Ask the Scholar
Document scope · 1 page
Scholar
Ask about this object, its catalog metadata, its source description, or the page inventory.
For page-specific OCR and visual context, open one of the page chats.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
7346067
label
Press Conference of Charles T. Miller, Captain of the SS Mayaguez
core
doc
dtoType
document
citationUrl
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
7346067
sourceUrl
contentType
document
title
Press Conference of Charles T. Miller, Captain of the SS Mayaguez
citationUrl
collections
White House Press Releases (Ford Administration)
Press Releases
subjects
Mayagüez Incident, 1975
largeImageUrl
imageCount
1
hasImages
yes
source
import
hasTranscription
no
Source extras
naId
7346067
levelOfDescription
item
productionDates
day
6
logicalDate
1976-10-06
month
10
year
1976
recordType
description
ocrSource
nara-archive
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
document
mediaId
561dbfa2db5cbc00
ocrText
Digitized from Box 32 of the White House Press Releases at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
OCTOBER 6, 1976
(San Francisco, California)
PRESS CONFERENCE
OF
CHARLES T. MILLER
CAPTAIN OF THE SS MAYAGUEZ
THE HOLIDAY INN
1:00 P.M. PDT
MR. NESSEN: As we announced earlier, we have
Captain Charles Miller of the MAYAGUEZ with us today.
Just to give you some background, the White House heard
Captain Miller did not agree with the findings of the
GAO report. Captain Miller was contacted, and he said
that he would like to talk to the President. He phoned
the President at 8:55 this morning and they talked and
Captain Miller gave the President his view of this
report. The President gave Captain Miller his view,
which you probably heard out at the theatre.
The President said, "How far are you from San
Francisco?" Captain Miller is between cruises. He
is vacationing down near Newport and the President said,
"I think it would be a good idea if you came up here
and came to the debate tonight." So, Captain Miller did
come up here. He had intended to hold a news conference
in Los Angeles, but he decided to hold it here instead.
Q
Before we go into this, your announcement
says that Captain Miller telephoned the President.
MR. NESSEN: That is correct.
Q
I would like to make sure I am correct in
saying that -- did you say that the White House had
heard that Captain Miller did not agree with the report
so he was contacted?
MR. NESSEN: That is correct. When he was
contacted, he indicated he would like to talk to the
President, and he phoned the President.
Q
Who contacted him and when?
MR. NESSEN: John Carlson did.
Captain Miller?
MORE
- 2 -
Q
Captain, could you begin by telling us
where you live and what you do now? Are you still the
Captain?
CAPTAIN MILLER: I am not the Captain of the
MAYAGUEZ. I have been transferred to another ship.
I came home from the Far East July 23. I am on vacation
until the end of February. Do you want to know where I
live? My home is in Pahrump Valley, Nevada. I also have an
apartment down in Fountain Valley, California.
Q
Is that where you were when you called
the President?
CAPTAIN MILLER: Yes.
Q
How about telling us what you think of
the GAO report?
CAPTAIN MILLER: Yesterday afternoon I went out
to buy a paper and the headlines were "MAYAGUEZ Dead Wasted".
Then I read the report out of Washington by the GAO. The
facts are not true, and I would like to set the American
public straight.
This was not a Mickey Mouse operation. The crew
was held under close security at all times. Our movement
was closely guarded, and it would have been extremely difficult
for our military forces that were in the area from May 13
to know where we were -- on the ship, on an island or on
the mainland. We were guarded that closely and also escorted
at all times by two or three gunboats.
Under the circumstances the Cambodians could
not speak English, I don't speak Cambodian -- and with
no indication from the Cambodians that they were going
to release us, I think the President showed great courage
to American lives that were in jeopardy. There was myself
and 40 crew members and we all thank God that he did.
Q Did you tell this to the Congressional
committee that investigated?
CAPTAIN MILLER: Yes.
Q The same facts?
CAPTAIN MILLER: I am telling you the same
facts that I gave to the GAO. This was the subcommittee
hearing on international public (foreign) relations and military
affairs subcommittee. The Chairman was Congressman Fascell.
Also present were Congressman Winn and Congressman Riegle
of Michigan.
Q
Captain, did you agree with the bombing
at the airport at Cambodia after the crew was rescued?
MORE
- 3 -
CAPTAIN MILLER: The bombing of Cambodia, of
Komponsom, did not happen after the crew was rescued. I
did not get aboard the destroyer WILSON until around
10:15 in the morning of the 15th, and the bombing had
already started. I talked to Commander Rogers, in charge
of the WILSON, and I asked him, or I told him that our
negotiations with the Cambodians for a release was that
I would ask Americans, our Government, to withdraw the
airplanes out of the sky if we were released and the ship
was permitted to sail, and Commander Rogers told me at
the time that I was too late, that Komponsom had already
been bombed by the air force of the carrier CORAL SEA.
