Friday, April 17, 2015 6:27:17 PM
With obummer normalizing relations with abnormal Cubans, a story by Michael Benge about Cuban involvement with the North Vietnamese during the war is circulating.
Benge was a POW who continued researching and advocating for POW/MIA return after the war. His story tells of communist involvement by Cubans and Russians in torturing and attempting to turn or exploit our captured servicemen. The story below talks of communist funding and Cuban training of American Anti-War activists such as those from Jane Fonda’s following.
This story is appalling. The claims Benge makes are so horrific, I tried to verify them. I found an online copy of Benge’s testimony to a Senate Select Committee in 1999 which is identical in many respects to the report I was forwarded. While a man may invent stories for several self-indulgent reasons, I doubt that same man would carry things as far as perjuring himself in Congress. A prevaricator would lighten the story to minimize his exposure to charges. Benge’s story didn’t change. I think Benge’s evidence is accurate.
The original copy of Benge’s lengthy report plus his testimony to the Senate from 1999 are both copied below along with his biography. Benge is real and I believe his report is as well.
The goal of the Cuban Program described below makes you wonder, how much infiltration is still going on in America and at what levels. Certainly, Occupy Wall St had communist backing. What about Ferguson? What about obama normalizing relations with Cuba. What does he get? He can’t want lessons in how to be a commie; he already has that role nailed. Maybe he needs training in How to Run a Dictatorship.
Warning: The descriptions of some of the atrocities our POWs were subjected to is graphic and sickening.
Bill Metz – Dakota Dunes, SD Cuban War Crimes Against American POWs by Michael D. Benge During the Vietnam War*
Cuban officials, under diplomatic cover in Hanoi during the Vietnam War, brutally tortured and killed American POWs whom they beat senseless in a research program "sanctioned by the North Vietnamese."(1) This was dubbed the "Cuba Program" by the Department of Defense (DOD) and the CIA, and it involved 19 American POWs (some reposts state 20). Recent declassified secret CIA and DOD intelligence documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal the extent of Cuba's involvement with American POWs captured in Vietnam. A Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report states that "The objective of the interrogators was to obtain the total submission of the prisoners..."(2)
According to former POW Air Force Colonel Donald "Digger" Odell, "two POWs left behind in the camp were 'broken' but alive when he and other prisoners were released [1973 Operation Homecoming]. ... They were too severely tortured by Cuban interrogators" to be released. The Vietnamese didn't want the world to see what they had done to them."(3)
POWs released during "Operation Homecoming" in 1973 "were told not to talk about third-country interrogations. .... This thing is very sensitive with all kinds of diplomatic ramifications."(4) Hence, the torture and murder of American POWs by the Cubans was swept under the rug by the U.S. Government.
The "Cuban Program"
The "Cuban Program" was initiated around August 1967 at the Cu Loc POW camp known as "The Zoo", a former French movie studio on the southwestern edge of Hanoi. The American POWs gave their Cuban torturers the names "Fidel," "Chico," "Pancho" and "Garcia." The Vietnamese camp commander was given the name "The Lump" because of a fatty tumor growth in the middle of his forehead.
Intelligence and debriefing reports reveal that testing "torture methods were of primary interest" of the "Cuban Program." The Cuban leader of the "Cuban Program" ["Fidel"] was described in debriefing reports as "a professional interrogator," and a second team member was described as looking like a Czech ["Chico"]. "The Cubans has (sic) the authority to order NVNS [North Vietnamese] to torture American PWs [POWs]." The Vietnamese "catered" to the Cubans. (5)
________________
*Research conducted for the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Missing Servicemen by Board Member and former Vietnam POW Mike Benge.
According to a 20 January 1976 deposition, Marge Van Beck of DIA/DI, Resources and Installation Division, MIA/PW Branch, states that she was told by the "Air Force that the CIA had identified FIDEL."(6) Since the CIA and the FBI has not released all documentation relevant to the "Cuban Program", there were no copies of any photographs accompanying the Defense Department's September 11, 1996, report to Congress, Cuban Program Information.(5)
Several other documents corroborate that the CIA analysts identified two Cuban military attaches, Eduardo Morjon Esteves and Luis Perez Jaen, who had backgrounds that seemed to correspond with information on "Fidel" and "Chico" supplied by returning POWs. (7) Reportedly, in 1977-78, Esteves served under diplomatic cover as a brigadier general at the United Nations in New York and no attempt was made to either arrest or expel him.(8)
However, unless the Cubans were overconfident, it is highly unlikely that those who participated in the "Cuban Program" would have used their actual names when they went to Vietnam, since it is standard practice in undercover operations to use new identities.
According to an expert on Cuba, "Fidel's" profile fits that of Cuban Dr. Miguel Angel Bustamente-O'Leary, President of the Cuban Medical Association. [DPMO's compilation lists a Professor Jose Bustamante, who was the president of the Pan-American Medical Confederation.] Dr. Miguel Bustamente is said to be an expert at extracting confessions through torture and he was compared to Nazi Dr. Joseph Mengale. (9)
"Chico's" profile fits that of Major Fernando VECINO Alegret, described in two intelligence reports as being "un-Cuban in appearance makes [sic] one wonder if he was a Cuban, or a block officer (possible Czech) in Cuban uniform." "He has studied in the USSR," and "...his Spanish...does not sound like Cuban Spanish." He was active in the Rebel Youth Association (AJR) and Union of Young Communists (UYC). (5b) His background would give him a natural tie-in to the international communist youth training center and the Vietnamese interrogation center in Cuba. It would also explain the observation of and participation in the "Cuban Program" by young Vietnamese officer trainees (see below).
According to POW debriefing reports, "The Lump" told a group of POWs that the 'Cuban Program'...was a Hanoi University Psychological Study."(5c) [Also see section on Vietnamese and Soviet Bloc Research on American POWs]
The torture and murder of American POWs in Vietnam by Cubans sets an unconscionable precedent and is in direct violation of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War that the North Vietnamese communists signed.
The Beatings
"Fidel" called one of the American POWs the "Faker". However, he wasn't faking it. He was one of the three American POWs who had already been beaten senseless by "Fidel" and his cohorts.
The sight of the prisoner stunned Bomar, he stood transfixed, trying to make himself believe that human beings could so batter another human being. The man could barely walk; he shuffled slowly, painfully. His clothes were torn to shreds. He was bleeding everywhere, terribly swollen, and a dirty, yellowish black and purple from head to toe. The man's head was down; he made no attempt to look at anyone. He had been through much more than the day's beatings. His body was ripped and torn everywhere; "hell- cuffs" appeared almost to have severed the wrists, strap marks still wound around the arms all the way to the shoulders, slivers of bamboo were embedded in the bloodied shins and there were what appeared to be tread marks from the hose across the chest, back and legs. Fidel smashed a fist into the man's face, driving him against the wall. Then he was brought to the center of the room and made to get down onto his knees. Screaming in rage, Fidel took a length of rubber hose from a guard and lashed it as hard as he could into the man's face. The prisoner did not react; he did not cry out or even blink an eye. Again and again, a dozen times, smashed the man's face with the hose. He was never released. (10)
Air Force ace Major James Kasler was also tortured by "Fidel" for days on end during June 1968. "Fidel" beat Kasler across the buttocks with a large truck fan belt until "he tore my rear end to shreds." For one three-day period, Kasler was beaten with the fan belt every hour from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. and kept awake at night. "My mouth was so bruised that I could not open my teeth for five days." After one beating, Kasler's buttocks, lower back, and legs hung in shreds. The skin had been entirely whipped away and the area was a bluish, purplish, greenish mass of bloody raw meat. (11)
DPMO's Evaluation
The "Cuban Program" was evaluated by two of the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office's (DPMO) chief analysts Robert Destatte and Chuck Towbridge. In an email to Commander Chip Beck, an intelligence officer who at the time was working at DPMO, Destatte said he had concluded that the "Cuban Program" was nothing more than a program "to provide instruction in basic English to PAVN [North Vietnamese Army] personnel working with American prisoners."(12) According to Destatte, it was an English language program that had gone awry.
Destatte also has the audacity to claim that the Vietnamese were unaware of the "Cuban Program," and it was stopped once the Vietnamese found out that "Fidel" and the others were torturing the American POWs. However, the evidence that Destatte studied in compiling the report to Congress belies his assertion. It is very clear from the POWs' debriefing reports that the camp commander, "The Lump", guards and various other Vietnamese cadre were present during torture sessions.
Destatte also professes, "The Vietnamese explanation is plausible and fully consistent with what we know about the conduct of the Cubans in question..."(12) And how had Destatte reached his conclusion? Destatte asked the North Vietnamese communists, and this is what they told him! These are the very same people who broke every agreement they made with the United States, and who systematically murdered over 80,000 political prisoners after the communist takeover of South Viet Nam in 1975. A military historian once told Commander Beck not to underestimate "dumb," and Beck said Destatte would have to be brain-dead, however, to be that dumb.(13)
It is evident that DOD's analysis of the "Cuban Program" is incomplete for it did not examine the possible link to a Hanoi University research study, nor was there any investigation of Cuba's role in maintaining the Ho Chi Minh Trail where numerous American servicemen were captured. In early 1999, DPMO's chief, Bob Jones, told members of the organizations representing the families of POW/MIAs that he had proposed a meeting among Vietnam, Laos and Cambodian officials to discuss the fate of American POW/MIAs. The author, representing the National Alliance of Families, suggested that Cuba should also be invited to participate, since they were responsible for the "Cuban Program" as well as for maintaining a good share of the Ho Chi Minh Trail where many servicemen became MIA. Jones retorted that my suggestion was ridiculous for there was no evidence that the Cubans were ever involved. ["See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil," author.]
Other Cuban Involvement With POWs
Documents reveal that Cubans not only tortured and killed a number of American POWs in Vietnam, but may have also taken several POWs to Cuba in the mid-1960s. The POWs, mostly pilots, were reportedly imprisoned in Las Maristas, a secret Cuban prison run by Castro's G-2 intelligence service. The source of this information reportedly was debriefed by the FBI; however, this debriefing report was not in DPMO's report to Congress, and no evidence has surfaced that there was any other follow up. (14)
According to a February 1971 State Department cable, a former aide to Fidel Castro offered "...to ransom POWs in NVN [North Viet Nam] through the Castro Government." The cable concluded, "Propose doing nothing further unless advised."(15) Evidently no advice was forthcoming, and there is no evidence of any other agency investigating this matter.
One intelligence source reportedly interviewed "Fidel", "Chico" and "Pancho" after they returned from Hanoi to Cuba and said they claimed that their real job was to act as gate-keepers to select American POWs who could aid international communism. (16)
According to a DIA "asset", Hanoi made "a political investment in all cases where prisoners [could] be ideologically turned around in order to someday serve its designs in behalf of international communism."(17) This is corroborated by several other intelligence reports. One, a CIA briefing memo, reveals that "As of September 1967 [redacted] a great deal of proselytizing of American pilots was being carried out in an effort to try to convince them to go to other communist countries as advisors. [redacted] This was disclosed during an official Party briefing [redacted]. The North Vietnamese claimed the communist countries needed the advice of American pilots to counter any attack which the U.S. might make against the communist countries."(18) This was the same time period that the "Cuban Program" was in full operation.
Those Americans targeted for selection by the communists as "advisors" for the communist countries would have been the highly-skilled pilots and electronic warfare back-seaters, skills highly prized by Soviet Bloc countries. The reported American POWs ("pilots") reported to have been held in Las Maristas prison in Cuba could have been some of these highly skilled people, who would have been prized assets for communist Cuba.
DPMO's analyst Bob Destatte wrongly concluded that the "Cuban Program" was terminated by the Vietnamese in August 1968 because of "Fidel's" excesses in torturing the American POWs. This is far from the truth, for the Vietnamese communists routinely continued to torture American POWs in other camps long after the "program" was terminated.
Besides being part of a medical study linked to the University in Hanoi, Cuba was carrying out an aggressive propaganda campaign and other subversive activities against the U.S. According to the Cuban paper El Mundo, in August 1968, Professor Miguel A. D'Estafano, who headed the Cuban Solidarity with Vietnam Committee, "prolonged his stay in the DRV to complete a program with various organizations and institutions to collect extensive information that can serve as the basis for the second symposium against genocide in Vietnam..." According to POW debriefings, a Cuban (presumably D'Estafano) showed up at the Zoo during that time and "Fidel," "Chico" and "Pancho" left with him. Their return was timed so they could prepare a presentation for the communist international Second Symposium Against Yankee Genocide in Vietnam held in Cuba, October 18-21, 1968.(19) There, films and tapes were shown of the research on American POWs in the "Cuban Program" that served to boost the morale of the communists that the war in Vietnam was being won.(1) [Similar to the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal "kangaroo court" and "dog and pony show" held in Denmark in July 1967.(20)]
"Fidel", "Chico" and "Pancho" weren't the only Cubans who were involved with American POWs. As part of their propaganda program, Dr. Fernando Barral, a Spanish-born psychologist, interviewed Lt. Cmdr. John Sidney McCain Jr. (now a U.S. Senator) for an article published in Cuba's house-organ Granma on January 24, 1970. (21) Barral was a card-carrying communist international residing in Cuba and traveling on a Cuban passport.
Cubans on the Ho Chi Minh Trail
The Cubans were heavily involved in the Vietnam war. Cuba had a very large contingent of combat engineers, the Giron Brigade, that was responsible for maintaining a large section of the "Ho Chi Minh Trail;" the supply line running from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia to South Vietnam. The contingent was so large that Cuba had to establish a consulate in the jungle. (22)
A large number of American personnel serving in both Vietnam and Laos were either captured or killed along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and in all likelihood, many by the Cubans. One National Security Agency SigNet report states that 18 American POWs "are being detained at the Phom Thong Camp..." in Laos, and "...are being closely guarded by Soviet and Cuban personnel with Vietnamese soldiers outside the camp."(23)
Cubans and Other POWs
According to CIA documents Cuban communist party committee members, Cuban "journalists" Raul Valdes Vivo and Marta Rojas Rodriguez, "visited liberated areas of South Vietnam where they interviewed [interrogated] U.S. prisoners of war being held by the Viet Cong."(24) [Many of the American POWs held in the South Viet Nam, were in fact under the command-control of the North Vietnamese's Enemy Proselytizing Bureau, but temporarily farmed-out to Viet Cong.] Rojas told of her "interviewing" American POWS in South Viet Nam at the Bertram Russel mock war crimes tribunal in Denmark in 1967.(20) Photographs of some of the POWs, and related articles, appeared in Cuban and various other communist media. American POWs Charles Crafts, Smith, McClure, Schumann and Cook were among those interviewed and photographed by Rojas and Vivo. This leads one to ask, "Why hasn't DOD pursued questioning Cubans about the fate of American POWs?"
One POW camp holding a large number of Americans was located about 100 km from the Chinese border between Monkai and Laokai, (an area where Cuban engineers were constructing military installations after 1975). According to an intelligence source, "one day the camp just disappeared, guards and all". (25) [also see End Notes]
The disappearance of American POWs near the Cuban facilities at Monkai and Laokai wasn't an isolated incident. American POWs also disappeared in the vicinity of two other Cuban installations. One American POW camp, located at "Work Site 5" (Cong Truong) just north of the DMZ, was adjacent to a Cuban field hospital that Fidel Castro visited in 1972. None of the POWs held in that camp were ever released, including black American aviator Lt. Clemmie McKinney. McKinney was shot down in April 1972, approximately the same time as Castro's visit. McKinney's remains were returned on August 14, 1985. The Vietnamese claim that McKinney died in November 1972; however, "A CILHI (U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii) forensic anthropologist states his opinion as to time of death as not earlier than 1975 and probably several years later."(26) Had McKinney been a guest of the real "Fidel" to be exploited by Castro's G-2 at Las Maristas and later returned to Vietnam?
Another Cuban installation was near Ba Vi, where numerous sightings of "white buffalos" [i.e., American POWs] were made by South Vietnamese undergoing "reeducation" in the North. According to one of the recently returned Vietnamese 34-A commandos, he saw 60 American POWs at the Thanh Tri Prison complex in 1969. (27) Also in the same prison complex were approximately 100 French and Moroccan POWs captured in the early 1950s. Later the French and Moroccans were transferred to the Ba Vi Prison complex near the Cuban facility. There were a small number of American POWs held for a while in a section of the Thanh Tri Prison complex, appropriately dubbed "Skidrow". However, they numbered about 20, not 60, and none had been held with French and/or Moroccan POWs. [see End Notes]
The commando's report corroborates numerous other similar sightings; however, DPMO has made a conscious effort to discredit all of these reports--although from unrelated sources and too numerous to ignore.
Other Cuban Involvement
Several reports indicate that Cubans were piloting MIGs in aerial combat with American pilots over North Vietnam. One American advisor flying in an H-34 used a M-79 grenade launcher to shoot down a Cuban flying a biplane in Northern Laos. (28)
This was the same kind of plane used in the attack against Lima Site 85--the top-secret base in Laos providing guidance for American planes in the bombing of North Vietnam.
The involvement with American POWs was just a part of Cuba's long history of commitment to assist the Vietnamese communists, and just another chapter in their role as "communist internationals" on behalf of the Soviet Union. The Cubans first showed up in Vietnam not too many years after they consolidated power on their own island in the early 1960s. Soon after, the Cubans soon began operating en masse alongside their Vietnamese brethren. They even accompanied the North Vietnamese through the gates of the South Vietnamese Presidential Palace in Saigon on April 29, 1975.(21) However, the Cuban's assistance to the North Vietnamese continued well beyond 1975.
