, and two million dollars to conduct their investigation. The SSCs short lifespan left no time for “a learning curve.” Staffers Jon Holstine, William LeGro, John McCreary, and Harold Nicklas were convinced that there were live POWs left behind and were dedicated to the resolution of questions about American’s POW/MIAs.
Robert Sheetz, Chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s POWMIA Office, provided statistics on the number of live sightings received by DIA from 1979 to August 1992, for a total of 1,426 firsthand live sightings, with one hundred eight unresolved. Committee investigators identified nineteen reported sightings of American POWs in and around Son La, North Vietnam area. Nine were first-hand reports; ten were hearsay, with thirteen of the sightings reported in the mid-to-late ‘70s.
In 1976, a year after the end of the war, one U.S. POW was reportedly seen cutting bamboo, another source spotted a group of sixty to seventy POWs on a soccer field, and six American’s reportedly had been forced to work as slave labor. In 1977, a report surfaced which claimed twenty-four foreigners under guard were spotted; another statement documented a sighting of forty to fifty Americans in a camp, and a hearsay report which indicated Americans were about to be moved also came to light. In 1978 and ‘79, there were four sightings of groups of thirty to fifty POWs in the Son La area.
Individuals who claimed to have worked as guards or as prison trustees in the Viengxay area of Laos made thirty-five post-war reports of American POWs between the 1970s and 1986. Generally, the reports cited small numbers of American prisoners held separate from other prisoners, although three reports from the ‘80s cited more than two-hundred POWs.
In the Oudamsai region of northern Laos there had been thirty reported sightings of American POWs following the end of Operation Homecoming in 1973 up to 1989, generally by Lao prisoners on work details or providing services to one of the five prisons in the area. Six were first-hand sightings of Americans in caves or camps, the rest were determined to be hearsay. Reports from the ‘70s generally referred to fewer than ten American POWs in the area, and three reports between ‘86 and ‘89 cited between sixteen to twenty-one POWs.
Some members of the SSC felt the number and detail of live-sighting reports were clear evidence American POWs were still in captivity after the war, while other members believed the large numbers of reports didn’t necessarily mean anything, especially if there were powerful reasons to discredit each of the reports. The SSC received information from a Secret Service Agent that he had overheard a discussion in the White House that the Reagan Administration may have received an offer from Vietnam in 1981, transmitted through a third country, to exchange live POWs for $4.5 billion. The Agent was not willing to provide testimony to the Committee voluntarily. The Committee voted seven to four not to subpoena that testimony, reason unknown, unless justice is deaf as well as blind.
National Security Agency analyst Jerry Mooney, while assigned to the Vietnam branch of NSA, maintained detailed files concerning losses of U.S. aircraft and the names of downed crewmembers. Mooney alleged the U.S. government knowingly abandoned hundreds of American prisoners in Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War. He allowed SSC investigators along with NSA officials to review extensive information he had collected and reconstructed from memory, but because NSA failed to locate files related specifically to tracking POWs for investigators, it was deemed impossible to check his recollections against his Vietnam War-era information.
In 1991, a six-month investigation conducted by Edward Tivnan, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times Magazine turned up intelligence sources who confirmed Mooney’s “intellectual musings.” Another former NSA analyst, retired air-defense specialist Terrell A. Minarcin, came forward with his own stories about American POWs held after the war ended, and how Soviet intelligence sources admitted the Russians interrogated American POWs.
Symbols and markings, identified using overhead reconnaissance photography, might have been attempts by American POWs to communicate their location to U.S. intelligence collectors. These possible distress symbols span a period from 1973 to 1992. One such symbol popped up in January 1988, when 13.5’ × 37.5’ letters spelling out USA appeared in CIA aerial surveillance of drug cultivation in Laos. Underneath the letters was an image, possibly a “walking K,” the signal for “pilot down here.” DIA “sat on” the investigation for four years because prior to April 1992, analysts were not tasked to search for such information.
