LETTER TO ELLIOTT ABRAMS FROM WILLIAM J. CASEY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86M00886R001900110015-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 16, 2010
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: June 22, 1984
• Content Type: LETTER

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Central Intelligence Agency
2 2 JUN 1984
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The Honorable Elliott Abrams
The Assistant Secretary for Human Rights
and Humanitarian Affairs
Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20520
Dear Elliott:
I appreciated your letter of 4 June and fully understand
that is a respected and reputable authority on 25X1
human rights. I am impressed to hear of her interests and
efforts in interviewing refugees and support her desire to
publish on the ills of Vietnamese reeducation camps since this is
a subject of interest and concern to our Government.
You might be interested in knowing that over the past
several years our analytical effort on Vietnam has focused on two
issues: the stability of the Communist regime in Hanoi, and
Hanoi's ability to solidify control over all of Indochina. To
help us analyze these questions, we have examined Vietnam's
domestic problems--resistance in the south toward
collectivization, economic stagnation, and the continuing
activities of resistance groups, for example--and we are
beginning to study likely replacemeQIts for Hanoi's aging
leadership.
In doing these studies, we hav narinh lly touched on
several of the areas of interest to A paper we 25X1
published in June 1983, for example, noted that Hanoi has used
reeducation camps as one method of neutralizing resistance to
government attempts to integrate the south. And in December
1983, we examined Hanoi's repression of antiregime leaders among
Vietnam's ethnic and religious groups. Unfortunately, because of
their classification, these studies are not releasable to
The use of reeducation camps is only one of a number of
Vietnamese policies aimed at strengthening control over the
country, and we are unable to devote significant resources to
25X1
DCI
EXEC
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btGRET
studying this single issue. As a result, we have not collated or
analyzed information on such issues as camp locations and
conditions or the health and attitudes of prisoners.
Our Directorate of Operations has a program for debriefing
Vietnamese refugees, primarily in Southeast Asia, as one facet of
keeping up with the internal political situation in Vietnam.
Information on reeducation camps, while not a specific
requirement for debriefing, has been a byproduct of this program
since 1975. Many of the reports containing information on the
reeducation camps have been disseminated to your office as well
as DIA. As you might suspect, DIA is interested in receiving the
results of refugee debriefings primarily in the context of
POW/MIA issue.
I believe the Agency could vrofit from having one of our
Vietnamese analysts meet with to hear her out on the 25X1
results of her research on conditions in Vietnamese reeducation
camps. Presumably such a meeting can be arranged by having our
analyst contact your office directly. Secondly, one of my
officers from the Directorate of Operations will call you soon to
discuss our disseminations on the reeducation camps. Perhaps
some of the repor e not too highly classified can be 25X1
made available to] :7 These suggested exch
anges with 25X1
should accrue to our mutual benefit.
Yours,
7s/ William J. Casey
William J. Casey
Director of Central Intelligence
-2-
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EXECUTIVE SECRETARIAT
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with a reply for his signature.
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ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE
WASHINGTON
June 4, 1984
CONFIDENTIAL
Mr.'William J. Casey
Director
Central Intelligence Agency
Langley, Virginia
Dear Bill:
An incident last Thursday surrounding Ginetta Sagan,
a founder of Amnesty International and a well known figure
in human'rights circles, prompts me to write you with two
concerns: one procedural, the other with much deeper policy
implications.
Unlike many of her colleagues, Ginetta is balanced. She
fully accepts that the worst human rights atrocities and abuses
occur in closed, Communist societies. Aware that documenting
these crimes is infinitely more difficult than documenting
human rights abuses in authoritarian states, Ginetta believes
it is incumbent upon human rights groups to devote as much
time as possible to chronicling the human rights practices
of Communist states. She uses the best means available to
her to perform this task - she systematically and thoroughly
interviews, in painstaking manner, emigres and refugees from
totalitarian regimes. Her steadfast insistence on the
premises and methods of her work has given her no small amount
of trouble within Amnesty International.
Ginetta has for several years been interviewing Indochinese
refugees, in particular documenting conditions in Vietnamese
reeducation camps from 1975 to present. She is preparing a
major article on the subject for publication next Spring whose
upshot will be to make the Thieu regime's renowned "tiger cages"
look like bridal suites at the Ritz compared to what followed.
Her findings can only benefit this Administration's'foreign
policy, its public diplomacy efforts, and the great struggle
to which you and I are dedicated.
Ginetta called me to see whether I couldn't arrange a
neeting with USG analysts to have her findings corroborated.
It seems to me we might also learn a good deal from her. To
my dismay, INR, after a flurry of inter-bureau phone calls,
finally came up with one analyst who last paid attention to
the issue several years ago. They now have a summer intern
plowing through past cable traffic to try to get a sketch of
the situation. According to INR at least, debriefings of
Indochinese refugees have been random, incomplete, and episodic.
CONFIDENTIAL
Liao
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CONFIDENTIAL
Our approach to CIA analysts (referred by INR) met with
flat rejection. Despite a thorough explanation-of who
Ginetta Sagan was (she should have been known through her
previous writings on Vietnam) and the ramifications of her
work, my office was told that not only did no Vietnam analyst
have any time for such a meeting, but that the CIA had almost
no information on the subject!
Can this possibly be true? Is it possible that no one
has done systematic debriefings of Vietnamese refugees? Have
no other sources disclosed which reeducation camps remain
open, which are closed, descriptions of general camp conditions,
the kind of prisoners still interned, and the health, occupations,
and attitudes of those prisoners released? I wouldn't necessarily
expect the Agency to search out such information, but I would
expect such information to have been gathered and collated
through routine collection operations.
If I assume the best, my concern is mundane and procedural.
The information is available, but comparing notes with
Ginetta Sagan meant more work so the Division Chief just rudely
brushed us off. Such obstacles are overcome, as they often
are in bureaucracies, by being bucked up and generating letters
like this one, irritating both of us. But if I assume the
worst, i.e. what INR and CIA claim about the extent of our
information on reeducation camps is in fact true, then my
concerns are deeper. It means that one woman, working alone
on a shoestring budget has more complete, accurate, and up-to-
date information about the internal political situation in
Vietnam than the combined intelligence resources of the United
States Government.
Please write me, Bill, and tell me it ain't so.
lliott Abrams
Assistant Secretary for Human Rights
and Humanitarian Affairs
CONFIDENTIAL
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