Raul Valdes Vivo: The creditation of Raul Valdes Vivo as a journalist, however, was only a cover, for he was in fact a DGI (Cuban Intelligence) officer and a high-ranking Cuban communist party member. [Latinos often hyphenate their last name in recognization of the matrilineal side of the family. Therefore, the last name of Raul Valdes Vivo (Valdes-Vivo), may in fact be Valdes. However, he will be referred to as Vivo in this paper.] In his book, El Gran Secreto: Cubanos en el Camino Ho Chi Minh, Vivo wrote that he first met Marta Rojas in 1965 at a Cuban Communist party meeting. Vivo was the Cuban communist party representative to the Indochinese communist party from 1965 thru 1974. (21)
Vivo claims to have established a Cuban embassy in the jungle in Vietnam in South Viet Nam in 1969. The truth is Vivo was attached to the Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN), the central command for North Vietnam's operations in South Vietnam, which was located well inside Cambodia. Much to the chagrin of the Vietnamese, Vivo was assigned to COSVN upon the insistency of Raul Castro, Fidel's brother, who was head of the Cuban armed forces. The Vietnamese reluctantly acquiesced, since Cuba was supplying several thousand soldiers to build, maintain and guard a sizeable portion of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and providing a large amount of other "technical" and material assistance. COSVN was in fact a front for a front. [For propaganda purposes, the North Vietnamese maintained that COSVN was the headquarters for the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF), a political arm of the Viet Cong. However, in fact, the NLF was a "front" for Hanoi, and COSVN was entirely controlled by the North Vietnamese. It was the North Vietnamese headquarters for staging and directing operations into South Vietnam.]
During a reception in Cuba for a high-ranking Vietnamese communist party official, in a loud voice, Castro chided Vivo for not inviting him to "his embassy." In fact, Castro wasn't at all chiding Vivo, for the barb was aimed at the North Vietnamese for not inviting Castro to COSVN headquarters in Cambodia. Vivo responded by telling Castro the difficulty in accessing "his embassy" after Cambodian General Lon Nol's coup d'etat 1970, indicating that Castro's safety in Cambodia could not be assured. Vivo was evidently in charge of Cuban intelligence in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Initially, the soviet-block subversion of Cambodia was coordinated by the Cubans out of the Cuban embassy in Phnom Penh. After General Lon Nol took over in 1970, the intelligence staff of the Cuban Embassy in Phnom Penh was moved into Hanoi along with a core of Vietnamese trained high-ranking Khmer Rouge officials to form a "Cambodian government in exile." In another section of his book, Vivo refers to himself as the Cuban Ambassador "in" Hanoi in 1971.
Later in his book, Vivo says that Cubans were with the North Vietnamese communists in 1975 when they took over Saigon, "although a modest presence." These statements are very important, for historians have yet to admit the extent of the involvement of Cuba and the other Soviet-Bloc in the directing the Vietnam War as part of the "communist international."
Vietnamese in Cuba
While a POW in Hanoi, I was interrogated by "The Lump" and another individual who had a Spanish accent. After learning about the "Cuban Program" upon release, I assumed the person with the Spanish accent might have been "Fidel." After my release in 1973, I identified "The Lump" in a photograph taken in Cuba shown to me by a member of a Congressional committee. In the picture, "The Lump" was with a U.S. anti-war contingent. I was told that he had been identified by intelligence agents as being responsible for funneling KGB money to the American anti-war groups, such as those that Jane Fonda led.(9)
The foreign affairs element of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, code named "CP-72," was positioned only 90 miles off the coast of Florida during the war and their personnel worked closely with the Cuban Government in manipulating the anti-war movement in the United States. Many of the propaganda themes directed at influencing groups in the United States were developed from information gathered by "CP-72" and was fed to the Cuban interrogation experts who were involved in exploiting American POWS in Vietnam for propaganda. (29).
Also, CIA and DIA reports reveal the operation of an international communist youth training center southeast of Santiago de Cuba in the mid-and-late 1960s. The young people, many of whom were blacks and Vietnamese, were being trained for subversive operations against the United States. One intelligence source reported that many of these young people were children of French soldiers who had either defected to the Vietnamese communists during the French Indochina or were children of French forces who were POWs and still held by the Hanoi communists. Reportedly, they had been given Vietnamese wives, and the children were taken away from their parents at a very young age and sent to communist youth camps similar to those in the Soviet Union and "Hitler's Children" in Nazi Germany. (30)
According to a DIA source, their control officer was Jesus Jiminez Escobar. "The students (agents) were to be infiltrated into the United States through normal airlift channels and would be claimed by relatives on their arrival." "Their subversive activities against the United States would include sabotage in connection with race riots..."16 Another DIA source said that "the 5th contingent was infiltrated into the U.S. from Canada through Calais, Maine."17
The same source said that DIA also monitored a center in Cuba during the same period where Vietnamese were being trained by the Cubans in POW interrogation methods. "Fidel", "Chico", and the other Cubans associated with the "Cuban Program" in Hanoi in all likelihood may have been staff associated with this center. Maj. Fernando Vecino Alegret, "Chico", has an extensive background in youth movements. This presumption is strengthened by the debriefing reports of American POWs who were in the "Cuban Program." They reported that "a large number of VN officer trainees" came to the camp, and the Cubans "Conducted interrogation training, using [American] POWs."[DPMO] The trainees were estimated to be approximately 20 years of age. One would logically assume that this was in-service training of Vietnamese graduates from the training camp in Cuba.
Vietnamese and Soviet Bloc Research on American POWs
The Cubans used standard scientific methodologies in selecting American POWs for the "Cuban Program;" i.e., random selection with a control group. Everett Alvarez was initially interviewed for the "Program" but was disqualified purportedly because he was of Spanish decent and presumed to speak Spanish. (5)
A 1975 secret CIA counterintelligence study states that the Medical Office of Hanoi's Ministry of Public Security (MPSMO) was responsible for "preparing studies and performing research on the most effective Soviet, French, communist Chinese and other...techniques..." of extracting information from POWs. The MPSMO "...supervised the use of torture and the use of drugs to induce [American] prisoners to cooperate." MPSMO's functions also "...included working with Soviet and Communist Chinese intelligence advisors who were qualified in the use of medical techniques for intelligence purposes. .... The Soviets and Chinese...were... interested in research studies on the reactions of American prisoners to various psychological and medical techniques..."(32)
The "Cuban Program" in Vietnam parallels that of a similar Soviet program in Korea according to congressional testimony on September 17, 1996 by General Jan Sejana, the highest ranking defector from the Soviet Block during the "Cold War."(33) After defecting, Sejana worked for years as a top-secret analyst for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. According to Gen. Sejana, “Americans were used to test physiological and psychological endurance and various mind control drugs. Moscow ordered Czechoslovakia to build a hospital in North Korea for the experiments [on American POWs] there." As in North Korean, Soviet, East German, Czechoslovakian and Cuban "medical specialists" were assigned to the top-secret "Hospital 198" in Hanoi where American POWs were believed to have been taken for "treatment".(34) This would have been the hospital where at least one of the American POWs in the "Cuban Program" was taken for shock treatment.[35]
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Gen. Sejana had been in charge of communist Czechoslovakia's Defense Council Secretariat, and from 1964 on, First Secretary at the Ministry of Defense. In his various official capacities, he was constantly meeting with Soviet officials, receiving instructions, and relaying those instructions to various Czech agencies and departments. "At the beginning of the Korean War, we received directions from Moscow to build a military hospital in North Korea. ..... The Top Secret purpose of the hospital was to experiment on American and South Korean POWs. .... It was very important to the Soviet plans because they believed it was essential to understand the manner in which different drugs...affected different races and people who had been brought up differently; for example on better diets. .... Because America was the main enemy, American POWs were the most highly valued experimental subjects. .... I want to point out that the same things happened in Vietnam and Laos during the Vietnam War. The only difference is the operation in Vietnam was better planned and more American POWs were used, both in Vietnam and Laos and in the Soviet Union."
Several sets of remains of American servicemen repatriated from Vietnam evidenced that they were of POWs who had suffered severe and depraved conditions long after the purported release of all POWs in 1973. The skull of one had been sawn open, evidence of an autopsy as part of an experiment common to Soviet-style research on the effect of certain drugs on the brain. (36)
Cuba's End Game in Vietnam
According to a DIA "asset", after the signing of the cease-fire on January 21, 1973, 4,000 Cuban army engineers arrived in Hanoi. They helped rebuild the Phuc Yen/Da Phuc Airfield North of Hanoi where, according to intelligence reports, American POWs were used as technicians after the war. Later, the Cubans disappeared into the mountains of the north and constructed and equipped secret bases about 100 km from the Chinese border between Monkai and Laokai. Here, the Soviets equipped the bases with mobile launch ramps, medium-range strategic missiles, possibly with tactical nuclear warheads, capable of hitting population centers in the southern part of China. (17) This is the same area where the above mentioned POW camp containing American prisoners "disappeared, guards and all."(25)
Units of this same Cuban engineering contingent were building the airfield in Grenada when Americans overran the island. U.S. military intelligence captured reams of documents and photographs relating to this unit's operations in Vietnam. However, no evidence has surfaced that these documents were ever analyzed for information on POWs by DPMO or any intelligence agency.
In the spirit of communist solidarity, Hanoi reciprocated for Cuba's assistance during the Vietnam war by sending U.S. arms and ammunition, captured in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, to South America to fuel the "revolution" directed by the Cubans there.
As agents of the Soviets, and continuing their belief in the communist international, the Cuban government expanded its role in the communist international.
The Cubans sent troops to Angola. In 1975, Vivo again surfaces in Angola posing as a journalist. Vivo "interviewed" western mercenaries who were put on trail in a "kangaroo court" in yet another slanted propaganda coup against the U.S. One of the mercenaries was an American who's body has yet to be recovered. (13)
Evidently, Cuba's partnership with Vietnam in subversive activities against the U.S. has continued. In 1996, Jane's Defense Weekly reported that "Vietnam has been training Cuban Special Forces troops to undertake limited attacks in the USA... .... Havana's strategy in pursuing such training is to attack the staging and supply areas for U.S. forces preparing to invade Cuba. .... The training program is focused on seaborne and underwater operations, roughly comparable to those assigned to U.S. Navy Seals. .... The political objective would be to bring the reality of warfare to the American public and so exert domestic pressure on Washington."(37)
Vietnam and Cuba are closely linked by their belief in exporting international communism. Hanoi praised Cuba for its shoot down of two American planes and denounced the Helms-Burton Bill as "Insolent!" Hanoi recently reaffirmed the unswerving solidarity of the communist party, the government and people of Vietnam with the Cuban revolution. (38)
Conclusion
The behavior of "Fidel", "Chico" and "Pancho" in the torture and murder of Americans is beyond the pale and is clearly in violation of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of Prisoners of War, which North Vietnam signed. Allowing these Cubans to go unpunished sets an ugly precedent, and adds to America's growing "paper tiger" image. Although the Cubans' crimes are smaller in number, they are no less than some of the war criminals that are being tried in Bosnia.
If the communist regime in Hanoi was fully cooperating in resolving the POW/MIA issue as President Clinton, Senator John McCain, and Ambassador Pete Peterson profess, the Vietnamese communists would have turned over to the U.S. the names of the Cubans who tortured and killed American POWs in the "Cuban Program." Full cooperation by the communist government in Hanoi includes the full disclosure of the true identities and roles of these Cuban "diplomats", who were "advisors" to the Hanoi prison system, and were directly responsible for the murder, torture, and severe disablement of American POWs.
Although the "Cuban Program" was reviewed by the Department of Defense's Prisoner of War and Missing in Action Office (DPMO), its analysis was incomplete. DPMO's chief analyst Robert Destatte's claims that the "Vietnamese's story is plausible and fully consistent with what DPMO knows about the conduct of the Cubans in question" are ludicrous and grossly incompetent. DPMO's analysis of the "Cuban Program" is glaringly incomplete, indicating either incompetence, negligence, or an attempt at political correctness in keeping with our present policy toward Cuba.
DPMO did not thoroughly, nor competently, analyze the documentation they presented to Congress, and other related material including:
-- POW debriefing reports containing the statements by the camp commander that the 'Cuban Program' "was a Hanoi University Psychological Study."
-- POW debriefing reporting’s that clearly state that the Vietnamese camp commander ("The Lump"), cadre and guards were well aware of, and often participated in, the torture.
-- the CIA report, North Viet-Nam: The Responsibilities of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam Intelligence and Security Services in the Exploitation of American Prisoners of War.
-- DIA reports on the training of Vietnamese prison interrogators by the Cubans.
-- no mention of the interviews and photographs made by Cuban journalists cited in documentation, and no there is no indication that it attempted to pursue the Cuban connection.
-- obtaining information from FBI files relating to the "Cuban Program," reports by Cuban refugees of American POWs from Vietnam being held in Cuba, or electronic and other surveillance of Eduardo Morjon Esteves during his "service" at the United Nations.
-- no attempt to obtain the intelligence information relating to their operations in Vietnam garnered from the seizure documents by Army intelligence from the Cuban engineers building the airfield in Granada during the U.S. incursion of that island.
End Notes
DPMO maintains, as did the defunct Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, that there is no conclusive evidence that American POWs were left behind in Vietnam after "Operation Homecoming" in March 1973. However, eyewitness reports, such as Col. Odell's, and numerous intelligence documents, belie these claims. Pentagon officials weren't the only ones who wanted to keep this secret, and it wasn't only because of third-country diplomatic ramifications. The Nixon Administration, and chief negotiator Henry Kissinger, in particular, wanted to hide the fact that POWs had been left behind in their haste to close the chapter on the Vietnam War.
There are numerous intelligence reports of a group of American POWs seen north of Hanoi, who were suffering from severe war wounds or mental disorders. They were still being held because the communists feared their release would have an unfavorable impact on public opinion. It is very likely that these POWs are the ones who simply disappeared at Monkai and Laokai, for conspicuously absent from the Operation Homecoming release in 1973 were POWs suffering from severe war wounds (amputees) and mental illnesses.
An abnormal, disproportionate number of Americans captured in Laos were never released. Although the CIA has acknowledged that approximately 600 men are missing in action in Laos, given the nature of the "Secret War," it is reasonable to presume that the number could be much higher. The fact that out of the 600 acknowledged missing in Laos, only 10 persons survived is unbelievable. Only 10 were released. When the North Vietnamese communists negotiated the treaty to end the Indochina War with the French in 1954, they never acknowledged the capture of POWs in Laos. A 1969 RAND report warned that when the U.S. negotiated with the dogmatic Vietnamese communists, they would most likely again deny that they captured any American POWs in Laos. U.S. intelligence showed that over 82% of American losses in Laos were in areas under total control of the North Vietnamese.
American POWs captured in Laos were likely candidates for "transfer" to other Soviet Bloc countries, such as Cuba, since the Vietnamese considered them as "free commodities."
Much of DOD's analysis of POW camps and evaluations of live sighting reports are based on the time-frame that the camps were occupied by POWs who returned in 1973. Therefore, if a live sighting pertains to a period of time that does not correspond to the time it was occupied by returned POWs, it is most often disregarded or debunked. Also, the analysts often failed to take into consideration the fact that many of these camps were vast complexes with annexes often hundreds of kilometers apart that have the same name as the main camp. An excellent example is the Son Tay POW camps, one north of Hanoi and the other south of Hanoi. Thus, if a live sighting report correlates to the name of a camp but the coordinates are different from the main camp, the live sighting may be discounted. This is what happened in the case of most of the Thanh Tri complex and Ba Vi Prison live sighting reports.
DPMO analysts, and DOD's Joint Task Force-Full Accounting (which conducts on-the-ground investigation of live sighting reports in Vietnam), discredits most live sighting reports by providing the names of the sources to the Vietnamese communist secret services weeks before interviews--a violation of good intelligence procedures, who subsequently disappear or are coerced; or by simply discrediting the sources because they had been political prisoners. However, DPMO's Bob Destatte uses these same sources (political prisoners) to vilify "Bobby" Garwood, a detainee who was court-martialed for collaboration with the Vietnamese communists and reported live sightings of Americans in Vietnam. If many of the reports are "triangulated," several live-sightings from unrelated sources are very similar--too much so to be mere coincidence (e.g., "white buffalos").
For some unfathomable reason, DOD sent pilots, who had worked in top-secret projects such as the atomic energy program, on tactical bombing missions over North Vietnam only to be shot down and captured. The loss of a great many planes over North Vietnam could have been easily avoided. According to National Security Council advisor William Stearman (1971-76 & 1981-93), "One of the untold scandals of the Vietnam War was the refusal of battleship foes [i.e., within the Pentagon] to follow an expert panel's advice and deploy them to Vietnam until it was too late. Of all the targets struck by air in North Vietnam, with a loss of 1,067 aircraft and air crews, 80 percent could have been taken out by a battleship's 16-inch guns without endangering American lives or aircraft."(39)
The loss of pilots was further exacerbated by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's Dr. Strangelove-like obsession of directing targets to be bombed at the same time every day. To some, it seemed as if DOD, led by McNamara, was intentionally aiding the communists by providing them with some of our best and brightest military minds [e.g., one F-111 pilot was shot down over North Vietnam shortly after leaving the Gemini space program.] Concurrently the Soviet equivalent to the Gemini program made quantum leaps over the next two years in the area of the F-111 pilot's specialty. An F-111 capsule was found in a Russian museum by U.S. investigators. There are several other similar examples of vast improvement in communist technologies after the capture of these pilots. According to DIA's "asset", the American POWs were "a gold mine of information to brief ... specialists in the technologies used by the enemy."
