Interviewer: Let's start off with this, this question of taking yourself back to the '60s.
Interviewer: How did you feel then, how do you feel now?
Solarz: I thought we were making a very serious mistake in the mid 60's as we began to get more deeply involved in the war in Vietnam.
Solarz: It didn't seem to me at the time that we had any vital national interests at stake there and the price we were paying for our involvement in Vietnam in terms of the blood and treasure we were expending there, without any persuasive justification that as a result of our involvement we were in any significant way enhancing the national interests of our own country seemed to me to be, therefore, utterly unjustified.
Solarz: And I was also concerned about the consequences of our involvement in Vietnam for the domestic tranquility of our own society which was clearly becoming to come apart as a result of the tensions which were generated by our involvement in the war in Vietnam.
Solarz: And so in the absence of any persuasive demonstration that the prevention of a communist victory in Southeast Asia and particularly in Vietnam was indispensable in terms of the national interests of the United States, I just didn't think that what we were doing there could be justified.
Interviewer: Looking back from that perspective to today, uh, what do you think Vietnam would have been, what's been the fallout?
Solarz: Well, I never was under any illusions about what would happen in Vietnam it in fact the communists did come to power there.
Solarz: It never seemed to me that the Viet Cong were agrarian reformers or that the political and economic system in North Vietnam was something which, uh, would be in the interests of South Vietnam.
Solarz: Uh, and so I can't say that I've been, uh, very surprised by what's happened in Vietnam since.
Solarz: The real question for the United States was whether we could justify the loss of blood and treasure, the sacrifice of 50,000 American lives and the expenditure of uh, hundreds of billions of dollars, uh to prevent a communist victory in that part of the world when there, in fact, were no vital American interests at stake.
Solarz: The argument, of course, was made at the time that if Vietnam fell all of the other dominoes in Southeast Asia would fall as well but I think that history has demonstrated quite clearly that that has not been the case.
Solarz: Indonesia, uh, the biggest domino of them all is today far more staunchly anti-communist uh, than it was, uh, when we first began to hear talk about the domino theory in the first place.
Solarz: And the, uh, ASEAN group of nations, uh, has emerged as a viable politically and economically, uh, anti communist association of nations in Southeast Asia.
Solarz: In tact, I think the American position in Southeast Asia in many respects is stronger today than it's been uh, in any time in the last decade.
Solarz: And while I'm i...
Solarz: what has happened in Vietnam is a tremendous tragedy, uh, for the people of Vietnam first and foremost and also for the people of Cambodia and Laos who are in effect under Vietnamese occupation.
Solarz: I can't say looking back on that experience that, uh, we should have put in more men and more money in order to prevent it because I don't think it was an objective that we could have achieved given the limitations on what we were prepared to do while at the same time, uh, the price we were paying was far too high to justify raising the stakes even further.
Interviewer: That would take us right into the Central American analogy, or lack of analogy.
Interviewer: Do you want to comment on that?
Solarz: Yeah.
Solarz: Well, I think there are a number of disturbing similarities between the situation in Central American today and the situation as it existed in Southeast Asia over a decade ago.
Solarz: But there are also, at the same time, some very obvious dissimilarities.
Solarz: Uh, clearly, uh, El Salvador is far closer to the United States than Vietnam, uh, uh, ever was.
Solarz: Uh, clearly we have a much greater strategic stake in what happens in Central American than we did in what happened in uh Southeast Asia.
Solarz: Uh, also El Salvador is a country of five million people.
Solarz: Vietnam was a country, in effect, of seventy million people.
Solarz: Uh, so, in that sense, I think there really are some very fundamental differences.
Solarz: At the same time there are some disturbing similarities and perhaps most disturbing is the extent to which we seem to be becoming incrementally more and more involved from a military point of view in El Salvador precisely in the same way we were in Vietnam.
Solarz: Uh, first we begin by providing military assistance.
Solarz: Then we provide military advisors.
Solarz: I have no doubt that, uh, if the present policy continues, uh, a time will, uh, develop there, probably in the next few years, when we may very well end up sending American ground forces into El Salvador as well just as we did in Vietnam.
Solarz: So in that sense, I think there are some real lessons in the Vietnamese experience that are applicable to Central American while at the same time there are obviously significant differences also.
Interviewer: What would you be your, what's your position, what's your answer to this in Central America? Given your experience with Vietnam.
Solarz: Yeah.
Solarz: I think that it's in our interest to, uh, prevent a military victory by the guerrillas in El Salvador while at the same time I also think it's in our interest to avoid having to send American troops down there in order to prevent, prevent it from happening.
Solarz: But the only way I think we can achieve that is through a policy which attempts to seek a political resolution of the conflict through negotiations between the government and the opposition rather than through an increasing militarization of the conflict.
