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>http://www.pythiapress.com/wartales/Prisoners-of-War.htm
The fate of the 528 presumably would be determined when the Laotian conflict was resolved. But that didn’t happen. The Americans held in Laos disappeared without a trace, as if into a black hole. Based on statistical probability alone, it was highly unlikely that they had all died or been killed at the time they were shot down.
In fact, the Pentagon had more than statistical probability to go on. It had detailed intelligence, including 300 reports (97 from CIA) and even photographs that indicated some of them had been held in prison camps and caves in northern Laos, near North Vietnam’s border—a hundred miles or so from Hanoi.
Pathet Lao: “We’re holding 158.”
A high-ranking Pathet Lao official had announced to his American visitors in 1969 that his guerrilla group was holding 158 U.S. POWs.
Given the number of missing in action and the realistic likelihood that many of them were dead, that sounded about right.
Therefore, it was not farfetched to speculate that the Vietnamese intended to use the American POWs in Laos to make sure Washington coughed up the $3.25 billion Nixon and Kissinger had promised them—and promised them, according to the first clause of the secret letter, “without any political conditions.”
If the money arrived on schedule, so might the POWs from Laos. The Vietnamese could claim that the two happenings were unrelated. And if the money didn’t arrive—well, Hanoi could afford to wait and see what time would bring.