Michael D. Benge*
2300 Pimmit Drive, #604-W
Falls Church, VA 22043
Tel: (703) 698-8256 (H)
(202) 712-4043 (W)
October 4, 1999
___________________
*The author spent 11 years in Vietnam, over five years as a prisoner of war--1968-73, and is a diligent follower of the affairs of the region. While serving as a civilian Foreign Service Officer, he was captured in South Vietnam by the North Vietnamese, and held in numerous camps in South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and North Vietnam. He spent 27 months in solitary confinement and one year in a "black box." For efforts in rescuing several Americans before being captured, he received the Department of State's highest award for heroism and a second one for valor. He is an active Board Member of the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Servicemen.
References Cited
1. United States Air Force. June 1975. Special Exploitation Program for SEASIA PWs, 1967-1968. Rep. No. A10-2, Series: 700/JP-1.
2 3. CIA Memorandum From: Deputy Director for Operations
For: Director, Defense Intelligence Agency. dated 28 Jan (illegible). Subj: Identification of "Fidel", Cuban Interrogator of U.S. Prisoners of War in North Vietnam
3. The Washington Times. Oct. 21, 1992. Ex-POW describes "broken" cellmates left in Indochina. Washington, DC
4. The Washington Star. April 3, 1973. POWs Tortured by "Fidel". Washington. DC.
5. DPMO. Sept. 11, 1996. Cuban Program Information. Department of Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) Compiled for Congressional Hearings.
5a. Ibid. p.57.
5b. Ibid. pp.150-154, 243.
5c. Ibid. p.77.
5d. Ibid. p.45.
6. CIA. 21 January 1976. Memorandum for the Record, DOC: F86- 12-64.
7. Heller, B.L., Com. Oct. 21, 1997. Cuban Interrogation Program. PW/MIA Branch, Resources and Installations Division, Directorate for Intelligence Research.
8. Personal communication with Congressman Bob Dornan.
9. Personal communication with former congressional staff considered an expert in Cuban affairs. Confidential.
10. Hubble, J.B. 1976. P.O.W. Readers Digest Press.
11. TIME At Last the Story Can Be Told. April 9, 1973. pp.19, 20, 25&26.
12. Destatte, R. July 3, 1996. Subj: RE: Cuban Vietnam Operations. DPMO Email To: Daniel M. Baughman, LTC; William G. Beck.
13. Beck, C., CDR USNR (ret). March-April 1997. The Gatekeepers and the Connection: Cuba and America's POWs. U.S. Veteran Dispatch.
14. Brown, J.M.G. Undated. Untitled. Records of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs.
14a. Cable. Department of Defense. R 211023Z AUG 80. FROM: USDAO Bangkok. Subj: Response to Request for Interview of Prisoner In Bangkok Immigration Jail.
15. Department of State Cable. Nassau 00104 051014Z.
Re: 051825Z Feb.71.
16. Personal communication. Confidential.
17. American Embassy/Paris. Oct. 18, 1979. Post-1975 Vietnam: POWs in Vietnam. Report.
18. CIA. Sept. 1970. Personal Views on Possible North Vietnamese Refusal to Comply Fully with Terms of a Prisoner Exchange Agreement. Intelligence Information Report.
19. FBIS. 11/12/68. Five Committees Report from Second Genocide Symposium. Article: Havana, Granma, Spanish, October 21, 1968, p3. Sum. No. 46,845.
20. FBIS. May 5, 8 & 9, 1967. Material on Russel 'War Crimes' Tribunal.
21. FBIS. 6 Feb 70. GRANMA Publishes Interview Witn U.S. POW McCain. GRANMA 4 Jan 70, p.7. Havana.
22. Vivo, Raul Valdes. 1990. El Gran Secreto: Cubanos en el Camino Ho Chi Minh. Editora Politica. La Habana.
23. National Security Agency. 0310233Z Nov. 83. SigNet 3071025.
24. State Department. Oct. 10, 1979. Selected POWs in Vietnam. no. 181733Z.
25. Personal communication with Garnett "Bill" Bell, former Chief, DOD/POW/MIA Office in Hanoi.
26. Sauter, M. and J. Sanders. The Men We Left Behind. National Press Books. 1993. pp.212-213.
27. Personal communication.
28. Personal communication with Commander William G. Beck, DPMO.
29. Bell, G.E. September 19, 1996. Testimony. House National Security committee Military Personnel Subcommittee.
30. CIA Report. Training of Negroes in Cuba. Attachment to memorandum to The Honorable Walt W. Rostow, Special Assistant to the President, from Thomas H. Karamessines, Deputy Director for Plans.
31, DIA source. Personal communication. Confidential.
32. CIA. Nov. 17, 1975. North Viet-Nam: The Responsibilities of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam Intelligence and Security Services in the Exploitation of American Prisoners of War.
33. Sejna, J. September 17, 1996. Statement Before the Subcommittee on Military Personnel of the House National Security Committee.
34. CIA. Sept 29, 1982. Hospital 198/The Medical Department of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Ministry of Interior (BVN); Treatment of BVN Personnel at Facilities which had Soviet, East German, Czechoslovak, and Cuban Medical Specialists
JCRC/Bangkok Reporting Cable. North Vietnam, pre-1975: Vietnam Cuba Hospital/Place Names Obtained During Third Joint Search Effort. Doc. No. 240947zfeb89.
35. Rochester, S.I. and F. Kiley. 1998. Honor Bound: The History of American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973. Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Washington, DC. p.400.
36. Personal communication with next of kin, confidential.
37. Jane's Defence Weekly. March 6, 1965. Cuban special forces prepare for US attack
38. FBIS-EAS-96-046 Vietnam. SRV Papers Back Cuban Downing of U.S. Airplanes. March 7, 1996.
FBIS-ESA-96-053 Vietnam. SRV Daily Calls Helms-Burton Bill on Cuba "Insolent". March 19, 1996.
FBIS-EAS-96-077 Vietnam. SRV: Le Kha Phieu Reaffirms Solidarity With Cuba. April 19, 1996.
39. Stearman, William Lloyd. A Misguided Missile Ship: Old Battleships Would Do a Better Job Than a Pricey New Boat. The Washington Post. July 7, 1996.
Records of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. Untitled. JAN-28-92 TUE 10:27. p.29.
Commander Bruce Heller, Chief, PW/MIA Branch, Resources and Installations Division, Directorate for Intelligence Research. 21 Oct. 1977. "Cuban" Interrogation Program. Memorandum.
BENGE, MICHAEL DENNIS
Name: Michael Dennis Benge
Rank/Branch: U.S. Civilian
Unit: Agency for International Development
Date of Birth: 6 August 1935
Home City of Record: Oregon
Date of Loss: 31 January 1968
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 124049N 1080235E (AQ800030)
Status (in 1973): Released POW
Category:
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: Ground
Refno: 1008
Other Personnel in Incident: Betty Ann Olsen; Henry F. Blood (both
captured); Rev.Griswald (killed); Carolyn Griswald (daughter of
Rev.Griswald, survived first attack, died of wounds); Rev. Zeimer (killed);
Mrs.Robert Zeimer (wounded, first attack, evaded, survived); Rev.&
Mrs.Thompson; Miss Ruth Whilting (all killed)
Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 30 June 1990 from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews. Updated by the P.O.W.
NETWORK 1998 with material from Michael Benge.
REMARKS: 730305 RELEASED BY PRG
SYNOPSIS: Michael D. Benge was born in 1935 and raised on a ranch in eastern
Oregon. After college at Oregon State, he applied to the CIA, because he
wanted to travel the world. CIA told him to try the Agency for International Development (AID). AID sent him to International Voluntary Services (IVS).
After two years in Vietnam with IVS, Benge transferred to AID and served as an AID agricultural advisor. By the time of the Tet offensive of 1968, he had been in-country five years, working almost the whole time with the Montagnards in the highlands. He spoke fluent Vietnamese and several Montagnard dialects.
On January 31, 1968, Benge was captured while riding in a jeep near Ban Me Thuot, South Vietnam. Learning of the Tet offensive strikes, Benge was checking on some IVS volunteers who were living in a hamlet with three companies of Montagnard rebels who had just been through a lot of fighting as the NVA went through the Ban Me Thuot area. His plan was to pick up the IVS "kids" and then go down to pick up some missionaries in the area.
Benge was captured a few miles from the Leprosarium at Ban Me Thuot. This center treated anyone with a need as well as those suffering from leprosy.
It was at the Leprosarium that Rev. Archie Mitchell, Dr. Eleanor Vietti and Daniel Gerber had been taken prisoner in 1962. The Viet Cong regularly harassed and attacked the center in spite of its humanitarian objectives.
During the Tet offensive, the Viet Cong again tried to wipe out the
Christian missionary influence in Dar Lac Province, and over a three day
period attacked the hospital compound several times.
Betty Ann Olsen was born to Missionary parents in Bouake, Ivory Coast. She had attended a religious school and missionary college in Nyack, New York.
Curious about the way the other part of the world lived, she went to Vietnam in 1964 as a missionary nurse for Christian and Missionary Alliance, and was assigned to the Leprosarium at Ban Me Thuot. Henry F. Blood was a missionary serving as translator and linguist for Wickcliff Translators at the Leprosarium.
During one of the earlier attacks on the hospital compound, three staff
homes were destroyed, one housing Rev. Griswald, who was killed, and his
grown daughter Carolyn, who survived the explosion but later died of her
wounds. During the same attack, Rev. and Mrs. Zeimer, Rev.and Mrs. Thompson and Miss Ruth Whilting were trapped and machine gunned. Only Mrs. Zeimer survived her 20-30 wounds and was later evacuated to Cam Ranh Bay. Blood and Olsen escaped injury for the moment.
Two days later, on February 1, 1968, as Olsen was preparing to escape with the injured Griswald, she and Henry Blood were captured during another attack on the hospital.
For the next month or so, Benge, Blood and Olsen were held in a POW camp in Darlac Province, about a day's walk from Ban Me Thuot, and were held in cages where they had nothing to eat but boiled manioc (a large starchy root from which tapioca is made).
The Vietnamese kept moving their prisoners, hiking through the jungles and mountains. The camp areas, swept very clean of leaves to keep the mosquito population down (and the ensuing malaria threat), were clearly visible from the sky. Once, Benge reports, an American aircraft came so close to the camp that he could see the pilot's face. The pilot "wagged his wings" and flew away. The Vietnamese, fearing rescue attempts and U.S. air strikes, kept moving.
For months Olsen, Blood and Benge were chained together and moved north from one encampment to another, moving over 200 miles through the mountainous jungles. The trip was grueling and took its toll on the prisoners. They were physically depleted, sick from dysentery and malnutrition; beset by fungus, infection, leeches and ulcerated sores.
Mike Benge contracted cerebral malaria and nearly died. He credits Olsen
with keeping him alive. She forced him to rouse from his delirium to eat and drink water and rice soup. Mike Benge describes Olsen as "a Katherine Hepburn type...[with] an extra bit of grit."
In the summer of 1968, the prisoners, again on the trail, were left exposed to the rain during the rainy season. Hank Blood contracted pneumonia, weakened steadily, and eventually died in July. (July 1968 is one of the dates given by the Vietnamese - the other, according to classified information the U.S. gave to the Vietnamese through General John Vessey indicates that Mr. Blood died on October 17, 1972. Mike Benge says Blood died around July 4.) Blood was buried in a shallow grave along the trail, with Olsen conducting grave-side services.
Benge and Olsen were kept moving. Their bodies were covered with sores, and they had pyorrhea from beri-beri. Their teeth were loosening and gums infected. They spent a lot of time talking about good meals and good places to eat, planning to visit their favorite restaurants together when they went home. They moved every two or three days.
Benge and Olsen were moved near Tay Ninh Province, almost to Da Lat, then back to Quang Duc Province. Olsen was getting weak, and the Vietnamese began to kick and drag her to keep her moving. Benge, trying to defend her, was beaten with rifle butts.
Just before crossing the border into Cambodia, Olsen weakened to the point that she could no longer move. Ironically, in this area, near a tributary to the Mekong river, fish and livestock abounded, and there was a garden, but the food was denied to the prisoners. They were allowed to gather bamboo shoots, but were not told how to cook it.
Bamboo needs to be boiled in two waters to extract an acid substance. Not knowing this, Olsen and Benge boiled their food only once and were beset with immobilizing stomach cramps within a half-hour; diarrhea soon followed.
Betty Ann Olsen weakened and finally died September 29, 1968 (Vessey information indicates this date as September 26), and was buried by Benge.
Finally, Benge was taken to Cambodia, turned over to the North Vietnamese, and another long, grueling trek began. Benge, however, had made his mind up that he wouldn't die. He treated his ulcerated body by lying in creeks and allowed small fish to feed off the dead tissue (a primitive debridement), then caught the fish and ate them raw. He caught small, green frogs and swallowed them whole. He did everything he could to supplement his meager food ration.
By the time he reached the camp the Vietnamese called "the land of milk and honey" his hair was white and he was so dehydrated and emaciated that other POWs estimated his age to be over seventy years old. He was, at the time, only thirty-three.
After a year in Cambodia, Benge was marched north on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to Hanoi. He spent over three years in camps there, including a total of twenty-seven months in solitary confinement. Upon his return, he verified collaboration charges against eight of his fellow POWs, in a prosecution effort initiated by Col. Theodore Guy (this action was discouraged by the U.S. Government and the effort was subsequently abandoned.)
Mike Benge then returned to Vietnam and worked with the Montagnards until the end of the war.
The Vietnamese have never attempted return the remains of Henry Blood and Betty Olsen. They are two individuals that the Vietnamese could provide a wealth of information on. Since they pride themselves on being
"humanitarians," it would not be in keeping with this image to reveal the horror Olsen and Blood endured in their hands. It is not surprising, then, that the Vietnamese have not publicly told their stories.
Olsen and Blood are among nearly 2500 Americans, including several civilians, who are still unaccounted for, missing or prisoner from the Vietnam war. Since the war ended, over 10,000 reports have been received concerning these missing Americans which have convinced many authorities that hundreds are still alive in communist hands. While Blood and Olsen may not be among them, they went to Vietnam to help. They would not turn their backs on their fellow man. Why has their own country turned its back on them?
SOURCE: WE CAME HOME
copyright 1977 Captain and Mrs. Frederic A Wyatt (USNR Ret),
Barbara Powers Wyatt, Editor
P.O.W. Publications, 10250 Moorpark St., Toluca Lake, CA 91602
Text is reproduced as found in the original publication (including date and spelling errors).
MICHAEL D. BENGE
Civilian
Captured: January 28, 1968
Released: March 5, 1973
From 1956 through 1959 I served in the Marine Corps. After I competed my tour of duty, I returned to Oregon State University and completed my studies in Mechanical Technology in Agricultural Engineering. I served with the International Volunteer Services (the forerunner of the Peace Corps), in Vietnam from 1963 to 1965, as an advisor in education and agriculture. I joined the Agency for International Development (AID), in January 1965 and returned to Vietnam to work chiefly with the Montagnards (an aboriginal people of the Malayan-Polynesian extraction living in the western highlands). Here I acted as a civilian economic and community development advisor to the Darlac province chief. During this period I was named the adopted son of a tribal chief and his wife. The brass bracelets given to me by the Montagnards were removed when I was captured. However, since my return I am again wearing the
bracelets.
Three years later on January 28, 1968, while attempting to group people for evacuation, I was captured by the North Vietnamese in South Vietnam. For five silent years I endured forced marches through South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, into North Vietnam. I was tortured by the hands of the Communists for my "bad attitude". While in captivity I was kept in solitary confinement for 27 months. At intervals I was forced to maintain a difficult position on my knees with my hands over my head for between 11 and 16 hours at a time. If I dropped my hands I was beaten. While marching for several months, I had only a small amount of rice and salt to eat. Perhaps once or twice a month I received a tiny portion of monkey or lizard meat. I ate anything I could pick up or catch, small crabs, frogs, minnows, bugs, etc. If caught doing this I
was beaten so I swallowed them raw when no one was looking.
About two months after I was captured I came down with cerebral malaria.
During this period of time I was delirious for thirty-five days and suffered periodic blindness. No medical assistance was offered. As a result of malnutrition, I began suffering from beri-beri, scurvy, jungle ulcers, loss of hair, and loose teeth. From 160 my weight decreased to less than 100 lbs. As I marched through Cambodia and Laos I passed an endless stream of North Vietnamese uniformed soldiers walking South and supplies being trucked from Port of Sianookville, Cambodia and from Hanoi In Cambodia and Laos there were rest camps every four hours along the trail flying the North Vietnamese flag.