Solarz: I don't think a military victory is in the cards for the government of El Salvador.
Solarz: Right now, a stalemate exists, but the military situation if anything is going from bad to worse.
Solarz: And I think the Reagan Administration makes a profound mistake when it thinks that by simply pumping in more and more military assistance it can turn the tide in El Salvador.
Solarz: In the last few years, we've provided the government of El Salvador about ten times as much military assistance as the opposition has received from its outside supporters.
Solarz: And yet militarily the situation has deteriorated.
Solarz: The problems that the government in El Salvador have from a military point of view, are very little to do with any shortage of arms or ammunition and have everything to do with ineffective leadership, a lack of adequate motivation, corruption at the highest levels of the armed forces, uh, which taken together mean that we could double, triple, or even quadruple the level of military assistance to El Salvador and I don't think it would make much of a difference.
Solarz: The only way out in my view is through a negotiated settlement of the conflict.
Solarz: And the only way to achieve a negotiated resolution at the conflict is through a dialogue without preconditions in which we can bring both sides to the negotiating table in the hope that they can in some how or other find the formula which would make it possible to end the war.
Interviewer: Let's go on to another consequence, a domestic consequence, and, and to narrow the focus a little bit to your own experience in Congress.
Interviewer: Uh, the, the relationship between Congress and...
Interviewer: Cut.
Interviewer: Go.
Solarz: The principal legacy of the war in Vietnam may very well be the extent to which it has permanently altered the relationship between the Congress and the President with respect to American foreign policy.
Solarz: I don't think we will ever again, uh, witness the day when the Congress of the United States is prepared as it, in effect, was prior to the Vietnam War to give the President carte blanche when it comes to the running of American foreign policy.
Solarz: Uh, the War Powers Resolution, which was adopted in the wake of the war in Vietnam, is only one institutional expression of the commitment on the part of the Congress to play a much more active role in the oversight of our foreign policy than was the case prior to the war in Vietnam.
Interviewer: Congressman, could you move your chair that way?
Solarz: Yeah.
Solarz: Okay?
Interviewer: Not quite so far.
Interviewer: Move it forward just a bit.
Interviewer: There you go.
Interviewer: Let's get into the issue of the missing in action, but, you have to separate from the remains of people who were killed versus the ones who might be alive.
Interviewer: Where are...
Interviewer: how do you see that issue right now?
Solarz: Well there are 2500 American MIAs in Indochina and the real question that confronts our country is the extent to which any of them are still alive and are being held against their will in Indochina.
Solarz: I have to say here that I am skeptical, oh, about whether any Americans are still living in Indochina and are being held there against their will, but I don't think it’s a possibility we can completely preclude and I say that because a few years ago, my subcommittee held a hearing on the subject of the MIAs at which General Eugene Tighe, who at the time was the head of the National Security Agency in the individual, in the executive branch who was primarily responsible for handling the MIA problem testified.
Solarz: And during the course of this testimony, General Eugene Tighe, who was scheduled to retire two weeks later from active service in the American government said in response to a question I asked him, that it was his personal judgment based on all of the available evidence that American servicemen were in fact being held against their will in Indochina.
Solarz: And it...
Interviewer: You wanna, want to start over?
Interviewer: Okay you can pick up from where you in testimony, uh, go ahead.
Solarz: In testimony for my subcommittee, which was holding hearings on the MIA problem, he said, based on all the available evidence it was his personal judgment that American servicemen were being held against their will in Indochina.
Solarz: And it seems to me that if the individual in the United States government who is primarily responsible for this issue believes that American servicemen are in fact being held against their will in Indochina, it doesn't necessarily mean that his judgment is accurate, but it does mean that it's a possibility that we simply cannot dismiss out of hand.
Interviewer: Is there any other evidence beside that?
Solarz: Yeah.
Solarz: I think...
Interviewer: Let's start over again please.
Solarz: Well, I would consider, uh, his statement to be a conclusion rather than evidence, but it is based on some evidence which would sustain that conclusion.
Solarz: For example, we know that there are a number of Indochinese refugees who have claimed to have personally seen Americans in captive type situations even recently in Indochina who have subsequently been polygraphed and who passed their lie detector tests in a fashion which would indicate that they were telling the truth.
Solarz: And the combination of live sightings with first hand witnesses whose reports were confirmed by polygraphs, uh, does seem to provide some evidence which once again, cannot be dismissed out of hand.
Interviewer: Okay, but here we have a situation, uh, where hopes of a lot of families are being sustained by really kind of flimsy, you might say, as you say its not, you're not certain about it, how do you deal with that?
Solarz: Oh, I think it imposes a very real responsibility...
Interviewer: Could you repeat that?
Solarz: Yeah, yeah.
