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U.S. officials later used Schweitzer's documents and photos to force Hanoi to allow a Defense Department team to search the entire prisoner archive. Last February President Clinton lifted the trade embargo against Vietnam; since then more than 70 U.S. companies have opened offices there. ``Relations were in the Ice Age only five years ago, and now the two sides are normalizing,'' Schweitzer told Time.
Pentagon officials suspect that Hanoi is still holding back what one Vietnamese officer described to Schweitzer as its ``darkest secrets''--records on some Americans who were killed or tortured to death while in captivity. Yet, in the 212 years since Schweitzer was first granted access, Vietnam has turned over more documents than in the previous 19 years.
Those records confirm what U.S. officials suspected: no prisoners are still alive. Some defense aides complained that Schweitzer was an amateur trying to play spy, whose find did not add much to what the Pentagon already knew about the missing. Of the 2,211 men listed as MIA, the U.S. has now firmly concluded that 2,156 are dead. Schlatter says the remaining 55 will likely be ruled dead as investigators collect more evidence. Even if that happens, a few Americans will remain unsatisfied. ``For some POW families, this issue will never be laid to rest,'' says Frances Zwenig, vice president of the U.S.-Vietnam Trade Council. Even access to all of Hanoi's archives is not likely to change that.