The 85 men held captive with me would never had been taken prisoner if the U.S. had struck the safe havens in Cambodia prior to the launching of the Tet offensive in 1968. The only reason the P.O.W.'s were released was because the Americans eventually bombed Hanoi. I was taken all the way to Hanoi. In the early part of December 1969, 1 spent about two months in a camp in Laos somewhere around Highway 9. I was then trucked into Hanoi and taken to a camp outside of the city. At this location I was put into solitary confinement for the next year, seeing no other American. I was kept in an isolation hut, where they had sealed off all of the ventilation holes allowing no air. The walls
were painted black with coal dust and cement. There was no light. I had
contact with no one else. The room was filled with mosquitoes and flies. There was one hole in the back of the hut which allowed little or no air to come in.
Only rats! And frequently I had eight or ten of them with me. My well was right outside the hut. About fifteen yards uphill they had placed a cesspool.
Everytime it rained the water turned brown with pollution. The free people of South Vietnam learned the nature of the North Vietnamese
communists in 1968 when they invaded Hue. The systematic massacre that
followed belied the N.V.A.'s persuasive propaganda. First they murdered
thousands on their lists of opponents or neutralists. Then they turned on the pro-communists and student groups whom they did not consider reliable. Then as they retreated they killed anyone they thought might have witnessed the wholesale slaughter. Two missionaries, with whom I was imprisoned, told of seeing six other missionaries, in Ban Me Thuot, gunned down in cold blood as they emerged from bunkers with their hands over their heads. Two women missionaries in Laos were tied inside grass huts by the NVA and burnt to death. In another area three villages were overrun by the North Vietnamese and they drove the women and children into a ditch and burnt them alive with flame-throwers.
I was elated when I first learned of the peace talks. However, even with peace and my return home I continue trying to awaken the people in the U.S. and elsewhere about many facts of the Vietnam war. I am very concerned about the American, South Vietnamese and third country prisoners of war who are still held by the North Vietnamese. We have documented proof of 53 Americans whom the North Vietnamese had captured and used for propaganda purposes. There has been no accounting of them on any of the POW or MIA lists. I feel that the North Vietnamese may use the remaining prisoners to justify to their people their claim of winning the war.
I am happy to have been home to rejoin my mother, father, and sister even for such a short period of time. At present I am still a bachelor and have returned to college in the Philippines for my M.S. degree in community development. I returned to South Vietnam for four months to see my many friends. I shall again return to work again with the Montagnards in Vietnam if "The Tide Doesn't Turn Red." Unlike many others, my going to Vietnam wasn't just "Doing My Thing". I still feel that I have a commitment. A commitment that "they too might have the freedom of choice, of beliefs and political alternatives."
It was great to return to America and be back in a country, even with all its social ills, where one can enjoy the freedom of speech, the freedom of thought, and the freedom of political choice in the free world, things that are unknown to those, still in the lands where I was held as a POW.
----------
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 98
From: "Mike Benge"
Subject: BIO
Michel Dennis Benge (Mike) was born on August 6, 1935 in Denver, CO, and grew up on a ranch in Eastern Oregon, where for a time, he rode brahma bulls and bareback horses in rodeos. He joined the Marine Corps in 1956, achieved the rank of sergeant, and was honorably discharged in 1959. He completed his undergraduate studies in Agricultural Engineering at Oregon State University in 1962.
In 1963, he joined the International Voluntary Services (a forerunner of the Peace Corps), and served for two years in the Central Highlands in South Viet Nam, working mainly with the Montagnards (a French term for people of the mountains). He is Fluent in both Vietnamese and Rhade (the major ethnic minority dialect), In 1965, he joined the United States Agency for International Development, and served as a provincial development officer in the Central Highlands of South Viet Nam. He received three of medals from the government of South Viet Nam for
outstanding work in public administration, public health, and ethnic minority affairs.
While serving in that capacity, he was captured by the North Vietnamese during the "Tet Offensive" on January 28, 1968. His capture resulted from attempting to rescue four Americans housed in a section of town that had been overrun by a North Vietnamese battalion. Mr. Benge was credited with rescuing 11 Americans prior to his capture, and for this, received the State Department's highest award for heroism. He also received a second award for valor for his actions during captivity.
Mr. Benge was held in numerous camps in South Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos and North Viet Nam. He spent 27 months in solitary confinement and one year in a "black box." While in the "Plantation Gardens," he served as Col. Ted Guy's deputy, and was released during "Operation Homecoming" in 1973.
While on medical leave, he returned to Viet Nam and continued his work with the Ministry of Ethnic Minorities. In 1974, he was assigned to the USAID Mission in the Philippines. After the fall of Viet Nam in 1975, he assisted in processing Vietnamese refugees to go to the U.S.
In 1978, he completed a Master's Degree in Agroforestry at the University of the Philippines at Los Banos. In 1979, he rotated to USAID headquarters in Washington, DC, continuing his work in international development, forestry and environment. For outstanding achievements in international forestry, Mr. Benge received an award from the King of Sweden, which was patterned after the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize.
He continues his work with USAID, and resides in Falls Church, VA. He is a single parent to two daughters, ages 16 and 11. He is active in POW/MIA affairs, and other South East Asian political issues.
Testimony of Michael D. Benge before the House International Relations Committee Chaired by the Honorable Benjamin A. Gilman,
November 4, 1999.
My name is Michael D. Benge. While serving as a civilian Economic Development Officer in the Central Highlands of South Viet Nam, I was captured by the North Vietnamese during the Tet Offensive on January 28, 1968. I was held in numerous camps in South Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos and North Viet Nam. I was a POW for over five years, and spent 27 months in solitary confinement, one year in a "black box," and one year in a cage in Cambodia. I served for almost 11 years in Viet Nam. I was released during Operation Homecoming in 1973. I am a Board Member of the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Missing Servicemen. And, I am a POW/MIA activist; that is, I am one who is actively seeking the truth regarding the fate of our Prisoners of War and Missing in Action.
I was not tortured by the Cubans, nor was I part of the "Cuban Program." There were 19 American POWs that I know of who were tortured by the Cubans in Hanoi during the Vietnam War. These brave men include Colonel Jack Bomar and Captain Ray Vohden, who will testify, and also Commander Al Carpenter, who is with us today. They named their torturers "Fidel," "Chico" and "Pancho." The torture took place in a POW camp called the Zoo, and the Vietnamese camp commander was a man they called the "Lump." He was called that because of the presence of a rather large fatty tumor in the middle of his forehead.
No, I was not tortured by Cubans in Vietnam, but I was interrogated by the "Lump," and a person who appeared to be a Latino and who spoke a few words of Spanish to the "Lump" during my interrogation in the early part of 1970. Upon my return to the U.S., I was shown a picture taken in Cuba of the "Lump," who was with an American anti-war group. Yes, it was the same person who had interrogated me in 1970. I was told by a Congressional Investigator that he was the man who was in charge of funneling Soviet KGB money to American anti-war groups and activists, such as Jane Fonda. After researching my paper, this made more sense, for who would be better suited to liaison with the Cubans. This was my first piece of the puzzle.
I decided to research the "Cuban Program" after repeated claims by the Administration, Senators John McCain and John Kerry, Ambassador Pete Peterson, and members of the Department of Defense (DOD) that the Vietnamese Government was "cooperating fully" in resolving the POW/MIA issue. This is far from the truth.
If the Vietnamese communists were fully cooperating as purported, they would have told us the true fate of the 173 U.S. servicemen who were last known to be alive and in the hands of the North Vietnamese communists. They would have helped us resolve the fate of over 600 American servicemen who were lost in Laos, of which over 80% were lost in areas under the total control of the North Vietnamese. If the Vietnamese were fully cooperating, we would not be here today, for they would have revealed the names of the Cubans "Fidel," "Chico" and "Pancho," who were responsible for the torture of 19 American POWs; beating one so severly that it resulted in his death.
Upon their return to the U.S., the POWs in the "Cuban Program" were told by our government not to tell of their torture by the Cubans, but they resisted, as they had in the "Cuban Program, and some broke the silence. Regardless, the "Cuban Program" was swept under the rug by the U.S. Government.
Thus, I chose to research the "Cuba Program"--one segment of the POW/MIA issue--to prove my point that the Vietnamese communists were not fully cooperating as purported. I first produced a draft paper in 1996 for presentation at the annual meeting of the National Alliance of Families.
Commander Chip Beck, who at that time was with the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO), became interested in my research, and tried to find out what DPMO knew. He was basically told by DPMO to back off. Congressman Bob Dornan also became interested. He held hearings, and requested that DPMO provide them with their analysis of the Cuban Program. A compilation was presented, and Mr. Robert Destatte from DPMO testified as to his and DPMO's analysis. Commander Beck also testified; after which, he was told by DPMO that his services were no longer needed.
With the release of DPMO's compilation and analysis, and the declassification of additional documents related to Cuba's involvement in Vietnam, I reassessed this information. In the DPMO compilation, there were memoranda stating that the CIA had identified Cuban military attaches Eduardo Morjon Esteves and Luis Perez Jaen with backgrounds that seemed to correspond with information on "Fidel" and "Chico" provided by returned POWs. Reportedly, Esteves served under diplomatic cover as a brigadier general at the United Naions in New York during 1977-78. Documents indicate that the FBI and DIA were "tasked" to ID these people; however, neither the CIA, the DIA, nor the FBI could produce a decent picture for identification by the returned POWs. It makes one wonder as to their level of effort.
Nonetheless, just from my reading the documents in the DPMO compilation, I found the profile of a man that that seemed to match almost perfectly the POWs' description of the Cuban called "Chico." However, this profile also partially fit the POWs' characterization of "Fidel." The profile was that of Major Fernando Vecino Alegret.
On August 22, 1999, the Miami Herald published an article on the "Cuban Program" based partially on my report. However, the reporter got it wrong and said that I believed Raul Valdes Vivo, the DGI agent attached to COSVN (ref. my submitted report), might be "Fidel." Independent of my report, a Cuban exile in the Miami area identified Fernando Vecino Alegret as "Fidel," based on information emanating from contacts within the exile community and Cuba. He also produced a picture of Alegret that was subsequentially identified by Col. Hubbard, who said he was 99% sure he was "Fidel." Alegret is now Cuba's Minister of Education, and Fidel Castro has issued a denial that Alegret was ever in Vietnam. However, DIA documentation in DPMO's compilation proves otherwise.
In Mr. Destatte's testimony, he claims he "was never responsible for any investigations or analysis related to the "Cuban Program." "Responsible" is the key word here that Mr. Destatte parses.
The Administration and the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) has mastered the art of obfuscation. I grew up on a farm in the West, and I used to try to catch greased pigs at the county fair, and I can assure you that trying to pin down DPMO to truthful facts is sometimes much more difficult than trying to catch a greased pig.
Mr. Chuck Towbridge of DPMO is also implicated as participating in the investigation and analysis; however, it has never been revealed who was in fact in charge. One would hope that someone at DPMO is in charge.
Mr. Destatte testified to DPMO's conclusions and that the "Cuban Program" was nothing more than a program "to provide instruction in basic English to PAVN [North Vietnamese Army] personnel working with American prisoners."
I have taught English to Vietnamese, and have been tortured by the Vietnamese, and I can tell the difference between the two. One might conclude from Mr. Destatte's testimony that neither he nor Mr. Towbridge know the difference. I can also read English and understand what I read. One might also conclude that they may have a problem here too. Perhaps they should have taken basic English instruction from the Cubans.
Mr. Destatte also had the audacity to testify that the Vietnamese high-command was unaware that the Cubans were torturing American POWs, and it was stopped once they found out. However, it is crystal clear from the POW debriefings, as well as the Air Force Intelligence Analysis, that the "Cuban Program" was sanctioned by the Vietnamese. This then leads one to ask, "How did Mr. Destatte reach his conclusion?"
Mr. Destatte reached his conclusion by asking North Vietnamese communist Colonel Pham Teo, who told Destatte he was in South Viet Nam in 1967-68 and knew nothing of the "Cuban Program." However, he had heard rumors that it was an English language instruction program that had "gone awry." Mr. Destatte testified that the Vietnamese explanation "is...fully consistent with what we know about the conduct of the Cubans in question."
Evidently, Destatte chose to believe a Vietnamese communist colonel over American POWs who had been brutally tortured in the "Cuban Program" and had clearly stated in their debriefings that the Vietnamese were well aware of and participated in their torture. Destatte choses to believe a member of a draconian regime, which had systematically murdered 70-80,000 political prisoners after they took over power in Vietnam in 1975, and who had broken every agreement ever made with the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments.
What bewilders me, as it should you, is that Destatte's superiors at DPMO had the audacity to let him testify before Congress to this foolishness. This exemplifies the quality of DPMO's investigation and analysis of the "Cuban Program."
I am neither a trained investigator nor an analyst, but I do know how to research. And I have concluded that at best, DPMO's investigation and analysis of the "Cuban Program" was not up to professional standards, and DPMO's conclusions are shameful! However, they did a great job of obfuscating the issue.
Since the "Cuban Program" was sanctioned by the Vietnamese, what then was the driving force behind it?" According to POW debriefings, supported by CIA and other reports, the "Cuba Program" was part of a Hanoi medical university's "psychological study." It was conducted to obtain full compliance from the American POWs, and to force them to make propaganda statements against the American government and the war in Vietnam. The real reason for the termination of the "Cuban Program" was so "Fidel," "Chico" and "Pancho" could return to Cuba as planned in time to prepare a presentation for the October 18-21, 1968, communist internationale Second Symposium Against Yankee Gonocide In Vietnam. This symposium in Cuba was a continuum of the Bertrand Russel War Crimes Tribunal kangaroo court and dog-and-pony show held in Denmark the previous year.
My paper is based partially on what DPMO gave to Congressman Dornan's Committee, as well as on documents obtained from the DIA and the CIA through the Freedom of Information Act, and it is thoroughly referenced. I would like to submit a copy of it and the referenced material to the Committee at this time for the record.
However, I have just scratched the surface, but I found enough documents to indicate that there should be a plethora of others related to the Cuban involvement in Vietnam if they are ever declassified as two U.S. Presidents have decreed. I also recommend that this matter be thoroughly investigated by professional investigators, not DPMO analysts.
Besides evidence contrary to DPMO's stated position on the "Cuban Program," the documents I examined reveal: the possibility that a number of American POWs from the Vietnam War had been held in Los Maristas, a secret Cuban prison run by Castro's G-2 intelligence service. The Cuban who claims to have seen them later escaped and made it to the United States, and was reportedly debriefed by the FBI;
a Cuban Official had offered the State Department to ransom some American POWs from Vietnam, but there was no follow up; that Cubans, along with Russians, guarded a number of American POWs in Laos;
the Cubans photographed a number of American POWs in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; that besides the "Cuban Program," the Cubans were very heavily involved in Vietnam. They had several thousand "engineers" in Vietnam constructing, repairing and guarding the Ho Chi Minh Trail where a large number of Americans disappeared; the possibility that American POWs were "treated" in Cuban hospitals in Hanoi; the Cubans had a permanent DGI agent assigned to the COSVN headquarters in Cambodia, the North Vietnamese command center directing the war in South Vietnam.
This is a fact not found in the history books on the Vietnam War. He was assigned there on the insistence of Rauol Castro, the head of Cuba's military and the brother of the real Fidel. This fact belies Mr. Destatte's testimony that "the Soviet and Cuban governments did not successfully dictate policies or actions to the North Vietnamese government;" two unrelated documents telling of American POWs being taken from Vietnam to Cuba;
the Cubans were also actively engaged in subversive activities, infiltrating a number of communist youth into the U.S., and were funneling KGB money through Vietnamese communist agents to antiwar groups and individuals in the U.S.; as recent as 1996, the Vietnamese trained Cuban Special Forces to undertake limited attacks in the USA.
Instead of hiring analysts at DPMO, DOD should hire some good professional investigators, such as former FBI or police investigators, and some people who know how to do systematic research. However, every time DPMO gets good ones, it seems to find a way to get rid of them.
My paper raises more questions than it answers, but only history will prove me right or wrong; however, I think I am on the right track. Only through full disclosure by the U.S. government agencies, which were gathering information on the depth of Cuban involvement in the Vietnam war and with American POWs, will we know the truth.
As you can see from my document, the Cubans were heavily involved in the Vietnam War. They were in charge of building and maintaining a good portion of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Recently, I was invited as a representative of the National Alliance of Families to a briefing at DPMO by its head, Bob Jones. Among things he discussed was his proposal for DPMO to sponsor a meeting between the U.S., Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to discuss American Servicemen lost along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I suggested to Mr. Jones that he should also invite Cuba to the conference, for they were heavily involved. He told me that was ridiculous, for the Cubans weren't involved in Vietnam. I recommended to him that he read both the material presented to Congress on the Cuban Program and Raul Valdes Vivo's book.
I was brought up with old fashioned values. My mother taught me at a young age that no matter how hard you search for the truth, you won't find it unless you want to.
We are not seeking revenge. We will leave that issue to the courts. We are also not seeking to get someone fired, we leave that up to you to judge. We are only seeking an honest accounting for the POW/MIAs. We, like every American should, only seek honest answers from our government and its representatives, and competent investigations as to the fate of the POW/MIAs so that their families might find closure to their long suffering grief.
Ignorance? Arrogance? Disinterest? Lack of caring? Incompetence? Obfuscation? I rest my case.