Q
Who told you that the bombing had started?
What Commander?
CAPTAIN MILLER: Commander Rogers.
Q
You contacted the Americans?
CAPTAIN MILLER: Yes. After we were released
we sailed back to the MAYAGUEZ, but the MAYAGUEZ had
already been boarded by Marines and the destroyer escort
by the name of HOLT was along side and had taken her in tow
to tow her out without any crew on her. There were about
30 on board this ship. The Marines had already landed on
the island of Kohtang and they were pinned down on the
beachhead.
When they saw that fishing boat coming in the
area where the MAYAGUEZ was anchored and the HOLT along
side of her, the WILSON steamed toward us and I hailed
WILSON and asked permission to go aboard, and Commander
Rogers let the fishing boat come along side.
That is when I was interrogated by Navy intelligence
on the WILSON and told them the situation that we had
negotiated our release, and that we would haul the aircraft
out and stop the bombing, and Commander Rogers told me,
"Captain, you are too late. We already bombed Komponsom
and the base on the Mainland."
Q
Captain, as you know, 41 Americans lost
their lives in the overall operation to rescue you, and
we don't know how many Cambodians died. There is some
feeling on the part of those who wrote that report that
in fact diplomatic methods might have freed you without
anybody's loss of life.
CAPTAIN MILLER: No, when we were removed off
the MAYAGUEZ we were removed by two fishing boats and
taken to the island of Kohtang. This is the afternoon
of the 13th. We laid in a small cove that was covered
with palm trees and slept on two fishing boats overnight.
Our P-3 that was overhead saw the crew leave on two fishing
boats.
MORE
- 4 -
The following morning, at around 8 o'clock,
they put us all on one fishing boat and took us into the
port of Komponsom. Our military saw two boats take the
crew in and only one boat leave. So they figured that half
the crew was being held on the island of Kohtang and the
other half was being shipped into a prison camp in Komponsom.
Q
I am not quite sure -- perhaps I did not make
my question clear. What I am trying to ask you is, are
you convinced in your own mind that there was no way
that you and your crew members could have been released
other than the operation which resulted in the deaths of
so many Americans and Cambodians?
CAPTAIN MILLER: Yes, not only am I convinced
but I think 39 other men that were with me were convinced.
The only time we were taken anyplace that we could talk
to an English speaking Cambodian was after our Air Force
arrived on the scene. This was on the afternoon of May 14
at around 3:30 in the afternoon.
When I arrived there I was met by a young
English speaking Cambodian and he said, "We want to
interrogate you, Captain," and they did. They asked
me if I was CIA or FBI, and we went through the inter-
rogations. Then he told me we had already damaged two or
three of their gunboats and injured 100 friendly Cambodian
people.
Q
How many Cambodian people?
CAPTAIN MILLER: About 100 friendly Cambodian
people. At all times I had a gun on my back or on my
head during the four days of capture. We started negotiating
because I could see that the Cambodians, the second
military command on the island of Kohrong Sam Lem was
very belligerent to us. They wanted to know what I had
on the ship, and I told them I would go back to the ship
and open the containers and show them I had only food,
clothing and general cargo for Bangkok, Singapore and Port
Sataheap. This they did not do.
I negotiated until about 8 o'clock that night
on the 14th. But all word had to come out through Phnom
Penh so we negotiated by radio from Kohrong Sam Lem to the
first military command post in Komponsom and was relayed
by radio or telephone -- I don't know which to the supreme
military command in Phnom Penh.
We were never promised our release. They offered
to release seven men to go back on the ship, get steam up
and radio my company in Bangkok and have us call off the
aircraft, but nothing was said that they were going to
release us, until around 9 o'clock at night on the 14th
when they told us that 6 o'clock in the morning we probably
would have word from Phnom Penh that we would be released
the following morning at 6 o'clock.
Q
Were you in any position to know about any
high level diplomatic negotiations that might have been
taking place?
MORE
- 5 -
CAPTAIN MILLER: No. From the time that I had the
radio officer send the SOS out, our radio was secured. My
single side band radio was secured. About four armed young
Cambodian boys were in the radio shack at all times. There
were about 100 or 150 Cambodians aboard the ship by this
time and everybody that wanted to walk around had a guard
on them. Most of the crew was held on the outside decks
under guard.
Q
The GAO report mentions those high level
negotiations but you know nothing about them?
CAPTAIN MILLER: I know nothing about any high
level negotiations. I was strictly negotiating with the
Khmer Rouge that was in charge of the Government of
Cambodia.
Q
Captain, were you asked to testify by the
people who prepared the GAO report?
CAPTAIN MILLER: Yes. I was in the subcommittee
hearing a year ago July 24th, and I reported the same as
I am telling you today.
