Red Lao Claim To Have Returned MIA Lundy's Remains

Where Were His Remains Found? When Were They Found? When Did He Die, And
What Killed Him?

This 1990 photo purports to show Air Force Colonel John Robertson, left, Air Force Major Albro Lundy, Jr., and Navy Lieutenant Larry Stevens, right. They all are missing as a result of the war in Vietnam.

By Ted Sampley
U.S. Veteran Dispatch

Dec. 1997/Jan. 1998

Communist Lao's Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Soubanh Sprithirath strolled into U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberland's Ventienne office October 28 of this year and plopped a box onto her desk. "Here is an American MIA," he told the Ambassador.

Ambassador Chamberland accepted the box and in a later statement to the press praised the Lao: "We appreciate the compassion of the Laos citizens who have cooperated in the return of these remains and hope . . . that other Laos citizens will come forward with information which will help other American families come to closure on the death of their loved ones."

The box, according to a Capitol Hill source, contained the bones of U.S. Air Force Pilot Major Albro L Lundy, Jr., his dog tags, ID card and Blood Chit. A Blood Chit is a numbered reward offer printed on silk carried by fixed wing air crew members on their person. The Southeast Asian version states the following in more than a dozen languages of that region: "I am a citizen of the United States of America. I do not speak your language. Misfortune forces me to seek your assistance in obtaining food, shelter and protection. Please take me to someone who will provide for my safety and see that I am

returned to my people. My government will reward you."

Nearly 600 American servicemen became missing in action as a result of the secret war fought by the United States in Laos. Because the United States government refused to admit fighting the war there, it did not negotiate with the Laotian communists for the return of U.S. prisoners at the end of the war. No live American POWs were released by the Lao.

The Capitol Hill source told the U.S. Veteran Dispatch that, because of the personal items in the box and their "excellent" condition, U.S. government officials are convinced that the remains are in fact those of Lundy, who was lost over northeastern Laos December 24, 1970.

Lundy was flying an A1E aircraft on a medical evacuation escort mission over a heavily defended communist controlled valley in Laos when he began having mechanical problems.

He radioed, "I've got a rough engine . . . It's backfiring."

He radioed to other members of the flight, "I've got to get out now."

The other pilots saw Lundy's seat rocket fire, followed by what some called a normal chute deployment. Seconds later, Lundy's plane hit the ground, disintegrated and burned. There were conflicting reports about Lundy's ejection. Some witnesses said Lundy's chute harness was empty. Others report that Lundy was in fact in the harness after the chute opened.

Aircraft circled the crash site which was located within five kilometers of a village for 30 minutes but found no signs of Lundy or received any emergency beacon signals from him. U.S. ground teams attempted to enter the crash site later that day but were driven away by hostile fire.

Two days later, the U.S. government declared Lundy "dead, body not recovered." His family was told in a telegram and official condolence letter that Maj. Lundy did not leave the aircraft and that he "died instantly as a result of the aircraft crash."

Following the U.S. government's certification that Lundy was dead, his wife Jonna Lundy began rebuilding her life and doing what was necessary to raise their six children. She pursued a law degree by attending night classes. She never remarried. One son, Albro Lundy III, is also a lawyer. He was 10 when his father left for the war that was raging in Indochina.

In 1991, a photo surfaced depicting three men believed to be American prisoners of war in captivity. The photo was accompanied by three sets of fingerprints and palm prints said to be those of the three men and carrying the date May 25, 1990. One of the three men was said to be Lundy.

The photo was brought into the United States by a Huston, Texas woman who had just returned from Thailand. She had done relief work in refugee camps along the Thai/Cambodian border in 1980-1981 and had returned 10 years later for a second visit to the camps.

After she returned to the United States in 1990, the woman contacted the U.S. Veteran Dispatch. She said that after returning to Thailand and visiting one of the refugee camps known as Sight Number Two, she was contacted by a "Cambodian refugee."