Respectfully Submitted
Michael D. Benge
2300 Pimmit Dr., #604-W
Falls Church, VA 22043
Ph: (703) 875-4063 (W)
(703) 698-8256 (H)
Benge was a POW who continued researching and advocating for POW/MIA return after the war. His story tells of communist involvement by Cubans and Russians in torturing and attempting to turn or exploit our captured servicemen. The story below talks of communist funding and Cuban training of American Anti-War activists such as those from Jane Fonda’s following.
This story is appalling. The claims Benge makes are so horrific, I tried to verify them. I found an online copy of Benge’s testimony to a Senate Select Committee in 1999 which is identical in many respects to the report I was forwarded. While a man may invent stories for several self-indulgent reasons, I doubt that same man would carry things as far as perjuring himself in Congress. A prevaricator would lighten the story to minimize his exposure to charges. Benge’s story didn’t change. I think Benge’s evidence is accurate.
The original copy of Benge’s lengthy report plus his testimony to the Senate from 1999 are both copied below along with his biography. Benge is real and I believe his report is as well.
The goal of the Cuban Program described below makes you wonder, how much infiltration is still going on in America and at what levels. Certainly, Occupy Wall St had communist backing. What about Ferguson? What about obama normalizing relations with Cuba. What does he get? He can’t want lessons in how to be a commie; he already has that role nailed. Maybe he needs training in How to Run a Dictatorship.
Warning: The descriptions of some of the atrocities our POWs were subjected to is graphic and sickening.
Bill Metz – Dakota Dunes, SD Cuban War Crimes Against American POWs by Michael D. Benge During the Vietnam War*
Cuban officials, under diplomatic cover in Hanoi during the Vietnam War, brutally tortured and killed American POWs whom they beat senseless in a research program "sanctioned by the North Vietnamese."(1) This was dubbed the "Cuba Program" by the Department of Defense (DOD) and the CIA, and it involved 19 American POWs (some reposts state 20). Recent declassified secret CIA and DOD intelligence documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal the extent of Cuba's involvement with American POWs captured in Vietnam. A Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report states that "The objective of the interrogators was to obtain the total submission of the prisoners..."(2)
According to former POW Air Force Colonel Donald "Digger" Odell, "two POWs left behind in the camp were 'broken' but alive when he and other prisoners were released [1973 Operation Homecoming]. ... They were too severely tortured by Cuban interrogators" to be released. The Vietnamese didn't want the world to see what they had done to them."(3)
POWs released during "Operation Homecoming" in 1973 "were told not to talk about third-country interrogations. .... This thing is very sensitive with all kinds of diplomatic ramifications."(4) Hence, the torture and murder of American POWs by the Cubans was swept under the rug by the U.S. Government.
The "Cuban Program"
The "Cuban Program" was initiated around August 1967 at the Cu Loc POW camp known as "The Zoo", a former French movie studio on the southwestern edge of Hanoi. The American POWs gave their Cuban torturers the names "Fidel," "Chico," "Pancho" and "Garcia." The Vietnamese camp commander was given the name "The Lump" because of a fatty tumor growth in the middle of his forehead.
Intelligence and debriefing reports reveal that testing "torture methods were of primary interest" of the "Cuban Program." The Cuban leader of the "Cuban Program" ["Fidel"] was described in debriefing reports as "a professional interrogator," and a second team member was described as looking like a Czech ["Chico"]. "The Cubans has (sic) the authority to order NVNS [North Vietnamese] to torture American PWs [POWs]." The Vietnamese "catered" to the Cubans. (5)
________________
*Research conducted for the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Missing Servicemen by Board Member and former Vietnam POW Mike Benge.
According to a 20 January 1976 deposition, Marge Van Beck of DIA/DI, Resources and Installation Division, MIA/PW Branch, states that she was told by the "Air Force that the CIA had identified FIDEL."(6) Since the CIA and the FBI has not released all documentation relevant to the "Cuban Program", there were no copies of any photographs accompanying the Defense Department's September 11, 1996, report to Congress, Cuban Program Information.(5)
Several other documents corroborate that the CIA analysts identified two Cuban military attaches, Eduardo Morjon Esteves and Luis Perez Jaen, who had backgrounds that seemed to correspond with information on "Fidel" and "Chico" supplied by returning POWs. (7) Reportedly, in 1977-78, Esteves served under diplomatic cover as a brigadier general at the United Nations in New York and no attempt was made to either arrest or expel him.(8)
However, unless the Cubans were overconfident, it is highly unlikely that those who participated in the "Cuban Program" would have used their actual names when they went to Vietnam, since it is standard practice in undercover operations to use new identities.
According to an expert on Cuba, "Fidel's" profile fits that of Cuban Dr. Miguel Angel Bustamente-O'Leary, President of the Cuban Medical Association. [DPMO's compilation lists a Professor Jose Bustamante, who was the president of the Pan-American Medical Confederation.] Dr. Miguel Bustamente is said to be an expert at extracting confessions through torture and he was compared to Nazi Dr. Joseph Mengale. (9)
"Chico's" profile fits that of Major Fernando VECINO Alegret, described in two intelligence reports as being "un-Cuban in appearance makes [sic] one wonder if he was a Cuban, or a block officer (possible Czech) in Cuban uniform." "He has studied in the USSR," and "...his Spanish...does not sound like Cuban Spanish." He was active in the Rebel Youth Association (AJR) and Union of Young Communists (UYC). (5b) His background would give him a natural tie-in to the international communist youth training center and the Vietnamese interrogation center in Cuba. It would also explain the observation of and participation in the "Cuban Program" by young Vietnamese officer trainees (see below).
According to POW debriefing reports, "The Lump" told a group of POWs that the 'Cuban Program'...was a Hanoi University Psychological Study."(5c) [Also see section on Vietnamese and Soviet Bloc Research on American POWs]
The torture and murder of American POWs in Vietnam by Cubans sets an unconscionable precedent and is in direct violation of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War that the North Vietnamese communists signed.
The Beatings
"Fidel" called one of the American POWs the "Faker". However, he wasn't faking it. He was one of the three American POWs who had already been beaten senseless by "Fidel" and his cohorts.
The sight of the prisoner stunned Bomar, he stood transfixed, trying to make himself believe that human beings could so batter another human being. The man could barely walk; he shuffled slowly, painfully. His clothes were torn to shreds. He was bleeding everywhere, terribly swollen, and a dirty, yellowish black and purple from head to toe. The man's head was down; he made no attempt to look at anyone. He had been through much more than the day's beatings. His body was ripped and torn everywhere; "hell- cuffs" appeared almost to have severed the wrists, strap marks still wound around the arms all the way to the shoulders, slivers of bamboo were embedded in the bloodied shins and there were what appeared to be tread marks from the hose across the chest, back and legs. Fidel smashed a fist into the man's face, driving him against the wall. Then he was brought to the center of the room and made to get down onto his knees. Screaming in rage, Fidel took a length of rubber hose from a guard and lashed it as hard as he could into the man's face. The prisoner did not react; he did not cry out or even blink an eye. Again and again, a dozen times, smashed the man's face with the hose. He was never released. (10)
Air Force ace Major James Kasler was also tortured by "Fidel" for days on end during June 1968. "Fidel" beat Kasler across the buttocks with a large truck fan belt until "he tore my rear end to shreds." For one three-day period, Kasler was beaten with the fan belt every hour from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. and kept awake at night. "My mouth was so bruised that I could not open my teeth for five days." After one beating, Kasler's buttocks, lower back, and legs hung in shreds. The skin had been entirely whipped away and the area was a bluish, purplish, greenish mass of bloody raw meat. (11)
DPMO's Evaluation
The "Cuban Program" was evaluated by two of the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office's (DPMO) chief analysts Robert Destatte and Chuck Towbridge. In an email to Commander Chip Beck, an intelligence officer who at the time was working at DPMO, Destatte said he had concluded that the "Cuban Program" was nothing more than a program "to provide instruction in basic English to PAVN [North Vietnamese Army] personnel working with American prisoners."(12) According to Destatte, it was an English language program that had gone awry.
Destatte also has the audacity to claim that the Vietnamese were unaware of the "Cuban Program," and it was stopped once the Vietnamese found out that "Fidel" and the others were torturing the American POWs. However, the evidence that Destatte studied in compiling the report to Congress belies his assertion. It is very clear from the POWs' debriefing reports that the camp commander, "The Lump", guards and various other Vietnamese cadre were present during torture sessions.
Destatte also professes, "The Vietnamese explanation is plausible and fully consistent with what we know about the conduct of the Cubans in question..."(12) And how had Destatte reached his conclusion? Destatte asked the North Vietnamese communists, and this is what they told him! These are the very same people who broke every agreement they made with the United States, and who systematically murdered over 80,000 political prisoners after the communist takeover of South Viet Nam in 1975. A military historian once told Commander Beck not to underestimate "dumb," and Beck said Destatte would have to be brain-dead, however, to be that dumb.(13)
It is evident that DOD's analysis of the "Cuban Program" is incomplete for it did not examine the possible link to a Hanoi University research study, nor was there any investigation of Cuba's role in maintaining the Ho Chi Minh Trail where numerous American servicemen were captured. In early 1999, DPMO's chief, Bob Jones, told members of the organizations representing the families of POW/MIAs that he had proposed a meeting among Vietnam, Laos and Cambodian officials to discuss the fate of American POW/MIAs. The author, representing the National Alliance of Families, suggested that Cuba should also be invited to participate, since they were responsible for the "Cuban Program" as well as for maintaining a good share of the Ho Chi Minh Trail where many servicemen became MIA. Jones retorted that my suggestion was ridiculous for there was no evidence that the Cubans were ever involved. ["See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil," author.]
Other Cuban Involvement With POWs
Documents reveal that Cubans not only tortured and killed a number of American POWs in Vietnam, but may have also taken several POWs to Cuba in the mid-1960s. The POWs, mostly pilots, were reportedly imprisoned in Las Maristas, a secret Cuban prison run by Castro's G-2 intelligence service. The source of this information reportedly was debriefed by the FBI; however, this debriefing report was not in DPMO's report to Congress, and no evidence has surfaced that there was any other follow up. (14)
According to a February 1971 State Department cable, a former aide to Fidel Castro offered "...to ransom POWs in NVN [North Viet Nam] through the Castro Government." The cable concluded, "Propose doing nothing further unless advised."(15) Evidently no advice was forthcoming, and there is no evidence of any other agency investigating this matter.
One intelligence source reportedly interviewed "Fidel", "Chico" and "Pancho" after they returned from Hanoi to Cuba and said they claimed that their real job was to act as gate-keepers to select American POWs who could aid international communism. (16)
According to a DIA "asset", Hanoi made "a political investment in all cases where prisoners [could] be ideologically turned around in order to someday serve its designs in behalf of international communism."(17) This is corroborated by several other intelligence reports. One, a CIA briefing memo, reveals that "As of September 1967 [redacted] a great deal of proselytizing of American pilots was being carried out in an effort to try to convince them to go to other communist countries as advisors. [redacted] This was disclosed during an official Party briefing [redacted]. The North Vietnamese claimed the communist countries needed the advice of American pilots to counter any attack which the U.S. might make against the communist countries."(18) This was the same time period that the "Cuban Program" was in full operation.
Those Americans targeted for selection by the communists as "advisors" for the communist countries would have been the highly-skilled pilots and electronic warfare back-seaters, skills highly prized by Soviet Bloc countries. The reported American POWs ("pilots") reported to have been held in Las Maristas prison in Cuba could have been some of these highly skilled people, who would have been prized assets for communist Cuba.
DPMO's analyst Bob Destatte wrongly concluded that the "Cuban Program" was terminated by the Vietnamese in August 1968 because of "Fidel's" excesses in torturing the American POWs. This is far from the truth, for the Vietnamese communists routinely continued to torture American POWs in other camps long after the "program" was terminated.
Besides being part of a medical study linked to the University in Hanoi, Cuba was carrying out an aggressive propaganda campaign and other subversive activities against the U.S. According to the Cuban paper El Mundo, in August 1968, Professor Miguel A. D'Estafano, who headed the Cuban Solidarity with Vietnam Committee, "prolonged his stay in the DRV to complete a program with various organizations and institutions to collect extensive information that can serve as the basis for the second symposium against genocide in Vietnam..." According to POW debriefings, a Cuban (presumably D'Estafano) showed up at the Zoo during that time and "Fidel," "Chico" and "Pancho" left with him. Their return was timed so they could prepare a presentation for the communist international Second Symposium Against Yankee Genocide in Vietnam held in Cuba, October 18-21, 1968.(19) There, films and tapes were shown of the research on American POWs in the "Cuban Program" that served to boost the morale of the communists that the war in Vietnam was being won.(1) [Similar to the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal "kangaroo court" and "dog and pony show" held in Denmark in July 1967.(20)]
"Fidel", "Chico" and "Pancho" weren't the only Cubans who were involved with American POWs. As part of their propaganda program, Dr. Fernando Barral, a Spanish-born psychologist, interviewed Lt. Cmdr. John Sidney McCain Jr. (now a U.S. Senator) for an article published in Cuba's house-organ Granma on January 24, 1970. (21) Barral was a card-carrying communist international residing in Cuba and traveling on a Cuban passport.
Cubans on the Ho Chi Minh Trail
The Cubans were heavily involved in the Vietnam war. Cuba had a very large contingent of combat engineers, the Giron Brigade, that was responsible for maintaining a large section of the "Ho Chi Minh Trail;" the supply line running from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia to South Vietnam. The contingent was so large that Cuba had to establish a consulate in the jungle. (22)
A large number of American personnel serving in both Vietnam and Laos were either captured or killed along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and in all likelihood, many by the Cubans. One National Security Agency SigNet report states that 18 American POWs "are being detained at the Phom Thong Camp..." in Laos, and "...are being closely guarded by Soviet and Cuban personnel with Vietnamese soldiers outside the camp."(23)
Cubans and Other POWs
According to CIA documents Cuban communist party committee members, Cuban "journalists" Raul Valdes Vivo and Marta Rojas Rodriguez, "visited liberated areas of South Vietnam where they interviewed [interrogated] U.S. prisoners of war being held by the Viet Cong."(24) [Many of the American POWs held in the South Viet Nam, were in fact under the command-control of the North Vietnamese's Enemy Proselytizing Bureau, but temporarily farmed-out to Viet Cong.] Rojas told of her "interviewing" American POWS in South Viet Nam at the Bertram Russel mock war crimes tribunal in Denmark in 1967.(20) Photographs of some of the POWs, and related articles, appeared in Cuban and various other communist media. American POWs Charles Crafts, Smith, McClure, Schumann and Cook were among those interviewed and photographed by Rojas and Vivo. This leads one to ask, "Why hasn't DOD pursued questioning Cubans about the fate of American POWs?"
One POW camp holding a large number of Americans was located about 100 km from the Chinese border between Monkai and Laokai, (an area where Cuban engineers were constructing military installations after 1975). According to an intelligence source, "one day the camp just disappeared, guards and all". (25) [also see End Notes]
The disappearance of American POWs near the Cuban facilities at Monkai and Laokai wasn't an isolated incident. American POWs also disappeared in the vicinity of two other Cuban installations. One American POW camp, located at "Work Site 5" (Cong Truong) just north of the DMZ, was adjacent to a Cuban field hospital that Fidel Castro visited in 1972. None of the POWs held in that camp were ever released, including black American aviator Lt. Clemmie McKinney. McKinney was shot down in April 1972, approximately the same time as Castro's visit. McKinney's remains were returned on August 14, 1985. The Vietnamese claim that McKinney died in November 1972; however, "A CILHI (U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii) forensic anthropologist states his opinion as to time of death as not earlier than 1975 and probably several years later."(26) Had McKinney been a guest of the real "Fidel" to be exploited by Castro's G-2 at Las Maristas and later returned to Vietnam?
Another Cuban installation was near Ba Vi, where numerous sightings of "white buffalos" [i.e., American POWs] were made by South Vietnamese undergoing "reeducation" in the North. According to one of the recently returned Vietnamese 34-A commandos, he saw 60 American POWs at the Thanh Tri Prison complex in 1969. (27) Also in the same prison complex were approximately 100 French and Moroccan POWs captured in the early 1950s. Later the French and Moroccans were transferred to the Ba Vi Prison complex near the Cuban facility. There were a small number of American POWs held for a while in a section of the Thanh Tri Prison complex, appropriately dubbed "Skidrow". However, they numbered about 20, not 60, and none had been held with French and/or Moroccan POWs. [see End Notes]
The commando's report corroborates numerous other similar sightings; however, DPMO has made a conscious effort to discredit all of these reports--although from unrelated sources and too numerous to ignore.
Other Cuban Involvement
Several reports indicate that Cubans were piloting MIGs in aerial combat with American pilots over North Vietnam. One American advisor flying in an H-34 used a M-79 grenade launcher to shoot down a Cuban flying a biplane in Northern Laos. (28)
This was the same kind of plane used in the attack against Lima Site 85--the top-secret base in Laos providing guidance for American planes in the bombing of North Vietnam.
The involvement with American POWs was just a part of Cuba's long history of commitment to assist the Vietnamese communists, and just another chapter in their role as "communist internationals" on behalf of the Soviet Union. The Cubans first showed up in Vietnam not too many years after they consolidated power on their own island in the early 1960s. Soon after, the Cubans soon began operating en masse alongside their Vietnamese brethren. They even accompanied the North Vietnamese through the gates of the South Vietnamese Presidential Palace in Saigon on April 29, 1975.(21) However, the Cuban's assistance to the North Vietnamese continued well beyond 1975.
