Amb. Quinn recalls that while all American POWs were to be released in June 1973 as part of the Paris Agreement, there were still more than 2,500 cases of American service members for whom there had not been a full accounting. Some were men who were known to be killed, but whose bodies had not been recovered. Others were cases where the fate of the missing American was not clear or certain. Amb. Quinn describes how he sat with the president and his political advisors in the Oval Office as they worked on the speech to the National League of Families, in which the president would pledge the government’s efforts to obtain the “fullest possible accounting” for our men. Amb. Quinn would again and again work on fulfilling this goal in subsequent assignments throughout the remainder of his State Department career.
THE ARCHIVE OF AMBASSADOR KENNETH M. QUINN
FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE MEKONG