The way to answer that is to look at objections about the document and answer them. One objection is the number of prisons reported in the 1205 document. One persistent critic has said that "After the Son Tay raid, US POWS were moved from thirteen outlying prisons - some as far away as Cao Bang near the Chinese border - into six prisons in Hanoi." He then cited the Montgomery Hearings as proof of his statement. This was part of his answer to the Quang's assertion that "We used to have 4 large prisons; however, after the American effort to free their prisoners of war from Ho-Toy (Son Tay) we expanded this number to eleven. Each prison holds approximately 100 prisoners of war."
The persistent critic has his facts outlined in a meaningful distorted way. Taking his statement about the Cao Bang prison, called Dogpatch, he has to know that what he stated is very misleading. Dogpatch was not opened until May 13, 1972, over 18 months after the Son Tay raid. (POW - John G. Hubbell - pg. 584) These over 200 POWs were moved from Camp Unity to within 5 miles of the Chinese border. This did several things. During the air war over North Vietnam, this was well within the "no fly zone" for aircraft so that our attacking aircraft would not "violate" the Chinese border. Further, it took them well out of reach of normal reconnaissance efforts on our part. This part worked. For many months, our intelligence agencies had no knowledge of this move. A DIA formerly classified study on POW prisons used for debriefing returning POWs, dated in November, 1972, only two months before the January 1973 Peace Accords were signed showed that we didn't have a clue then about this camp. So, contrary to this critic, who should have known better from his former position with the government, this one camp is an example of an "expansion" of the prisons and a confirmation of what Quang said.
George A. Carver Jr. served from October 1966 to October 1973 as Special Assistant to the Chief of Central Intelligence for Vietnamese Affairs (serving Richard Helms, James Schlesinger, and William Colby) and concurrently during the period 1972-73 he also served as Chairman of the Washington Special Action Group's Subcommittee on Indochina Intelligence. On February 10, 1994, Carver testified "In late 1972 and during 1973's initial months, a number of government officials... myself included, were convinced that the Vietnamese Communists were not leveling and never had leveled with the United States on the matter of American POWs... I was certain that at a minimum, they were lying about the number of Americans that had been initially captured or were then being held in Laos..."
Understating, Carver said, "Neither individuals nor institutions, particularly governmental or military institutions, relish admitting that they may have made major mistakes...this very human trait has significantly influenced the U.S. government's handling of information... about POWs and MIAs... in ways that have done much to exacerbate some already very difficult problems..."
Tackling some very heavy objections head on, Carver said, "...whoever wrote the (1205) document was very much 'in the loop' on POW matters. The document says the number of US POWs that the Vietnamese have offically acknowledged holding is 368 -- and that happens to be the correct number, as of September 1972..." (contrary to the assertion of persistent critic who chose a figure from August 1972 - 383 - as a straw horse to attempt to denigrate the document - and incidentally pump up his own work of many years) Carver added, "Also, the document says, 'in the near future, we will free several prisoners of war from here, in order to put pressure on the Nixon government' and on 25 September, three American pilots were in fact released..." He added that the Quang document "confirms what I have believed for... just over two decades, but have never previously been able to prove... I was particularly intrigued by the Morris document's assertions that the Vietnamese Communists had indeed divided their American prisoners into three separate groups... the general principles employed were very much the ones I had postulated two decades ago..."
Admiral Jerry Tuttle, former Deputy Director of DIA, stated to the Senate POW Committee that he believed that there was at least one prison system separate from the one which contained the 591 Americans released (Senate Memorandum for Record- declassified materials). Among the reasons listed by Tuttle were - No returnees were interrogated by Soviet interrogators - no returnees were debriefed about nuclear weapons matters - and no returnees were held in caves even though our intelligence knew of POWs held in caves (see also the story of the 1981 POW raid in this forum). Tuttle further pointed out that similar military activity - such as sandbagging, putting in new gun emplacements, and reinforcing outer perimeters, which took place at Faith and Briarpatch, two "known" POW camps from which some of the 591 POWs ultimately returned, also took place at Coc Mai, Xom Giong, and Cam Chu, three of "18" suspected POW camps from which no one returned. The Senate document also pointed out that overhead imagery of ground signals of authenticators of known POWs, as recent as June 1992, has reportedly been detected at these three same POW camps.
Finally, and this is by no means exhaustive of the evidence to deflect criticism of the persistent critic, whose analysis very seldom if ever contradicts official government policy which he happened to have help formulate, Stephen Morris, the researcher who found the 1205 document, points out that in when DIA declassified it's POW camp holdings, in 1992, their own evidence shows that on the day before Son Tay, it knows of five camps operating and on the day before Quang's briefing, it knows of six camps operating. He testified, "Thus, even the Pentagon's returnee limited data base decisively contradicts Vessey more than it does information in the Russian document" (not to mention our persistent critic).
While the following does not deal directly with the 1205 document, these statements do not contradict the evident conclusion from that document - that hundreds of POWs were held back and not returned, as suspected for years. Three former DIA Directors, LTG Eugene Tighe, LTG Daniel O. Graham, and LTG James A. Williams all said or implied survival of POWs past 1973; COL Millard Peck, Chief of the Special Office for POW MIA in DIA, wrote "I don't think these people are working in fields per se, I think they're in closely guarded facilities"; GEN MAJ Jan Sejna, former Communist official and later DIA analyst said, "I believe they are in Korea, Vietnam, China, and Russia." Further, former Vietnamese high ranking officials, Dang Tan and Le Dinh, both identified by CIA, DIA, and other intelligence officials as knowledgeable and in a position to know such matters, both said that between 700 and 800 American POWs were held back. Their figures square closely with that of Quang. Finally, LTG Tighe was commissioned to do a study for US intelligence prior to Operation Homecoming and his findings were that around 900 - 1000 POWs should have come home, vice the 591 that did. All of this is not unknown to American intelligence and POW policy personnel, but like Carver said, "Neither individuals nor institutions, particularly governmental or military institutions, relish admitting that they may have made major mistakes..." and thus they will do their best to debunk anything upsetting their cozy own world, even if it means continued imprisonment for those not fortunate enough to have been picked by Vietnam for return. Remember, however, the saying of Quang - once the Vietnamese got what they wanted - which they did - they considered the return of American POWs - all of them - to be a correct thing to do - but no one on our side was ready to admit a mistake and be ready to receive them back.
This site is hardly able to give all the information available, as I so stated above. To further your own research, try these sites. For information on the testimony of George Carver, go to http://aiipowmia.com/crvr.html For the testimony of Dr. Stephen J. Morris, go to http://aiipowmia.com/morristst.html For the US Senate memorandum for record on the 1205 document, go to http://www.aiipowmia.com/1205html and for the "persistent critic" go to http://www.miafacts.org/1205.html Finally, I hope that you will also look into my book, Trails of Deceit as it covers much more also than you will find here at this site plus materials not covered at the sites listed above. As I have said repeatedly, no one person can adequately cover all the material on this vital subject, although all of us give it a good shot. Now you know why I believe the 1205 report and believe it to be
