This action, seeking disclosure of unrepatriated American POWs at the conclusion of the Vietnam War, is now 21-years-old. In April of 2025 the US Court of Appeals reversed and remanded the case for further proceedings, holding that the CIA should have, but did not, search for records of POWs held in Laos.
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Freedom of Information Act lawsuits —
Unrepatriated POWS from the Korean and Vietnam Wars
Hall et al. v. CIA, US District Court for the District of Columbia
Driggs et al v. CIA, US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
Background
The so-called "1205/735 documents" are the most significant records on the question of the number of unrepatriated American POWs at the conclusion of the Vietnam War.
1205 Document. In 1992, a researcher discovered in the Soviet archives the transcript of the Soviet's surreptitiously-taped debriefing by a top Vietnamese Army General to Vietnam's Politburo, just months before the 1973 return of 591 POWs, reporting that the total number of communist-held American POWs in Southeast Asia was 1,205.
735 Document. The transcript of another debriefing, given by the Secretary of the Vietnamese Workers Party to the North Vietnamese government, discloses that, in 1970, the number of American pilots held in Southeast Asia was 735.
NIE
In 1998, the DoD and the CIA issued their 33-page National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Vietnamese Intentions, Capabilities, and Performance Concerning the POW/MIA Issue, disparaging the reliability of the numbers provided in the 1205/735 Documents.
Critical Assessment
In November of 1998 Senator Bob Smith, who served as Chairman of the Vietnam War Working Group of the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POWs and MIAs and Co-Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs (1991-1993), issued his 160-page Critical Assessment of the 1998 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Vietnamese Intentions, Capabilities, and Performance Concerning the POW/MIA Issue.
Response to Critical Assessment
In February of 2000 the DoD and CIA responded with their Joint Report, A Review of the 1998 National Intelligence Estimate on POW/MIA Issues and the charges Levied by A Critical Assessment of the Estimate.
Classified version Response to Critical Assessment
Twenty-one years later, in June of 2021, plaintiffs learned that the CIA was withholding in full a classified version of its Response to Critical Assessment. In December of 2021 the CIA released this heretofore withheld record, redacted. Plaintiffs are litigating certain redactions to that document. The issue has been fully briefed. We expect a ruling shortly.
McDaniel et al. v. National Archives and Records Administration, US District Court for the District of Columbia
NARA responded to the plaintiffs' FOIA request that it was unable to search for POW records from the Korean and Vietnam Wars because it did not know where to look. So, plaintiffs amended their complaint to seek all records of "correspondence between NARA and the Agency that transferred" POW records, including "indices, lists, or any other records describing of the contents" of boxes in specified Record Groups. The 21,000 pages that NARA has produced will enable the plaintiffs to specify where NARA should conduct its search, whereupon the plaintiffs will ask the Court to order it to do so.
US government response to Benghazi attack
Accuracy in Media, et al v. DOD, et al, US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit
In this lawsuit the Appellant argues that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta's claim that he gave the order for forces to respond to the attack at 8:39 p.m. is untrue, and that he didn't give that order until 3:00 a.m. the following day. Appellant contends that the district court's finding—that the evidence is "entirely consistent with DoD's representations"—was clear error. Plaintiffs also challenge redactions to FBI and CIA records regarding witness statements that the CIA ordered the rescuers to "stand down."
The case has been fully briefed. Oral argument has not yet been scheduled.
TWA Flight 800
The downing of TWA Flight 800, US District Court, Los Angeles
In his 2006 100-page opinion Los Angeles District Court Judge Howard Matz found that this evidence of official misconduct was so compelling that it mandated, under FOIA law, the overruling of two of the five statutory exemptions that the CIA had invoked. The September 2006 edition of the National Law Journal, a rare win in fight for TWA crash records reported:
Lahr, who received some documents with redactions, sought full records. In his ruling, Matz recognized Lahr’s numerous reasons for believing that the government participated in a massive cover-up, such as conflicting eyewitness testimony and the physically impossible “zoom-climb” theory on which the investigation is based. The judge said that “taken together, this evidence is sufficient to permit Plaintiff to proceed based on his claim that the government acted improperly in its investigation of Flight 800 or at least performed in a grossly negligent fashion. Accordingly, the public interest in ferreting out the truth would be compelling indeed.”
Mark Lane and I also filed a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of James and Elizabeth Sanders.
Civil Rights lawsuits
James Dwight Sanders et al v. FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom et al
Patrick James Knowlton v FBI Deputy Director Robert F. Bryant, et al.
Estate of Judi Bari et al. v. FBI Agent Frank Doyle et al. (Of counsel)
US Court of Appeals Special Division for the Purpose of Appointing Independent Counsels
Litigation to append 20 pages to Starr's Foster death Report
Vincent Foster murder
Vince Foster, Bill Clinton's deputy White House Counsel, was shot at close range, on Tuesday, July 20, 1993, between 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. The bullet entered on the right side of his neck, just below the jaw line, and into his skull, where it remained. The bullet was small-caliber. It was a "reload," with a light powder charge, used to minimize blowback onto the shooter. The location was a secluded area of a tiny national park just miles from the Whitehouse. The park was almost always deserted.
The murderers expected that the body would be "discovered" when the Park Police closed the park at dark. But something went wrong. A call went into 9-1-1 at 6:00 p.m. Two County Fire and Rescue arrived at 6:09 p.m., followed by nine more over the next ten minutes. One Park Police Officer was already there.
County personnel observed, and reported, variously, somebody running away from the body site, the bullet wound in the neck, a place-holder gun in the hand (a semiautomatic like the Park Police carry), and coded the death as a homicide. While Foster's car was gray, "all the police and medical personnel" described a "brown car," as Kavanaugh admitted in a taped telephone conversation.
Over a seven-year period beginning in 1995, we filed a civil rights case, three grand jury applications, and litigation before the Special Division of the U.S. Court of Appeals, where, in 1997, that court ordered Kenneth Starr to attach evidence of murder cover-up to Brett Kavanaugh's Report on the death. Starr had vigorously opposed that ruling.
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