Raul Valdes Vivo: The creditation of Raul Valdes Vivo as a journalist, however, was only a cover, for he was in fact a DGI (Cuban Intelligence) officer and a high-ranking Cuban communist party member. [Latinos often hyphenate their last name in recognization of the matrilineal side of the family. Therefore, the last name of Raul Valdes Vivo (Valdes-Vivo), may in fact be Valdes. However, he will be referred to as Vivo in this paper.] In his book, El Gran Secreto: Cubanos en el Camino Ho Chi Minh, Vivo wrote that he first met Marta Rojas in 1965 at a Cuban Communist party meeting. Vivo was the Cuban communist party representative to the Indochinese communist party from 1965 thru 1974. (21)
Vivo claims to have established a Cuban embassy in the jungle in Vietnam in South Viet Nam in 1969. The truth is Vivo was attached to the Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN), the central command for North Vietnam's operations in South Vietnam, which was located well inside Cambodia. Much to the chagrin of the Vietnamese, Vivo was assigned to COSVN upon the insistency of Raul Castro, Fidel's brother, who was head of the Cuban armed forces. The Vietnamese reluctantly acquiesced, since Cuba was supplying several thousand soldiers to build, maintain and guard a sizeable portion of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and providing a large amount of other "technical" and material assistance. COSVN was in fact a front for a front. [For propaganda purposes, the North Vietnamese maintained that COSVN was the headquarters for the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF), a political arm of the Viet Cong. However, in fact, the NLF was a "front" for Hanoi, and COSVN was entirely controlled by the North Vietnamese. It was the North Vietnamese headquarters for staging and directing operations into South Vietnam.]
During a reception in Cuba for a high-ranking Vietnamese communist party official, in a loud voice, Castro chided Vivo for not inviting him to "his embassy." In fact, Castro wasn't at all chiding Vivo, for the barb was aimed at the North Vietnamese for not inviting Castro to COSVN headquarters in Cambodia. Vivo responded by telling Castro the difficulty in accessing "his embassy" after Cambodian General Lon Nol's coup d'etat 1970, indicating that Castro's safety in Cambodia could not be assured. Vivo was evidently in charge of Cuban intelligence in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Initially, the soviet-block subversion of Cambodia was coordinated by the Cubans out of the Cuban embassy in Phnom Penh. After General Lon Nol took over in 1970, the intelligence staff of the Cuban Embassy in Phnom Penh was moved into Hanoi along with a core of Vietnamese trained high-ranking Khmer Rouge officials to form a "Cambodian government in exile." In another section of his book, Vivo refers to himself as the Cuban Ambassador "in" Hanoi in 1971.
Later in his book, Vivo says that Cubans were with the North Vietnamese communists in 1975 when they took over Saigon, "although a modest presence." These statements are very important, for historians have yet to admit the extent of the involvement of Cuba and the other Soviet-Bloc in the directing the Vietnam War as part of the "communist international."
Vietnamese in Cuba
While a POW in Hanoi, I was interrogated by "The Lump" and another individual who had a Spanish accent. After learning about the "Cuban Program" upon release, I assumed the person with the Spanish accent might have been "Fidel." After my release in 1973, I identified "The Lump" in a photograph taken in Cuba shown to me by a member of a Congressional committee. In the picture, "The Lump" was with a U.S. anti-war contingent. I was told that he had been identified by intelligence agents as being responsible for funneling KGB money to the American anti-war groups, such as those that Jane Fonda led.(9)
The foreign affairs element of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, code named "CP-72," was positioned only 90 miles off the coast of Florida during the war and their personnel worked closely with the Cuban Government in manipulating the anti-war movement in the United States. Many of the propaganda themes directed at influencing groups in the United States were developed from information gathered by "CP-72" and was fed to the Cuban interrogation experts who were involved in exploiting American POWS in Vietnam for propaganda. (29).
Also, CIA and DIA reports reveal the operation of an international communist youth training center southeast of Santiago de Cuba in the mid-and-late 1960s. The young people, many of whom were blacks and Vietnamese, were being trained for subversive operations against the United States. One intelligence source reported that many of these young people were children of French soldiers who had either defected to the Vietnamese communists during the French Indochina or were children of French forces who were POWs and still held by the Hanoi communists. Reportedly, they had been given Vietnamese wives, and the children were taken away from their parents at a very young age and sent to communist youth camps similar to those in the Soviet Union and "Hitler's Children" in Nazi Germany. (30)
According to a DIA source, their control officer was Jesus Jiminez Escobar. "The students (agents) were to be infiltrated into the United States through normal airlift channels and would be claimed by relatives on their arrival." "Their subversive activities against the United States would include sabotage in connection with race riots..."16 Another DIA source said that "the 5th contingent was infiltrated into the U.S. from Canada through Calais, Maine."17
The same source said that DIA also monitored a center in Cuba during the same period where Vietnamese were being trained by the Cubans in POW interrogation methods. "Fidel", "Chico", and the other Cubans associated with the "Cuban Program" in Hanoi in all likelihood may have been staff associated with this center. Maj. Fernando Vecino Alegret, "Chico", has an extensive background in youth movements. This presumption is strengthened by the debriefing reports of American POWs who were in the "Cuban Program." They reported that "a large number of VN officer trainees" came to the camp, and the Cubans "Conducted interrogation training, using [American] POWs."[DPMO] The trainees were estimated to be approximately 20 years of age. One would logically assume that this was in-service training of Vietnamese graduates from the training camp in Cuba.
Vietnamese and Soviet Bloc Research on American POWs
The Cubans used standard scientific methodologies in selecting American POWs for the "Cuban Program;" i.e., random selection with a control group. Everett Alvarez was initially interviewed for the "Program" but was disqualified purportedly because he was of Spanish decent and presumed to speak Spanish. (5)
A 1975 secret CIA counterintelligence study states that the Medical Office of Hanoi's Ministry of Public Security (MPSMO) was responsible for "preparing studies and performing research on the most effective Soviet, French, communist Chinese and other...techniques..." of extracting information from POWs. The MPSMO "...supervised the use of torture and the use of drugs to induce [American] prisoners to cooperate." MPSMO's functions also "...included working with Soviet and Communist Chinese intelligence advisors who were qualified in the use of medical techniques for intelligence purposes. .... The Soviets and Chinese...were... interested in research studies on the reactions of American prisoners to various psychological and medical techniques..."(32)
The "Cuban Program" in Vietnam parallels that of a similar Soviet program in Korea according to congressional testimony on September 17, 1996 by General Jan Sejana, the highest ranking defector from the Soviet Block during the "Cold War."(33) After defecting, Sejana worked for years as a top-secret analyst for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. According to Gen. Sejana, “Americans were used to test physiological and psychological endurance and various mind control drugs. Moscow ordered Czechoslovakia to build a hospital in North Korea for the experiments [on American POWs] there." As in North Korean, Soviet, East German, Czechoslovakian and Cuban "medical specialists" were assigned to the top-secret "Hospital 198" in Hanoi where American POWs were believed to have been taken for "treatment".(34) This would have been the hospital where at least one of the American POWs in the "Cuban Program" was taken for shock treatment.[35]
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Gen. Sejana had been in charge of communist Czechoslovakia's Defense Council Secretariat, and from 1964 on, First Secretary at the Ministry of Defense. In his various official capacities, he was constantly meeting with Soviet officials, receiving instructions, and relaying those instructions to various Czech agencies and departments. "At the beginning of the Korean War, we received directions from Moscow to build a military hospital in North Korea. ..... The Top Secret purpose of the hospital was to experiment on American and South Korean POWs. .... It was very important to the Soviet plans because they believed it was essential to understand the manner in which different drugs...affected different races and people who had been brought up differently; for example on better diets. .... Because America was the main enemy, American POWs were the most highly valued experimental subjects. .... I want to point out that the same things happened in Vietnam and Laos during the Vietnam War. The only difference is the operation in Vietnam was better planned and more American POWs were used, both in Vietnam and Laos and in the Soviet Union."
Several sets of remains of American servicemen repatriated from Vietnam evidenced that they were of POWs who had suffered severe and depraved conditions long after the purported release of all POWs in 1973. The skull of one had been sawn open, evidence of an autopsy as part of an experiment common to Soviet-style research on the effect of certain drugs on the brain. (36)
Cuba's End Game in Vietnam
According to a DIA "asset", after the signing of the cease-fire on January 21, 1973, 4,000 Cuban army engineers arrived in Hanoi. They helped rebuild the Phuc Yen/Da Phuc Airfield North of Hanoi where, according to intelligence reports, American POWs were used as technicians after the war. Later, the Cubans disappeared into the mountains of the north and constructed and equipped secret bases about 100 km from the Chinese border between Monkai and Laokai. Here, the Soviets equipped the bases with mobile launch ramps, medium-range strategic missiles, possibly with tactical nuclear warheads, capable of hitting population centers in the southern part of China. (17) This is the same area where the above mentioned POW camp containing American prisoners "disappeared, guards and all."(25)
Units of this same Cuban engineering contingent were building the airfield in Grenada when Americans overran the island. U.S. military intelligence captured reams of documents and photographs relating to this unit's operations in Vietnam. However, no evidence has surfaced that these documents were ever analyzed for information on POWs by DPMO or any intelligence agency.
In the spirit of communist solidarity, Hanoi reciprocated for Cuba's assistance during the Vietnam war by sending U.S. arms and ammunition, captured in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, to South America to fuel the "revolution" directed by the Cubans there.
As agents of the Soviets, and continuing their belief in the communist international, the Cuban government expanded its role in the communist international.
The Cubans sent troops to Angola. In 1975, Vivo again surfaces in Angola posing as a journalist. Vivo "interviewed" western mercenaries who were put on trail in a "kangaroo court" in yet another slanted propaganda coup against the U.S. One of the mercenaries was an American who's body has yet to be recovered. (13)
Evidently, Cuba's partnership with Vietnam in subversive activities against the U.S. has continued. In 1996, Jane's Defense Weekly reported that "Vietnam has been training Cuban Special Forces troops to undertake limited attacks in the USA... .... Havana's strategy in pursuing such training is to attack the staging and supply areas for U.S. forces preparing to invade Cuba. .... The training program is focused on seaborne and underwater operations, roughly comparable to those assigned to U.S. Navy Seals. .... The political objective would be to bring the reality of warfare to the American public and so exert domestic pressure on Washington."(37)
Vietnam and Cuba are closely linked by their belief in exporting international communism. Hanoi praised Cuba for its shoot down of two American planes and denounced the Helms-Burton Bill as "Insolent!" Hanoi recently reaffirmed the unswerving solidarity of the communist party, the government and people of Vietnam with the Cuban revolution. (38)
Conclusion
The behavior of "Fidel", "Chico" and "Pancho" in the torture and murder of Americans is beyond the pale and is clearly in violation of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of Prisoners of War, which North Vietnam signed. Allowing these Cubans to go unpunished sets an ugly precedent, and adds to America's growing "paper tiger" image. Although the Cubans' crimes are smaller in number, they are no less than some of the war criminals that are being tried in Bosnia.
If the communist regime in Hanoi was fully cooperating in resolving the POW/MIA issue as President Clinton, Senator John McCain, and Ambassador Pete Peterson profess, the Vietnamese communists would have turned over to the U.S. the names of the Cubans who tortured and killed American POWs in the "Cuban Program." Full cooperation by the communist government in Hanoi includes the full disclosure of the true identities and roles of these Cuban "diplomats", who were "advisors" to the Hanoi prison system, and were directly responsible for the murder, torture, and severe disablement of American POWs.
Although the "Cuban Program" was reviewed by the Department of Defense's Prisoner of War and Missing in Action Office (DPMO), its analysis was incomplete. DPMO's chief analyst Robert Destatte's claims that the "Vietnamese's story is plausible and fully consistent with what DPMO knows about the conduct of the Cubans in question" are ludicrous and grossly incompetent. DPMO's analysis of the "Cuban Program" is glaringly incomplete, indicating either incompetence, negligence, or an attempt at political correctness in keeping with our present policy toward Cuba.
DPMO did not thoroughly, nor competently, analyze the documentation they presented to Congress, and other related material including:
-- POW debriefing reports containing the statements by the camp commander that the 'Cuban Program' "was a Hanoi University Psychological Study."
-- POW debriefing reporting’s that clearly state that the Vietnamese camp commander ("The Lump"), cadre and guards were well aware of, and often participated in, the torture.
-- the CIA report, North Viet-Nam: The Responsibilities of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam Intelligence and Security Services in the Exploitation of American Prisoners of War.
-- DIA reports on the training of Vietnamese prison interrogators by the Cubans.
-- no mention of the interviews and photographs made by Cuban journalists cited in documentation, and no there is no indication that it attempted to pursue the Cuban connection.
-- obtaining information from FBI files relating to the "Cuban Program," reports by Cuban refugees of American POWs from Vietnam being held in Cuba, or electronic and other surveillance of Eduardo Morjon Esteves during his "service" at the United Nations.
-- no attempt to obtain the intelligence information relating to their operations in Vietnam garnered from the seizure documents by Army intelligence from the Cuban engineers building the airfield in Granada during the U.S. incursion of that island.
End Notes
DPMO maintains, as did the defunct Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, that there is no conclusive evidence that American POWs were left behind in Vietnam after "Operation Homecoming" in March 1973. However, eyewitness reports, such as Col. Odell's, and numerous intelligence documents, belie these claims. Pentagon officials weren't the only ones who wanted to keep this secret, and it wasn't only because of third-country diplomatic ramifications. The Nixon Administration, and chief negotiator Henry Kissinger, in particular, wanted to hide the fact that POWs had been left behind in their haste to close the chapter on the Vietnam War.
There are numerous intelligence reports of a group of American POWs seen north of Hanoi, who were suffering from severe war wounds or mental disorders. They were still being held because the communists feared their release would have an unfavorable impact on public opinion. It is very likely that these POWs are the ones who simply disappeared at Monkai and Laokai, for conspicuously absent from the Operation Homecoming release in 1973 were POWs suffering from severe war wounds (amputees) and mental illnesses.
An abnormal, disproportionate number of Americans captured in Laos were never released. Although the CIA has acknowledged that approximately 600 men are missing in action in Laos, given the nature of the "Secret War," it is reasonable to presume that the number could be much higher. The fact that out of the 600 acknowledged missing in Laos, only 10 persons survived is unbelievable. Only 10 were released. When the North Vietnamese communists negotiated the treaty to end the Indochina War with the French in 1954, they never acknowledged the capture of POWs in Laos. A 1969 RAND report warned that when the U.S. negotiated with the dogmatic Vietnamese communists, they would most likely again deny that they captured any American POWs in Laos. U.S. intelligence showed that over 82% of American losses in Laos were in areas under total control of the North Vietnamese.
American POWs captured in Laos were likely candidates for "transfer" to other Soviet Bloc countries, such as Cuba, since the Vietnamese considered them as "free commodities."
Much of DOD's analysis of POW camps and evaluations of live sighting reports are based on the time-frame that the camps were occupied by POWs who returned in 1973. Therefore, if a live sighting pertains to a period of time that does not correspond to the time it was occupied by returned POWs, it is most often disregarded or debunked. Also, the analysts often failed to take into consideration the fact that many of these camps were vast complexes with annexes often hundreds of kilometers apart that have the same name as the main camp. An excellent example is the Son Tay POW camps, one north of Hanoi and the other south of Hanoi. Thus, if a live sighting report correlates to the name of a camp but the coordinates are different from the main camp, the live sighting may be discounted. This is what happened in the case of most of the Thanh Tri complex and Ba Vi Prison live sighting reports.
DPMO analysts, and DOD's Joint Task Force-Full Accounting (which conducts on-the-ground investigation of live sighting reports in Vietnam), discredits most live sighting reports by providing the names of the sources to the Vietnamese communist secret services weeks before interviews--a violation of good intelligence procedures, who subsequently disappear or are coerced; or by simply discrediting the sources because they had been political prisoners. However, DPMO's Bob Destatte uses these same sources (political prisoners) to vilify "Bobby" Garwood, a detainee who was court-martialed for collaboration with the Vietnamese communists and reported live sightings of Americans in Vietnam. If many of the reports are "triangulated," several live-sightings from unrelated sources are very similar--too much so to be mere coincidence (e.g., "white buffalos").
For some unfathomable reason, DOD sent pilots, who had worked in top-secret projects such as the atomic energy program, on tactical bombing missions over North Vietnam only to be shot down and captured. The loss of a great many planes over North Vietnam could have been easily avoided. According to National Security Council advisor William Stearman (1971-76 & 1981-93), "One of the untold scandals of the Vietnam War was the refusal of battleship foes [i.e., within the Pentagon] to follow an expert panel's advice and deploy them to Vietnam until it was too late. Of all the targets struck by air in North Vietnam, with a loss of 1,067 aircraft and air crews, 80 percent could have been taken out by a battleship's 16-inch guns without endangering American lives or aircraft."(39)
The loss of pilots was further exacerbated by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's Dr. Strangelove-like obsession of directing targets to be bombed at the same time every day. To some, it seemed as if DOD, led by McNamara, was intentionally aiding the communists by providing them with some of our best and brightest military minds [e.g., one F-111 pilot was shot down over North Vietnam shortly after leaving the Gemini space program.] Concurrently the Soviet equivalent to the Gemini program made quantum leaps over the next two years in the area of the F-111 pilot's specialty. An F-111 capsule was found in a Russian museum by U.S. investigators. There are several other similar examples of vast improvement in communist technologies after the capture of these pilots. According to DIA's "asset", the American POWs were "a gold mine of information to brief ... specialists in the technologies used by the enemy."
