Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 9, 1993 TAG: 9307090042
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: HANOI, VIETNAM LENGTH: Short
Robert Garwood, dishonorably discharged from the Marine Corps for collaborating with his North Vietnamese captors, arrived as part of a delegation led by Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H.
Smith is pressing Vietnam to cooperate more fully in the search for traces of 2,253 Americans listed as missing from the war.
Garwood's presence on the trip has elicited criticism that he lacks credibility, both because of his conviction and because he first publicly raised claims of seeing live Americans five years after he returned to the United States in 1979.
Smith said he brought Garwood along to try to check his story.
Soon after arriving in Hanoi, the senator and the other seven members of his group followed Garwood to two sites where the former POW said he saw live Americans in the late 1970s. Vietnam insists it held none at the time.
Garwood said Vietnamese soldiers had prevented him from asking the men if they were American.
Garwood was taken prisoner in 1965 near Da Nang in the former South Vietnam and did not leave Vietnam until 1979. During his trial he denied the collaboration charges.
by CNB