Howard Dean on Trump's comments:

[grantcart]

57. The tweet contains a major factual error, he was not executed by the North Vietnamese

I have the highest respect for Dr. Dean but the fact is that while many Americans were executed in Laos it was all done by the Pathet Lao and always against the wishes of the North Vietnamese who wanted to keep the POWs alive so that they could be traded for prisoners and for public relations reasons.

It is a common trope to accuse the North Vietnamese of these actions but our government has long admitted in secret documents that the North pressured the Pathet Lao to stop executing Americans as is detailed in this unclassified document:

https://www.loc.gov/item/powmia/pw003473/

To understand why the Pathet Lao executed Americans it is important to understand the context of US operations in Laos. The United States dropped more tonnage of bombs on Laos than any other country in history, including Germany during WWII:

http://legaciesofwar.org/about-laos/secret-war-laos/#:~:text=From%201964%20to%201973%2C%20the,country%20per%20capita%20in%20history.

From 1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped more than two million tons of ordnance on Laos during 580,000 bombing missions—equal to a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24-hours a day, for 9 years – making Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in history

Unfortunately, as can happen in war, mistakes were made when you drop bombs more than 500,000 times. President Obama extended sympathy to the Laotian people and offered assistance in clearing up hundreds of thousands unexploded ordnance. The US estimates that more than 20,000 Laotian civilians have been hurt or killed by unexploded bombs. Only 1% of the area covered by these unexploded bombs has been cleared.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37286520


When the CIA bombers (not the Air Force) made an error and accidentally bombed a suburb in Vientiane with massive loss of life the Pathet Lao executed 74 American POWs and warned the US that further bombing of civilian areas would result in additional executions.

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000119211.pdf

As noted above the North Vietnamese were not only not executing Americans in Laos they were pressuring the Pathet Lao to stop executing them.

The story and execution of Charles Dean is well documented, he was a back packer who accidentally drifted on a raft into Laotian territory (the area is very close to where the Thai football team got trapped and saved in the cave).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Charles_Dean_and_Neil_Sharman

My guess is that a local Pathet Lao either killed them because of personal animus because he had lost relatives to the bombing or that they died during some ham handed interrogation effort. Charles was not a serviceman nor with the CIA (the CIA had a small army of Hmong in Laos and had no need of an American who didn't speak the language, nor would they have used a raft to infiltrate Laos as they had a very large "secret air force" called Air America that controlled the air over Laos.

Interesting side note is that while we didn't have diplomatic relations with North Vietnam the United States never broke relations with Laos and maintained a small consulate in the country.

Charles Dean death is a sad event, especially for the Dean family but he was not executed by the North Vietnamese. Whenever you see a story about Americans "executed" by the North Vietnamese it is almost certainly a short hand reference to events in Laos which the NV did not control.