Michael D. Benge*
2300 Pimmit Drive, #604-W
Falls Church, VA 22043
Tel: (703) 698-8256 (H)
(202) 712-4043 (W)
October 4, 1999
___________________
*The author spent 11 years in Vietnam, over five years as a prisoner of war--1968-73, and is a diligent follower of the affairs of the region. While serving as a civilian Foreign Service Officer, he was captured in South Vietnam by the North Vietnamese, and held in numerous camps in South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and North Vietnam. He spent 27 months in solitary confinement and one year in a "black box." For efforts in rescuing several Americans before being captured, he received the Department of State's highest award for heroism and a second one for valor. He is an active Board Member of the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Servicemen.
References Cited
1. United States Air Force. June 1975. Special Exploitation Program for SEASIA PWs, 1967-1968. Rep. No. A10-2, Series: 700/JP-1.
2 3. CIA Memorandum From: Deputy Director for Operations
For: Director, Defense Intelligence Agency. dated 28 Jan (illegible). Subj: Identification of "Fidel", Cuban Interrogator of U.S. Prisoners of War in North Vietnam
3. The Washington Times. Oct. 21, 1992. Ex-POW describes "broken" cellmates left in Indochina. Washington, DC
4. The Washington Star. April 3, 1973. POWs Tortured by "Fidel". Washington. DC.
5. DPMO. Sept. 11, 1996. Cuban Program Information. Department of Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) Compiled for Congressional Hearings.
5a. Ibid. p.57.
5b. Ibid. pp.150-154, 243.
5c. Ibid. p.77.
5d. Ibid. p.45.
6. CIA. 21 January 1976. Memorandum for the Record, DOC: F86- 12-64.
7. Heller, B.L., Com. Oct. 21, 1997. Cuban Interrogation Program. PW/MIA Branch, Resources and Installations Division, Directorate for Intelligence Research.
8. Personal communication with Congressman Bob Dornan.
9. Personal communication with former congressional staff considered an expert in Cuban affairs. Confidential.
10. Hubble, J.B. 1976. P.O.W. Readers Digest Press.
11. TIME At Last the Story Can Be Told. April 9, 1973. pp.19, 20, 25&26.
12. Destatte, R. July 3, 1996. Subj: RE: Cuban Vietnam Operations. DPMO Email To: Daniel M. Baughman, LTC; William G. Beck.
13. Beck, C., CDR USNR (ret). March-April 1997. The Gatekeepers and the Connection: Cuba and America's POWs. U.S. Veteran Dispatch.
14. Brown, J.M.G. Undated. Untitled. Records of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs.
14a. Cable. Department of Defense. R 211023Z AUG 80. FROM: USDAO Bangkok. Subj: Response to Request for Interview of Prisoner In Bangkok Immigration Jail.
15. Department of State Cable. Nassau 00104 051014Z.
Re: 051825Z Feb.71.
16. Personal communication. Confidential.
17. American Embassy/Paris. Oct. 18, 1979. Post-1975 Vietnam: POWs in Vietnam. Report.
18. CIA. Sept. 1970. Personal Views on Possible North Vietnamese Refusal to Comply Fully with Terms of a Prisoner Exchange Agreement. Intelligence Information Report.
19. FBIS. 11/12/68. Five Committees Report from Second Genocide Symposium. Article: Havana, Granma, Spanish, October 21, 1968, p3. Sum. No. 46,845.
20. FBIS. May 5, 8 & 9, 1967. Material on Russel 'War Crimes' Tribunal.
21. FBIS. 6 Feb 70. GRANMA Publishes Interview Witn U.S. POW McCain. GRANMA 4 Jan 70, p.7. Havana.
22. Vivo, Raul Valdes. 1990. El Gran Secreto: Cubanos en el Camino Ho Chi Minh. Editora Politica. La Habana.
23. National Security Agency. 0310233Z Nov. 83. SigNet 3071025.
24. State Department. Oct. 10, 1979. Selected POWs in Vietnam. no. 181733Z.
25. Personal communication with Garnett "Bill" Bell, former Chief, DOD/POW/MIA Office in Hanoi.
26. Sauter, M. and J. Sanders. The Men We Left Behind. National Press Books. 1993. pp.212-213.
27. Personal communication.
28. Personal communication with Commander William G. Beck, DPMO.
29. Bell, G.E. September 19, 1996. Testimony. House National Security committee Military Personnel Subcommittee.
30. CIA Report. Training of Negroes in Cuba. Attachment to memorandum to The Honorable Walt W. Rostow, Special Assistant to the President, from Thomas H. Karamessines, Deputy Director for Plans.
31, DIA source. Personal communication. Confidential.
32. CIA. Nov. 17, 1975. North Viet-Nam: The Responsibilities of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam Intelligence and Security Services in the Exploitation of American Prisoners of War.
33. Sejna, J. September 17, 1996. Statement Before the Subcommittee on Military Personnel of the House National Security Committee.
34. CIA. Sept 29, 1982. Hospital 198/The Medical Department of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Ministry of Interior (BVN); Treatment of BVN Personnel at Facilities which had Soviet, East German, Czechoslovak, and Cuban Medical Specialists
JCRC/Bangkok Reporting Cable. North Vietnam, pre-1975: Vietnam Cuba Hospital/Place Names Obtained During Third Joint Search Effort. Doc. No. 240947zfeb89.
35. Rochester, S.I. and F. Kiley. 1998. Honor Bound: The History of American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973. Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Washington, DC. p.400.
36. Personal communication with next of kin, confidential.
37. Jane's Defence Weekly. March 6, 1965. Cuban special forces prepare for US attack
38. FBIS-EAS-96-046 Vietnam. SRV Papers Back Cuban Downing of U.S. Airplanes. March 7, 1996.
FBIS-ESA-96-053 Vietnam. SRV Daily Calls Helms-Burton Bill on Cuba "Insolent". March 19, 1996.
FBIS-EAS-96-077 Vietnam. SRV: Le Kha Phieu Reaffirms Solidarity With Cuba. April 19, 1996.
39. Stearman, William Lloyd. A Misguided Missile Ship: Old Battleships Would Do a Better Job Than a Pricey New Boat. The Washington Post. July 7, 1996.
Records of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. Untitled. JAN-28-92 TUE 10:27. p.29.
Commander Bruce Heller, Chief, PW/MIA Branch, Resources and Installations Division, Directorate for Intelligence Research. 21 Oct. 1977. "Cuban" Interrogation Program. Memorandum.
BENGE, MICHAEL DENNIS
Name: Michael Dennis Benge
Rank/Branch: U.S. Civilian
Unit: Agency for International Development
Date of Birth: 6 August 1935
Home City of Record: Oregon
Date of Loss: 31 January 1968
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 124049N 1080235E (AQ800030)
Status (in 1973): Released POW
Category:
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: Ground
Refno: 1008
Other Personnel in Incident: Betty Ann Olsen; Henry F. Blood (both
captured); Rev.Griswald (killed); Carolyn Griswald (daughter of
Rev.Griswald, survived first attack, died of wounds); Rev. Zeimer (killed);
Mrs.Robert Zeimer (wounded, first attack, evaded, survived); Rev.&
Mrs.Thompson; Miss Ruth Whilting (all killed)
Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 30 June 1990 from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews. Updated by the P.O.W.
NETWORK 1998 with material from Michael Benge.
REMARKS: 730305 RELEASED BY PRG
SYNOPSIS: Michael D. Benge was born in 1935 and raised on a ranch in eastern
Oregon. After college at Oregon State, he applied to the CIA, because he
wanted to travel the world. CIA told him to try the Agency for International Development (AID). AID sent him to International Voluntary Services (IVS).
After two years in Vietnam with IVS, Benge transferred to AID and served as an AID agricultural advisor. By the time of the Tet offensive of 1968, he had been in-country five years, working almost the whole time with the Montagnards in the highlands. He spoke fluent Vietnamese and several Montagnard dialects.
On January 31, 1968, Benge was captured while riding in a jeep near Ban Me Thuot, South Vietnam. Learning of the Tet offensive strikes, Benge was checking on some IVS volunteers who were living in a hamlet with three companies of Montagnard rebels who had just been through a lot of fighting as the NVA went through the Ban Me Thuot area. His plan was to pick up the IVS "kids" and then go down to pick up some missionaries in the area.
Benge was captured a few miles from the Leprosarium at Ban Me Thuot. This center treated anyone with a need as well as those suffering from leprosy.
It was at the Leprosarium that Rev. Archie Mitchell, Dr. Eleanor Vietti and Daniel Gerber had been taken prisoner in 1962. The Viet Cong regularly harassed and attacked the center in spite of its humanitarian objectives.
During the Tet offensive, the Viet Cong again tried to wipe out the
Christian missionary influence in Dar Lac Province, and over a three day
period attacked the hospital compound several times.
Betty Ann Olsen was born to Missionary parents in Bouake, Ivory Coast. She had attended a religious school and missionary college in Nyack, New York.
Curious about the way the other part of the world lived, she went to Vietnam in 1964 as a missionary nurse for Christian and Missionary Alliance, and was assigned to the Leprosarium at Ban Me Thuot. Henry F. Blood was a missionary serving as translator and linguist for Wickcliff Translators at the Leprosarium.
During one of the earlier attacks on the hospital compound, three staff
homes were destroyed, one housing Rev. Griswald, who was killed, and his
grown daughter Carolyn, who survived the explosion but later died of her
wounds. During the same attack, Rev. and Mrs. Zeimer, Rev.and Mrs. Thompson and Miss Ruth Whilting were trapped and machine gunned. Only Mrs. Zeimer survived her 20-30 wounds and was later evacuated to Cam Ranh Bay. Blood and Olsen escaped injury for the moment.
Two days later, on February 1, 1968, as Olsen was preparing to escape with the injured Griswald, she and Henry Blood were captured during another attack on the hospital.
For the next month or so, Benge, Blood and Olsen were held in a POW camp in Darlac Province, about a day's walk from Ban Me Thuot, and were held in cages where they had nothing to eat but boiled manioc (a large starchy root from which tapioca is made).
The Vietnamese kept moving their prisoners, hiking through the jungles and mountains. The camp areas, swept very clean of leaves to keep the mosquito population down (and the ensuing malaria threat), were clearly visible from the sky. Once, Benge reports, an American aircraft came so close to the camp that he could see the pilot's face. The pilot "wagged his wings" and flew away. The Vietnamese, fearing rescue attempts and U.S. air strikes, kept moving.
For months Olsen, Blood and Benge were chained together and moved north from one encampment to another, moving over 200 miles through the mountainous jungles. The trip was grueling and took its toll on the prisoners. They were physically depleted, sick from dysentery and malnutrition; beset by fungus, infection, leeches and ulcerated sores.
Mike Benge contracted cerebral malaria and nearly died. He credits Olsen
with keeping him alive. She forced him to rouse from his delirium to eat and drink water and rice soup. Mike Benge describes Olsen as "a Katherine Hepburn type...[with] an extra bit of grit."
In the summer of 1968, the prisoners, again on the trail, were left exposed to the rain during the rainy season. Hank Blood contracted pneumonia, weakened steadily, and eventually died in July. (July 1968 is one of the dates given by the Vietnamese - the other, according to classified information the U.S. gave to the Vietnamese through General John Vessey indicates that Mr. Blood died on October 17, 1972. Mike Benge says Blood died around July 4.) Blood was buried in a shallow grave along the trail, with Olsen conducting grave-side services.
Benge and Olsen were kept moving. Their bodies were covered with sores, and they had pyorrhea from beri-beri. Their teeth were loosening and gums infected. They spent a lot of time talking about good meals and good places to eat, planning to visit their favorite restaurants together when they went home. They moved every two or three days.
Benge and Olsen were moved near Tay Ninh Province, almost to Da Lat, then back to Quang Duc Province. Olsen was getting weak, and the Vietnamese began to kick and drag her to keep her moving. Benge, trying to defend her, was beaten with rifle butts.
Just before crossing the border into Cambodia, Olsen weakened to the point that she could no longer move. Ironically, in this area, near a tributary to the Mekong river, fish and livestock abounded, and there was a garden, but the food was denied to the prisoners. They were allowed to gather bamboo shoots, but were not told how to cook it.
Bamboo needs to be boiled in two waters to extract an acid substance. Not knowing this, Olsen and Benge boiled their food only once and were beset with immobilizing stomach cramps within a half-hour; diarrhea soon followed.
Betty Ann Olsen weakened and finally died September 29, 1968 (Vessey information indicates this date as September 26), and was buried by Benge.
Finally, Benge was taken to Cambodia, turned over to the North Vietnamese, and another long, grueling trek began. Benge, however, had made his mind up that he wouldn't die. He treated his ulcerated body by lying in creeks and allowed small fish to feed off the dead tissue (a primitive debridement), then caught the fish and ate them raw. He caught small, green frogs and swallowed them whole. He did everything he could to supplement his meager food ration.
By the time he reached the camp the Vietnamese called "the land of milk and honey" his hair was white and he was so dehydrated and emaciated that other POWs estimated his age to be over seventy years old. He was, at the time, only thirty-three.
After a year in Cambodia, Benge was marched north on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to Hanoi. He spent over three years in camps there, including a total of twenty-seven months in solitary confinement. Upon his return, he verified collaboration charges against eight of his fellow POWs, in a prosecution effort initiated by Col. Theodore Guy (this action was discouraged by the U.S. Government and the effort was subsequently abandoned.)
Mike Benge then returned to Vietnam and worked with the Montagnards until the end of the war.
The Vietnamese have never attempted return the remains of Henry Blood and Betty Olsen. They are two individuals that the Vietnamese could provide a wealth of information on. Since they pride themselves on being
"humanitarians," it would not be in keeping with this image to reveal the horror Olsen and Blood endured in their hands. It is not surprising, then, that the Vietnamese have not publicly told their stories.
Olsen and Blood are among nearly 2500 Americans, including several civilians, who are still unaccounted for, missing or prisoner from the Vietnam war. Since the war ended, over 10,000 reports have been received concerning these missing Americans which have convinced many authorities that hundreds are still alive in communist hands. While Blood and Olsen may not be among them, they went to Vietnam to help. They would not turn their backs on their fellow man. Why has their own country turned its back on them?
SOURCE: WE CAME HOME
copyright 1977 Captain and Mrs. Frederic A Wyatt (USNR Ret),
Barbara Powers Wyatt, Editor
P.O.W. Publications, 10250 Moorpark St., Toluca Lake, CA 91602
Text is reproduced as found in the original publication (including date and spelling errors).
MICHAEL D. BENGE
Civilian
Captured: January 28, 1968
Released: March 5, 1973
From 1956 through 1959 I served in the Marine Corps. After I competed my tour of duty, I returned to Oregon State University and completed my studies in Mechanical Technology in Agricultural Engineering. I served with the International Volunteer Services (the forerunner of the Peace Corps), in Vietnam from 1963 to 1965, as an advisor in education and agriculture. I joined the Agency for International Development (AID), in January 1965 and returned to Vietnam to work chiefly with the Montagnards (an aboriginal people of the Malayan-Polynesian extraction living in the western highlands). Here I acted as a civilian economic and community development advisor to the Darlac province chief. During this period I was named the adopted son of a tribal chief and his wife. The brass bracelets given to me by the Montagnards were removed when I was captured. However, since my return I am again wearing the
bracelets.
Three years later on January 28, 1968, while attempting to group people for evacuation, I was captured by the North Vietnamese in South Vietnam. For five silent years I endured forced marches through South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, into North Vietnam. I was tortured by the hands of the Communists for my "bad attitude". While in captivity I was kept in solitary confinement for 27 months. At intervals I was forced to maintain a difficult position on my knees with my hands over my head for between 11 and 16 hours at a time. If I dropped my hands I was beaten. While marching for several months, I had only a small amount of rice and salt to eat. Perhaps once or twice a month I received a tiny portion of monkey or lizard meat. I ate anything I could pick up or catch, small crabs, frogs, minnows, bugs, etc. If caught doing this I
was beaten so I swallowed them raw when no one was looking.
About two months after I was captured I came down with cerebral malaria.
During this period of time I was delirious for thirty-five days and suffered periodic blindness. No medical assistance was offered. As a result of malnutrition, I began suffering from beri-beri, scurvy, jungle ulcers, loss of hair, and loose teeth. From 160 my weight decreased to less than 100 lbs. As I marched through Cambodia and Laos I passed an endless stream of North Vietnamese uniformed soldiers walking South and supplies being trucked from Port of Sianookville, Cambodia and from Hanoi In Cambodia and Laos there were rest camps every four hours along the trail flying the North Vietnamese flag.
The 85 men held captive with me would never had been taken prisoner if the U.S. had struck the safe havens in Cambodia prior to the launching of the Tet offensive in 1968. The only reason the P.O.W.'s were released was because the Americans eventually bombed Hanoi. I was taken all the way to Hanoi. In the early part of December 1969, 1 spent about two months in a camp in Laos somewhere around Highway 9. I was then trucked into Hanoi and taken to a camp outside of the city. At this location I was put into solitary confinement for the next year, seeing no other American. I was kept in an isolation hut, where they had sealed off all of the ventilation holes allowing no air. The walls
were painted black with coal dust and cement. There was no light. I had
contact with no one else. The room was filled with mosquitoes and flies. There was one hole in the back of the hut which allowed little or no air to come in.