An investigation team interviewed a thirty-nine-year old opium addict introduced as the owner of the rice field in Ban Houey Hin Dam village. The Hmong Montagnard said his sons had made the symbol and had also drawn a “stick airplane.” The sons were also questioned, and told investigators relatives in the U.S. often printed a large U-S-A on letters sent from North America. They had decided to duplicate the symbol in the field by stacking rice straw in the shape of U-S-A and setting it ablaze. Although father and sons were not polygraphed, their explanation satisfied the investigation team—case closed. closed. However, in former DPMO analyst Warren Gray’s opinion, there was no way anyone could stack rice shocks in a field covered with straw and burn it in the shape of a huge U-S-A symbol without torching the hundreds of tall, dry, brittle rice fields in the same Laotian valley.
In September 1942, Eugene Tighe enlisted in the U.S. Army, and after discharge, enlisted with the U.S. Air Force in August 1950 as an intelligence officer. In June 1977, the president appointed General Tighe director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a position he held until 1981. Tighe headed a Pentagon panel in 1986, which concluded after a five-month review of intelligence files, that American prisoners of war were “possibly” still alive in Vietnam, as well as other parts of Southeast Asia. He said at the time that his panel could not say how many of the missing Americans were alive. In February 1992, Tighe told SSC investigators he had immediately noticed the lack of men that returned from Laos in 1973. “He and others had convictions from photography and other sources that there were quite a large number of live Americans in Laos.” It did not make sense to him that if a POW went down on the Vietnam side of the border they came home, but if captured on the Lao side they did not return. This caused him to think there were two sets of prisoners. Tighe’s certainty in this regard became much stronger when the “boat” people began to come out with correlative reports and passed lie detector tests. Although he initiated the use of polygraphs, Tighe felt it “scared refugees and probably kept some from coming forward.” He believed, “There are two ways to get proof for the POW/MIA issue. One is to declare war and go back into Vietnam, the second is to establish a cooperative relationship with the Vietnamese.”
On April 8, 1992, the briefing text was presented to Senior Staff members and their designees. Objections to the text by the designee’s prompted Staff Director Frances Zwenig to order everyone present to leave their copies of the briefing text in the room. The next day Senator John McCain produced a copy of the purportedly secured intelligence briefing text. He strongly disagreed with the content, which concluded some live POWs had been left behind, and made an accusation that the briefing text had already been leaked to a POW/MIA activist. When Chairman John Kerry reassured him that was not the case, McCain replied he was certain it would be. Kerry reassured McCain there would be no leaks because all the copies would be collected and destroyed. Kerry ordered the destruction of “all copies” of the staff intelligence briefing text. Zwenig complied with the destruction order. She told staff investigator John McCreary during a phone conversation she had been “acting under orders,” and had also been instruct
ed to delete all computer files, which Barry Valentine witnessed.
On April 15, the Senate Select Committee intelligence investigators advised William Codinha of their concern about the possibility they had committed a crime by participating in the destruction of the briefing text. Codinha downplayed the significance of the documents, and of their destruction. He reprimanded the investigators for “making a mountain out of a molehill,” and replied to their concerns by asking, “Who’s the injured party?”
“The 2,494 families of the unaccounted for U.S. servicemen, among others,” the investigators told him.
“Who’s gonna tell them? It’s classified,” he responded. Codinha gave no indication any copies of the intelligence briefing text still existed. The investigators decided they needed appointment of independent counsel. Six investigators signed the request, and delivered it to Codinha the next day. Kerry called a meeting for 8:30 PM that night. Kerry said he gave the order to destroy the documents, not Zwenig, that none of the Senators present at the meeting had objected. Both Zwenig and Codinha supported a claim that the original briefing text had been deposited with the Office of Senate Security “all along.” The issue was “moot.”
Six months later, on October 30, 1992, McCreary issued a Memorandum for the Record regarding “Obstruction of the Investigation.” He was concerned the investigation had been seriously compromised by Zwenig leaking sensitive information to DoD, which interfered with useful witnesses and endangered lives, particularly Jan Senja. Senja, a retired MG in the Czechoslovakian Army, defected from a high-level position in the Ministry of Defense in 1968, and had become an employee of DIA. He testified in a deposition to the Committee that American POWs were transported from Southeast Asia to the Soviet Union. Senja said he had personal knowledge of the transfer of up to ninety POWs through Prague.
Keeping the Promise: The Story of MIA Jerry Elliott, a Family Shattered by His Disappearance, and a Sister's 40-Year Search for the Truth Page 18