Solarz: I think that those of us in public life who have a responsibility for dealing with this issue have a very special responsibility to not raise false hopes on the part of the families of the servicemen who are missing in action in Indochina but who might possibly still be living today on the one hand, while on the other hand I think we also have a very real responsibility to make sure that there is no stone left unturned in the effort to finally account for the fate of these men.
Solarz: And while I am extremely skeptical that any servicemen are, in fact, being held against their will in Indochina today, or for that matter are even living there voluntarily, uh, it does seem to me that we cannot dismiss this possibility out of hand, given the extent to which there is some evidence available which would suggest that they are being kept there.
Interviewer: Do you think the administration is handling this problem?
Solarz: I think the administration is making a very sincere effort to track down all of the uh leads that have become available.
Solarz: I have a sense that they might perhaps have put somewhat greater resources into the effort than they have.
Solarz: The process works very slowly.
Solarz: Uh, but I do believe that they are making a conscientious effort to, uh, determine what has happened, uh, to the missing in action and they have clearly let the uh Vietnamese and Laotian governments know that their future bilateral relationship with the United states will to some extent be contingent on their willingness to cooperate in this endeavor.
Interviewer: Uh, apropos of that, is the...
Interviewer: if we have relations with Vietnam, do you think that would facilitate this and just to follow it up, is there any prospect in your mind that we could?
Solarz: I don't believe there is any realistic prospect for a normalization of relations between the United States and Vietnam in the absence of some real progress toward a resolution of the Cambodian problem.
Solarz: And the withdrawal of at least a substantial number of the 185,000 Vietnamese troops that continue to occupy that country.
Solarz: At the same time, I think we ought to make it very clear to the Vietnamese that in the context of a willingness on their part to resolve the Cambodian problem in a way which would permit the people of Cambodia to freely and fairly determine their own future and which would presumably provide also for the withdrawal of Vietnamese forces from that country.
Solarz: But in a way which doesn’t permit Pol Pot to return to power, that we are prepared to diplomatically normalize our relationship and in other ways, perhaps, to be helpful as well in terms of the reconstruction of the entire region.
Interviewer: What do you think we're missing.
Interviewer: Are we missing anything in our policy towards Asia by not having relations with Vietnam?
Solarz: Well I think it was unfortunate that we didn't normalize our relationship with Vietnam shortly after the war came to an end.
Solarz: But, given the extent to which we didn't do that, because I think that as a matter of overall principle, we ought to have diplomatic relations with every government in the world rather we approve of them or don't approve of then because recognition doesn't imply approval, it simply recognizes a reality.
Solarz: But given the extent to which we didn't normalize relationships with Vietnam after the end of the war, it seems to me that it would be a mistake for us to do so now, in the absence of any progress towards a resolution of the problem in Cambodia.
Solarz: Because were we to gratuitously establish normal diplomatic relations with Vietnam at this time, I think it would create very severe problems for us in terms of our relationship with China, it would create even greater problems for us in terms of our relationship with the ASEAN countries, Thailand, uh, the Philippines, and Singapore, and Malaysia, uh, and Indonesia would feel very strongly that it would he a mistake to, uh, give Vietnam what it wants diplomatically, uh, without a willingness on the part of Vietnam to withdraw its forces from Cambodia.
Interviewer: To go back to the MIA question, we talked about the why, the possibility of Americans being alive.
Interviewer: Are you satisfied that they're turning over all the remains of those the bodies, those who are dead?
Solarz: I'm not satisfied that the, uh, Vietnamese government has been completely cooperative on this effort.
Solarz: They seem to dole out remains in a kind of ghoulish fashion every time a, uh, new delegation goes to Hanoi, my sense is that they, uh, use this as a kind of leverage with the United States as an opportunity to periodically demonstrate good will.
Solarz: I have the sense they could he doing much more than they are doing to cooperate with us at the very least in terms of, uh, disclosing the whereabouts of the remains of American servicemen who were killed in action uh during the course of the war.
Interviewer: When we interviewed , in uh, Hanoi a couple of years ago, he proposed that, that a joint commission he set up, uh, actually go and help them.
Interviewer: Could you comment on that?
Solarz: Well I think that that would he helpful.
Solarz: Uh, so far, uh, I think it would be helpful if such a commission could be...
Interviewer: I'm sorry, you've got to repeat what you said.
Solarz: Pardon? Yeah.
Solarz: Yeah.
Solarz: Uh, I think that in terms of the effort to determine the fate of our missing in action and the, to discover the remains of servicemen who were killed in action, the establishment of a joint commission, would he very helpful.
Solarz: I gather there's been some low level cooperation, but not nearly enough.
Solarz: And to the extent the Vietnamese were willing, or are willing to cooperate in this fashion, I certainly think we ought to cooperate with them.