Only rats! And frequently I had eight or ten of them with me. My well was right outside the hut. About fifteen yards uphill they had placed a cesspool.
Everytime it rained the water turned brown with pollution. The free people of South Vietnam learned the nature of the North Vietnamese
communists in 1968 when they invaded Hue. The systematic massacre that
followed belied the N.V.A.'s persuasive propaganda. First they murdered
thousands on their lists of opponents or neutralists. Then they turned on the pro-communists and student groups whom they did not consider reliable. Then as they retreated they killed anyone they thought might have witnessed the wholesale slaughter. Two missionaries, with whom I was imprisoned, told of seeing six other missionaries, in Ban Me Thuot, gunned down in cold blood as they emerged from bunkers with their hands over their heads. Two women missionaries in Laos were tied inside grass huts by the NVA and burnt to death. In another area three villages were overrun by the North Vietnamese and they drove the women and children into a ditch and burnt them alive with flame-throwers.
I was elated when I first learned of the peace talks. However, even with peace and my return home I continue trying to awaken the people in the U.S. and elsewhere about many facts of the Vietnam war. I am very concerned about the American, South Vietnamese and third country prisoners of war who are still held by the North Vietnamese. We have documented proof of 53 Americans whom the North Vietnamese had captured and used for propaganda purposes. There has been no accounting of them on any of the POW or MIA lists. I feel that the North Vietnamese may use the remaining prisoners to justify to their people their claim of winning the war.
I am happy to have been home to rejoin my mother, father, and sister even for such a short period of time. At present I am still a bachelor and have returned to college in the Philippines for my M.S. degree in community development. I returned to South Vietnam for four months to see my many friends. I shall again return to work again with the Montagnards in Vietnam if "The Tide Doesn't Turn Red." Unlike many others, my going to Vietnam wasn't just "Doing My Thing". I still feel that I have a commitment. A commitment that "they too might have the freedom of choice, of beliefs and political alternatives."
It was great to return to America and be back in a country, even with all its social ills, where one can enjoy the freedom of speech, the freedom of thought, and the freedom of political choice in the free world, things that are unknown to those, still in the lands where I was held as a POW.
----------
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 98
From: "Mike Benge"
Subject: BIO
Michel Dennis Benge (Mike) was born on August 6, 1935 in Denver, CO, and grew up on a ranch in Eastern Oregon, where for a time, he rode brahma bulls and bareback horses in rodeos. He joined the Marine Corps in 1956, achieved the rank of sergeant, and was honorably discharged in 1959. He completed his undergraduate studies in Agricultural Engineering at Oregon State University in 1962.
In 1963, he joined the International Voluntary Services (a forerunner of the Peace Corps), and served for two years in the Central Highlands in South Viet Nam, working mainly with the Montagnards (a French term for people of the mountains). He is Fluent in both Vietnamese and Rhade (the major ethnic minority dialect), In 1965, he joined the United States Agency for International Development, and served as a provincial development officer in the Central Highlands of South Viet Nam. He received three of medals from the government of South Viet Nam for
outstanding work in public administration, public health, and ethnic minority affairs.
While serving in that capacity, he was captured by the North Vietnamese during the "Tet Offensive" on January 28, 1968. His capture resulted from attempting to rescue four Americans housed in a section of town that had been overrun by a North Vietnamese battalion. Mr. Benge was credited with rescuing 11 Americans prior to his capture, and for this, received the State Department's highest award for heroism. He also received a second award for valor for his actions during captivity.
Mr. Benge was held in numerous camps in South Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos and North Viet Nam. He spent 27 months in solitary confinement and one year in a "black box." While in the "Plantation Gardens," he served as Col. Ted Guy's deputy, and was released during "Operation Homecoming" in 1973.
While on medical leave, he returned to Viet Nam and continued his work with the Ministry of Ethnic Minorities. In 1974, he was assigned to the USAID Mission in the Philippines. After the fall of Viet Nam in 1975, he assisted in processing Vietnamese refugees to go to the U.S.
In 1978, he completed a Master's Degree in Agroforestry at the University of the Philippines at Los Banos. In 1979, he rotated to USAID headquarters in Washington, DC, continuing his work in international development, forestry and environment. For outstanding achievements in international forestry, Mr. Benge received an award from the King of Sweden, which was patterned after the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize.
He continues his work with USAID, and resides in Falls Church, VA. He is a single parent to two daughters, ages 16 and 11. He is active in POW/MIA affairs, and other South East Asian political issues.
Testimony of Michael D. Benge before the House International Relations Committee Chaired by the Honorable Benjamin A. Gilman,
November 4, 1999.
My name is Michael D. Benge. While serving as a civilian Economic Development Officer in the Central Highlands of South Viet Nam, I was captured by the North Vietnamese during the Tet Offensive on January 28, 1968. I was held in numerous camps in South Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos and North Viet Nam. I was a POW for over five years, and spent 27 months in solitary confinement, one year in a "black box," and one year in a cage in Cambodia. I served for almost 11 years in Viet Nam. I was released during Operation Homecoming in 1973. I am a Board Member of the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Missing Servicemen. And, I am a POW/MIA activist; that is, I am one who is actively seeking the truth regarding the fate of our Prisoners of War and Missing in Action.
I was not tortured by the Cubans, nor was I part of the "Cuban Program." There were 19 American POWs that I know of who were tortured by the Cubans in Hanoi during the Vietnam War. These brave men include Colonel Jack Bomar and Captain Ray Vohden, who will testify, and also Commander Al Carpenter, who is with us today. They named their torturers "Fidel," "Chico" and "Pancho." The torture took place in a POW camp called the Zoo, and the Vietnamese camp commander was a man they called the "Lump." He was called that because of the presence of a rather large fatty tumor in the middle of his forehead.
No, I was not tortured by Cubans in Vietnam, but I was interrogated by the "Lump," and a person who appeared to be a Latino and who spoke a few words of Spanish to the "Lump" during my interrogation in the early part of 1970. Upon my return to the U.S., I was shown a picture taken in Cuba of the "Lump," who was with an American anti-war group. Yes, it was the same person who had interrogated me in 1970. I was told by a Congressional Investigator that he was the man who was in charge of funneling Soviet KGB money to American anti-war groups and activists, such as Jane Fonda. After researching my paper, this made more sense, for who would be better suited to liaison with the Cubans. This was my first piece of the puzzle.
I decided to research the "Cuban Program" after repeated claims by the Administration, Senators John McCain and John Kerry, Ambassador Pete Peterson, and members of the Department of Defense (DOD) that the Vietnamese Government was "cooperating fully" in resolving the POW/MIA issue. This is far from the truth.
If the Vietnamese communists were fully cooperating as purported, they would have told us the true fate of the 173 U.S. servicemen who were last known to be alive and in the hands of the North Vietnamese communists. They would have helped us resolve the fate of over 600 American servicemen who were lost in Laos, of which over 80% were lost in areas under the total control of the North Vietnamese. If the Vietnamese were fully cooperating, we would not be here today, for they would have revealed the names of the Cubans "Fidel," "Chico" and "Pancho," who were responsible for the torture of 19 American POWs; beating one so severly that it resulted in his death.
Upon their return to the U.S., the POWs in the "Cuban Program" were told by our government not to tell of their torture by the Cubans, but they resisted, as they had in the "Cuban Program, and some broke the silence. Regardless, the "Cuban Program" was swept under the rug by the U.S. Government.
Thus, I chose to research the "Cuba Program"--one segment of the POW/MIA issue--to prove my point that the Vietnamese communists were not fully cooperating as purported. I first produced a draft paper in 1996 for presentation at the annual meeting of the National Alliance of Families.
Commander Chip Beck, who at that time was with the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO), became interested in my research, and tried to find out what DPMO knew. He was basically told by DPMO to back off. Congressman Bob Dornan also became interested. He held hearings, and requested that DPMO provide them with their analysis of the Cuban Program. A compilation was presented, and Mr. Robert Destatte from DPMO testified as to his and DPMO's analysis. Commander Beck also testified; after which, he was told by DPMO that his services were no longer needed.
With the release of DPMO's compilation and analysis, and the declassification of additional documents related to Cuba's involvement in Vietnam, I reassessed this information. In the DPMO compilation, there were memoranda stating that the CIA had identified Cuban military attaches Eduardo Morjon Esteves and Luis Perez Jaen with backgrounds that seemed to correspond with information on "Fidel" and "Chico" provided by returned POWs. Reportedly, Esteves served under diplomatic cover as a brigadier general at the United Naions in New York during 1977-78. Documents indicate that the FBI and DIA were "tasked" to ID these people; however, neither the CIA, the DIA, nor the FBI could produce a decent picture for identification by the returned POWs. It makes one wonder as to their level of effort.
Nonetheless, just from my reading the documents in the DPMO compilation, I found the profile of a man that that seemed to match almost perfectly the POWs' description of the Cuban called "Chico." However, this profile also partially fit the POWs' characterization of "Fidel." The profile was that of Major Fernando Vecino Alegret.
On August 22, 1999, the Miami Herald published an article on the "Cuban Program" based partially on my report. However, the reporter got it wrong and said that I believed Raul Valdes Vivo, the DGI agent attached to COSVN (ref. my submitted report), might be "Fidel." Independent of my report, a Cuban exile in the Miami area identified Fernando Vecino Alegret as "Fidel," based on information emanating from contacts within the exile community and Cuba. He also produced a picture of Alegret that was subsequentially identified by Col. Hubbard, who said he was 99% sure he was "Fidel." Alegret is now Cuba's Minister of Education, and Fidel Castro has issued a denial that Alegret was ever in Vietnam. However, DIA documentation in DPMO's compilation proves otherwise.
In Mr. Destatte's testimony, he claims he "was never responsible for any investigations or analysis related to the "Cuban Program." "Responsible" is the key word here that Mr. Destatte parses.
The Administration and the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) has mastered the art of obfuscation. I grew up on a farm in the West, and I used to try to catch greased pigs at the county fair, and I can assure you that trying to pin down DPMO to truthful facts is sometimes much more difficult than trying to catch a greased pig.
Mr. Chuck Towbridge of DPMO is also implicated as participating in the investigation and analysis; however, it has never been revealed who was in fact in charge. One would hope that someone at DPMO is in charge.
Mr. Destatte testified to DPMO's conclusions and that the "Cuban Program" was nothing more than a program "to provide instruction in basic English to PAVN [North Vietnamese Army] personnel working with American prisoners."
I have taught English to Vietnamese, and have been tortured by the Vietnamese, and I can tell the difference between the two. One might conclude from Mr. Destatte's testimony that neither he nor Mr. Towbridge know the difference. I can also read English and understand what I read. One might also conclude that they may have a problem here too. Perhaps they should have taken basic English instruction from the Cubans.
Mr. Destatte also had the audacity to testify that the Vietnamese high-command was unaware that the Cubans were torturing American POWs, and it was stopped once they found out. However, it is crystal clear from the POW debriefings, as well as the Air Force Intelligence Analysis, that the "Cuban Program" was sanctioned by the Vietnamese. This then leads one to ask, "How did Mr. Destatte reach his conclusion?"
Mr. Destatte reached his conclusion by asking North Vietnamese communist Colonel Pham Teo, who told Destatte he was in South Viet Nam in 1967-68 and knew nothing of the "Cuban Program." However, he had heard rumors that it was an English language instruction program that had "gone awry." Mr. Destatte testified that the Vietnamese explanation "is...fully consistent with what we know about the conduct of the Cubans in question."
Evidently, Destatte chose to believe a Vietnamese communist colonel over American POWs who had been brutally tortured in the "Cuban Program" and had clearly stated in their debriefings that the Vietnamese were well aware of and participated in their torture. Destatte choses to believe a member of a draconian regime, which had systematically murdered 70-80,000 political prisoners after they took over power in Vietnam in 1975, and who had broken every agreement ever made with the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments.
What bewilders me, as it should you, is that Destatte's superiors at DPMO had the audacity to let him testify before Congress to this foolishness. This exemplifies the quality of DPMO's investigation and analysis of the "Cuban Program."
I am neither a trained investigator nor an analyst, but I do know how to research. And I have concluded that at best, DPMO's investigation and analysis of the "Cuban Program" was not up to professional standards, and DPMO's conclusions are shameful! However, they did a great job of obfuscating the issue.
Since the "Cuban Program" was sanctioned by the Vietnamese, what then was the driving force behind it?" According to POW debriefings, supported by CIA and other reports, the "Cuba Program" was part of a Hanoi medical university's "psychological study." It was conducted to obtain full compliance from the American POWs, and to force them to make propaganda statements against the American government and the war in Vietnam. The real reason for the termination of the "Cuban Program" was so "Fidel," "Chico" and "Pancho" could return to Cuba as planned in time to prepare a presentation for the October 18-21, 1968, communist internationale Second Symposium Against Yankee Gonocide In Vietnam. This symposium in Cuba was a continuum of the Bertrand Russel War Crimes Tribunal kangaroo court and dog-and-pony show held in Denmark the previous year.
My paper is based partially on what DPMO gave to Congressman Dornan's Committee, as well as on documents obtained from the DIA and the CIA through the Freedom of Information Act, and it is thoroughly referenced. I would like to submit a copy of it and the referenced material to the Committee at this time for the record.
However, I have just scratched the surface, but I found enough documents to indicate that there should be a plethora of others related to the Cuban involvement in Vietnam if they are ever declassified as two U.S. Presidents have decreed. I also recommend that this matter be thoroughly investigated by professional investigators, not DPMO analysts.
Besides evidence contrary to DPMO's stated position on the "Cuban Program," the documents I examined reveal: the possibility that a number of American POWs from the Vietnam War had been held in Los Maristas, a secret Cuban prison run by Castro's G-2 intelligence service. The Cuban who claims to have seen them later escaped and made it to the United States, and was reportedly debriefed by the FBI;
a Cuban Official had offered the State Department to ransom some American POWs from Vietnam, but there was no follow up; that Cubans, along with Russians, guarded a number of American POWs in Laos;
the Cubans photographed a number of American POWs in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; that besides the "Cuban Program," the Cubans were very heavily involved in Vietnam. They had several thousand "engineers" in Vietnam constructing, repairing and guarding the Ho Chi Minh Trail where a large number of Americans disappeared; the possibility that American POWs were "treated" in Cuban hospitals in Hanoi; the Cubans had a permanent DGI agent assigned to the COSVN headquarters in Cambodia, the North Vietnamese command center directing the war in South Vietnam.
This is a fact not found in the history books on the Vietnam War. He was assigned there on the insistence of Rauol Castro, the head of Cuba's military and the brother of the real Fidel. This fact belies Mr. Destatte's testimony that "the Soviet and Cuban governments did not successfully dictate policies or actions to the North Vietnamese government;" two unrelated documents telling of American POWs being taken from Vietnam to Cuba;
the Cubans were also actively engaged in subversive activities, infiltrating a number of communist youth into the U.S., and were funneling KGB money through Vietnamese communist agents to antiwar groups and individuals in the U.S.; as recent as 1996, the Vietnamese trained Cuban Special Forces to undertake limited attacks in the USA.
Instead of hiring analysts at DPMO, DOD should hire some good professional investigators, such as former FBI or police investigators, and some people who know how to do systematic research. However, every time DPMO gets good ones, it seems to find a way to get rid of them.
My paper raises more questions than it answers, but only history will prove me right or wrong; however, I think I am on the right track. Only through full disclosure by the U.S. government agencies, which were gathering information on the depth of Cuban involvement in the Vietnam war and with American POWs, will we know the truth.
As you can see from my document, the Cubans were heavily involved in the Vietnam War. They were in charge of building and maintaining a good portion of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Recently, I was invited as a representative of the National Alliance of Families to a briefing at DPMO by its head, Bob Jones. Among things he discussed was his proposal for DPMO to sponsor a meeting between the U.S., Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to discuss American Servicemen lost along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I suggested to Mr. Jones that he should also invite Cuba to the conference, for they were heavily involved. He told me that was ridiculous, for the Cubans weren't involved in Vietnam. I recommended to him that he read both the material presented to Congress on the Cuban Program and Raul Valdes Vivo's book.
I was brought up with old fashioned values. My mother taught me at a young age that no matter how hard you search for the truth, you won't find it unless you want to.
We are not seeking revenge. We will leave that issue to the courts. We are also not seeking to get someone fired, we leave that up to you to judge. We are only seeking an honest accounting for the POW/MIAs. We, like every American should, only seek honest answers from our government and its representatives, and competent investigations as to the fate of the POW/MIAs so that their families might find closure to their long suffering grief.
Ignorance? Arrogance? Disinterest? Lack of caring? Incompetence? Obfuscation? I rest my case.
Respectfully Submitted
Michael D. Benge
2300 Pimmit Dr., #604-W
Falls Church, VA 22043
Ph: (703) 875-4063 (W)
(703) 698-8256 (H)
NEVER LET A STUMBLE IN THE ROAD BE THE END OF THE JOURNEY!
Join the InvestorsHub Community
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
