The Press: The Missing 23

As a news story, the war in Southeast Asia has lost much of its importance in recent years, but journalists have a compelling reason not to forget it. Twenty-three reporters and photographers are still missing in Indochina.

At a reunion last week of about 150 of their colleagues at Manhattan’s International Center of Photography, officers of the American Committee to Free Journalists Held in Southeast Asia reported that a number of the newsmen may still be alive. They are thought to be in the hands of insurgent Khmers Rouges forces in Cambodia, where most of the 23 disappeared after the 1970 U.S. invasion. Committee Chairman Walter Cronkite said that the group was continuing to press diplomats and travelers in Southeast Asia for word of the missing, and had even been approached by a private U.S. intelligence firm that proposed assembling a mercenary force to recapture them. The plan, which would have cost the news organizations that fund the committee about $2 million, was rejected.

Not all those at the reunion were satisfied that either force or quiet diplomacy would bring the missing journalists back. Some Indochina hands argued that the prisoners would never be returned as long as the U.S. continued to prop up the Lon Nol government. Others were less political; Louise Stone —wife of Freelance Photographer Dana Stone, who was on assignment for CBS News—announced that she is preparing her own mission on foot through the area in Cambodia where her husband was last seen in 1970.