The refugee told her he wanted to talk about American flyers, "the ones that are alive." He said he represented a "Cambodian businessman" who had been able to "purchase" two Americans from captivity. The refugee gave the woman the names "Robertson" and "Stevens." He said they had been moved to a "safe site" in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

According to the woman, the refugee gave her the photograph and a map showing the site in Phnom Penh where the MIAs were being held. He wanted her to go and see for herself. The woman, suspecting some sort of scam, asked how much it was going to cost her. The refugee said it would cost her only $500 for the air fare. Instead of going to Cambodia, however, the woman took the information to the U.S. Embassy in Bancok where much to her shock, her information was received with little enthusiasm. The embassy personnel, the woman told the U.S. Veteran Dispatch, was simply not interested.

The woman asked the U.S. Veteran Dispatch for assistance in finding the families of the men

"The head shape is exactly the same," Lundy's son Albro III said in a news conference in July 1991. "Look at the ear placements," he said, holding up another picture taken of his father more than 20 years before. "Look at the hair line, look at the cowlick, look at the eyebrows. Look how deep the eyes are set . . . Look at the nose and the broad tip at the end of the nose. Take a look down here at the chin with the dimples," Albro III pointed to one of the men in the photo and told the reporters, "this is my father."

depicted in the photo. She was provided with information regarding how she could reach the families and advised to contact former prisoner of war Navy Captain Eugene "Red" McDaniel who was head of the American Defense Institute (ADI), a think tank based in Alexandria, Virginia. ADI at that time was sponsoring the collection of information pertaining to the POW/MIA issue.

The Lundy family was contacted by ADI. After being shown the photograph, the family positively identified Albro Lundy as one of the men in the photo.

"The head shape is exactly the same," Lundy's son Albro III said in a news conference in July 1991.

"Look at the ear placements," he said, holding up another picture taken of his father more than 20 years before. "Look at the hair line, look at the cowlick, look at the eyebrows. Look how deep the eyes are set.

"Look at the nose and the broad tip at the end of the nose. Take a look down here at the chin with the dimples," Albro III pointed to one of the men in the photo and told the reporters, "this is my father."

The appearance of the photo made international headlines after ADI released it to Reuter's wire service. International interest in the photo brought to a screeching halt an ongoing U.S. government effort to declare the issue of American servicemen missing from the Vietnam satisfactorily resolved so that Vietnam's lucrative slave labor market could be opened to American business interests.

The other two U.S. MIAs purportedly in the photograph, Navy Lt. Larry Stevens and Air Force Col John Leighton Robinson, were also positively identified by their family members. Ironically, Vietnam had erroneously claimed to have returned the remains of Robinson in 1990, but the Pentagon said the remains were those of an animal.

The families immediately turned to the U.S. government and asked that the finger and palm prints be compared to the U.S. government held prints of the three missing pilots. To their amazement, the U.S. military could not find any fingerprint records to check against those accompanying the photo.

In Lundy's case, the absence of his fingerprint records required the loss or destruction of multiple sets of fingerprints known to have once been on file with the Air Force, the FBI, the State Department

and his college ROTC.

The Lundy family was further astonished when they discovered that over the years the U.S. government had received at least 20 reports describing Lundy as alive and still in captivity. The family had only been told of two of the sightings.

Senators Bob Smith, John Kerry, Jesse Helms, Frank Murkowski, Alan Cranston and Charles Grassley met in private to discuss whether or not the Senate should establish a committee to look into the POW/MIA issue. Smith and Grassley demanded that such a committee be formed.

The Senate soon voted to establish a Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, which began its investigation into the POW/MIA issue in November 1991. After 18 months, the Select Committee concluded that yes, some American servicemen were left behind alive in the hands of the communists after the end of the Vietnam War.

Nigel Cawthorne, a British author who investigated the "live POW issue" and wrote about his findings in his book The Bamboo Cage, estimated at least 300 American prisoners remained in the hands of the communists after the war. Authors Monika Jensen-Stevenson and William Stevenson claim in their book Kiss The Boys Goodbye: How The United States Betrayed Its Own POWs In Vietnam the number was at least 100. Jensen-Stevenson and Cawthorne both testified before the Select Committee.