Interviewer: Let me go back just one last point on Cambodia.
Interviewer: You talked about the need for a solution in Cambodia.
Interviewer: What are your ideas about the possibilities and how could one come about?
Solarz: I'm not very optimistic about the possibilities for a political settlement of the conflict in Cambodia because I think that Vietnam has historically sought to dominate all of Indochina.
Solarz: And now that they've managed to bring Cambodia under their effective sphere at influence it seems to me that it's not very likely that they're going to relinquish it.
Solarz: On the other hand, I think they are paying a heavy price for their continued occupation of Cambodia.
Solarz: The resistance, if anything, is growing in strength.
Solarz: It's draining resources away from Vietnam that they desperately need to deal with very serious economic problems in their own country.
Solarz: It only makes them more, rather than less dependent on the Soviet Union and I can't believe that that's something which the Vietnamese government particularly relishes.
Solarz: Uh, but on the other hand, it's doubtful that the resistance is going to be able to force Vietnam militarily to withdraw from Cambodia.
Solarz: I don't think the Soviet Union is going to put pressure on Vietnam to withdraw from Cambodia either.
Solarz: And I think if we've learned any lesson from the war in Vietnam, it's that the Vietnamese are a very determined and patient people.
Solarz: Uh, they fought for over forty years for their own independence and for the reunification of their country.
Solarz: I wouldn't he surprised if they're prepared to fight for another forty years to effectively incorporate Cambodia within a larger Indochinese federation dominated by Hanoi.
Solarz: But, so long as the people of Cambodia themselves attempt to resist the incorporation of their country into Vietnam and the continued occupation of their nation by the Vietnamese, uh, I can only say that I wish them well, because I'm for a Cambodiafor the Cambodians.
Solarz: I don't believe in a Cambodia for the Vietnamese.
Interviewer: One moment...
Interviewer: and go ahead.
Interviewer: On the refugee issue...
Solarz: Yeah, I think the United States has responded very generously...
Interviewer: Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Interviewer: I need your clipboard in your...
Interviewer: just (inaudible)…
Solarz: Ok.
Interviewer: Ah, (inaudible)
Solarz: I think the United States has responded with compassion and with generosity to the plight of the refugees fleeing from Indochina.
Solarz: I think we could have and should have done even more than we did, but having accepted several hundred thousand Vietnamese and Cambodian and Laotian refugees who were fleeing from those countries which I think we really had a moral obligation to do, particularly given the role we played in the war in Vietnam, not to mention the principles upon which our country was founded that now we should be doing more particularly for the Cambodian refugees, but by in large I think we've acquitted ourselves with some honor in this final chapter of the conflict in Vietnam.
Interviewer: You want to touch on the Paris solution.
Solarz: Yeah.
Solarz: One of the tragic continuing consequences of the war in Vietnam is the extent to which as thousands and thousands of Vietnamese continue to flee their country by boat, many of these refugees from repression are victimized in the most brutal fashion imaginable out at sea by pirates coming primarily from Thailand who in the most brutal fashion rape and rob and even murder the refugees while they are on the high seas.
Solarz: Something like two thirds of all of the boats leaving Vietnam that ultimately arrive in Thailand are victimized by pirates and the average boat is victimized, I think, between two and three times.
Solarz: Women are subjected to repeated rapes, all of their possessions are taken, some of them are abducted and used in uh vile fashions for up to several weeks at a time.
Solarz: Many others are simply killed and thrown overseas and I don't think the international community has done nearly enough to provide some protection to these people who are fleeing from repression.
Solarz: I think, as a matter of fact, in the history of refugee movements, there has never been a more tragic episode than the one in which these people who managed to escape from the repression in Vietnam end up being killed or otherwise maimed on the high seas in their attempt to find freedom somewhere else.
Interviewer: Just one last point.
Interviewer: Could you just give us briefly your impressions of your trip to Vietnam?
Solarz: Yeah.
Solarz: Well, my first impression was one, my first impression when I arrived in Hanoi uh is uh how did we ever manage to lose the war, because it was at first glance such a primitive society, so backward compared to our own.
Solarz: Uh which I suppose indicates that in war the human factor is obviously far more important than the technological factor.
Solarz: But it really was very difficult for me to grasp as I looked around, at particularly at the relatively primitive level of the economy there, that uh a superpower like the United States could have lost the conflict, which obviously we did.
Solarz: The other impression I had was that the Vietnamese, particularly their leaders, are a very tough people.
Solarz: There was very little give which I was able to discover in my discussions with Nguyen Co Thach, the foreign minister of Vietnam.
Solarz: I had the impression that they're in Cambodia for the duration.
Solarz: And there are no conceivable circumstances under which they would be prepared to leave.
Interviewer: Cut.