Word: schweitzers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...time President Bush announced the news last week, Washington had enough fresh material to begin settling what might be hundreds of the unresolved cases. Schweitzer told TIME that while complete evidence lies scattered "throughout the country," the key is the museum's one-inch-thick central index -- the Red Book -- cataloging everything the Vietnamese government knows about American servicemen...
...first, Schweitzer said, he tried to sell his book proposal to New York City publishers, but for three years "nobody was interested." At "wit's end," he turned to an old friend in official Washington, State Department official Richard Armitage, then at the Pentagon. But when Schweitzer offered his services, he was turned down. "I had to force Ted down the throats of the intelligence bureacracy," says a Defense Intelligence Agency official. The agency soon reversed itself, and under the code name Swamp Ranger, set Schweitzer to screen the Hanoi archives, copying enormous numbers of documents...
...July, Swamp Ranger began to deliver the major part of what became a trove of more than 5,000 black-and-white photos. Many of them are different views of the same individuals, but 1,700 different servicemen are included. Schweitzer also copied thousands of supporting documents from the archives, including photos of artifacts such as dog tags, uniform name strips, helmets, flight suits, eyeglasses, ID cards, class and wedding rings and many other personal items. "At one point," recalls principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Carl Ford, "I suddenly thought, wow, the Rosetta stone of the MIA issue...
...Schweitzer seems to have acquired his information through a quiet manner and dogged patience that won the trust of the Vietnamese. They regarded him as a hero who was severely beaten by Thai pirates while working for the U.N. to protect fleeing Vietnamese boat people, and as a benefactor who started a philanthropic foundation to deliver pharmaceuticals to Vietnamese medical clinics. His material was partly confirmed by black-and-white photos supplied by a North Carolina native named Eugene Brown. Brown apparently acquired his pictures through his Vietnamese wife, who had intelligence connections in her homeland. He offered his evidence...
What happens next depends entirely on the Vietnamese. Schweitzer says, "We're just at the beginning of the beginning." He is returning to Hanoi to help a team of American experts gain unfettered access to the documents. Schweitzer is worried that the archives could quickly deteriorate and that "key people who know a lot" could die before a full accounting is made. Though this new access provides no indication that there are any live American POWs, the U.S. may finally be able to give the dead a decent burial...