While the Select Committee was still investigating, a year after the photograph from Cambodia depicting Lundy, Robertson and Stevens surfaced. Defense Department officials told the New York Times that they were convinced the photograph was a phony. They said it was a reproduction of a 1923 photo of three Soviet farmers that had been published in a December 1989 Khmer language issue of a magazine called Soviet Union.

The Pentagon produced a copy of the magazine which they said had been found in Cambodia's National Library located in Phnom Penh. The Pentagon could only produce one copy of the magazine.

Kathy Lundy, the daughter-in-law of Major Lundy, said the Pentagon's copy of the magazine and conclusion "raises more questions." She said that quick research done on behalf of the families by contacts in Moscow found that Soviet Union magazine was published in 22 languages but not in Khmer.

She said Russian and English editions from December of 1989 do not show the picture that was reported to have come from the Cambodian library. The Pentagon acknowledged that Ms. Lundy was correct in her findings but explained the discrepancy by saying that not all regional editions of the magazine were identical.

The establishment press believed the Pentagon. The photo was declared a fraud. The U.S. government moved forward with plans to normalize trade relations with Vietnam.

To dilute its own findings, the Select Committee so as not to offend the communist Vietnamese and to appease the corporate interests lobbying to do business with Vietnam, also declared in its final report that there was no evidence proving the abandoned POWs were still alive.

POW/MIA families and activists countered, maintaining that in the absence of "credible" evidence proving the POW/MIAs dead, they should be considered still alive and in captivity. They adamantly opposed any normalized relations with Vietnam until such evidence was presented.

The establishment press headlined the Select Committee's conclusion that there was no evidence of live POWs still being held. The U.S. government moved forward and began the normalization process.

Six months after the Select Committee issued its final report, the New York Times reported the discovery in Moscow of a 1972 Russian intelligence document pertaining to U.S. prisoners of war held by Hanoi during the Vietnam War. The document, which became known as the "1205 Document", was authored by Tran Van Quang, a North Vietnamese Army Lieutenant General whose war time responsibility included keeping track of North Vietnam's American prisoners of war.

The 1205 Document, which was found in the archives of the Communist Party of the former Soviet Union, revealed that during the Vietnam War the communists were actually holding 1,205 American

prisoners at a time when Hanoi officials were telling U.S. negotiators that they held only 386 American POWs.

The unexpected appearance of the 1205 Document provided even more compelling evidence that the Vietnamese were lying about continuing to hold U.S. POWs after the war. Controversy surrounding the document again stopped the U.S. government's rush to normalize relations with Vietnam.

U.S. officials soon declared the 1205 Document to be a fraud. The establishment press agreed, and the U.S. government resumed its preparation for trade with Vietnam.

American business interests were finally granted their wish in 1994 when President Bill Clinton lifted the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam. On July 11, 1995, Clinton announced normalized diplomatic relations between the two countries, citing "enhanced Vietnamese cooperation" in resolving the POW/MIA issue.

And this year, it is well known that the Laotian Communist Party, not to be outdone by the Vietnamese Communist Party has solicited the support of U.S. business interests in pressuring the Clinton administration to grant Most Favored Nation (MFN) trade status to Laos.

Laotians have obviously learned from the Vietnamese how to find and use U.S. MIA bones to achieve their political goals.

What better way for Laotian communists to divert attention from the fact that no living U.S. POWs were returned from Laos at the end of the war. The miraculous appearance of a high profile MIA believed to still be alive in 1990 discredits any notion that Laos still holds live U.S. POWs.

Albro Lundy III says his family will not accept the remains as those of his father until they have been verified by qualified forensic experts. He wants to know how the Lao government obtained his father's ID information and remains. He wants to know what the chain of custody of the remains was and the exact circumstance and date of his father's death.

Good questions.