U.S. POWs in Laos

Re “U.S. Fliers Believed Held by Laos at Vietnam War’s End,” Jan. 2: Laos was subjected to four years (1965-69) of intensive bombing by American warplanes while representatives of the U.S. government officially denied that it was happening.

That policy of denial has constituted one of the difficulties in finding those American crew members who managed to survive the destruction of their aircraft, or even to acquire reliable information about them. (If the U.S. was not bombing Laos, how could there be American airmen there?)

The lingering MIA issue, which has brought so much suffering to the families of those lost Americans, is another tragic consequence of that “dirty little war” in Southeast Asia; yet, it pales in significance before the realization of what the Lao people suffered in that four-year period.

ANTHONY GARAVENTE

Carson