I think the gentleman from California who contests my view would concede the bulk of his concern is that I have made too extensive conclusions from the evidence before me. I. in turn. have not been able to get the gentleman to address the evidence itself. the evidence of hundreds of people who have said their villages have been destroyed. I noted in the argument yesterday the gentleman quoted William Hecht. special assistant to a U.S. delegation of churchmen.. who had been- in Vientiane interviewing refugees at the same time we were. I quote his statement: Our assessment was that refugees considered the bombing a blessing. That was remarkably parallel to what Father Menger. who had been there 15 years and who had interviewed a number of these refugees with us and translated some for me. had stated. and I would like to state his precise statement off a tape we had with the concluding interviews of the refugees there. This was the final refugee interview. and I would like to read it into the record. if I may at this point. These are my comments and I am stating them from a tape that was made by one of the members of my staff: Congressman McCloskey. "Finally. we got from them the fact that a study had been made of refugee attitudes and when I saw that study of refugee attitudes and it summarizes the information we are verifying today. I said I would like to take this list of names and places and go up to these refugee villages. We were set to leave at 1:00 in the afternoon to come up to 272. to go up to Luang Prabang which would have given us a chance to see the northern refugee camps. At 1300 it turned out that the papers were not ready and we didnt get them actually until 3:00 in the afternoon. Because of that. we are limited to getting one camp rather than site 272 and Luang Probang.
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refugee refugees