Q
Captain, is it your feeling -- if I can
try to understand what you are saying -- that there was no
way that you all would have been released unless this
incident was escalated to the military extent it was and
that those people who were killed in the operation were
sacrificed as the only method in which you could be free?
Is that what you are saying?
CAPTAIN MILLER: That is what I am saying.
MORE
- 6 -
Q
Why are you saying that? That is what I
don't understand.
CAPTAIN MILLER: Because when they took us
into the Port of Komponsom, they tried to take us ashore
and some high-ranking military official came down and
told the gunboat to escort us down the beach another
half a mile or three-quarters of a mile down where there
was a military prison or a military camp. It was a house
built around the square with big steel gates on it.
They tried to get us ashore there and several
aircraft flew over the fishing boat and they got scared
and put us back in the fishing boat and sent us to the
island of Kohrong Sam Lem. We would have been put in a
military camp in Komponsom and then probably shipped
into a military camp in the capital of Phnom Penh and
then we would have been held for ransom.
Q
Captain, the fact remains you were told
the day before that you would be released the following
morning. That was almost 12 hours before the raid on
Komponsom.
CAPTAIN MILLER: No, sir. At this time we had
not even arrived at the island of Kohrong Sam Lem. We
were taken from Kohtang into Komponsom. I had nobody
to talk to at that time.
Q
You said earlier you were told at 9:00
p.m. that you would depart at 6:00 a.m. the next day,
that you would probably be released. That was the day --
after you were released -- that the raid on Kohtang was
placed.
CAPTAIN MILLER: Yes, this young English-speaking
Cambodian, when I was negotiating with him and told him
I could call off the aircraft from bombing their gunboats
and securing any more Cambodian people -- that I. could
call the aircraft off and stop the shooting until the
ship sailed and all aircraft would leave the Cambodian
skies.
That was 9:00 at night on the night of the
14th. We slept on the island that night. We had no
communication with anybody after 9:00.
Q
The point is, Captain, the raid on Kohtang
took place a day later, after you had been told that you
would be released.
CAPTAIN MILLER: I was not told we would
be released. He told me we would probably be sent back
to the MAYAGUEZ at 6:00 the following morning. I had
no means of communication.
MORE
- 7 -
Q
You were on your way back to the MAYAGUEZ
when the Marines were landing at Phnom Penh?
CAPTAIN MILLER: I had not been released from
the island of Kohrong Sam Lem until 7:20 the morning of
the 15th, and the invasion of Kohtang had already started
and I was at least 25 miles away from the MAYAGUEZ.
Q
Captain Miller, did the raid on Kohtang
island have anything to do with your release at all?
CAPTAIN MILLER: Yes. I think that the raid
started before our release and at 7:20 in the morning we
had word from Komponsom to send the crew back to the
ship.
Q
Do you think it affected your release or
inspired it?
CAPTAIM MILLER: Yes. The aircraft in the
air -- I did not know anything about our Navy ships
being there -- the HOLT or the WILSON or the CORAL SEA --
but that was one of the factors, that the American
military was building their might in around the island
of Poulo Wei. That made the Phnom Penh supreme command
release us.
Q
Captain, do you mean it was your question,
it was your negotiations that led to your release or was
it negotiations in which you were not involved that led
to your release?
CAPTAIN MILLER: It was negotiations that I held
with the English-speaking Cambodian on the island of
Kohrong Sam Lem, which was radioed to Komponsom and then
to Phnom Penh. Our final release word was received at
7:20 in the morning.
Q Captain, is it possible your release was
scheduled and was going ahead and just happened to take
place a little bit after the raid and would have taken
place regardless?
CAPTAIN MILLER: No, I don't think so. If our
military had not been on the island, we would have
been taken and put in a military prison on Komponsom and
then shipped to Phnom Penh.
Q Why do you say that?
CAPTAIN MILLER: Because they were very
belligerent to American people at the time.
MORE
- 8 -
Q
Captain, you say that you Have no knowledge
about any high-level negotiations so you are not able
to say that high-level negotiations weren't taking place
that might have led to your release. Whether you had been
put into a prison camp or not, you are not able to say
whether high-level negotiations might have taken place
that would have led to your release, is that correct?
CAPTAIN MILLER: No, I didn't know about any
negotiations aside from the negotiations I was holding
with the Cambodians myself.
Q
So that could have led to your release.
You have no knowledge that it did not happen.
CAPTAIN MILLER: No. When we arrived on the
island of Kohrong Sam Lem, I could see the fear in the
eyes of the second military commander and this English-
speaking man of our aircraft that was in the skies over
Komponsom and Kohrong Sam Lem and the MAYAGUEZ, that
they were deadly afraid of the aircraft that was in the
sky at the time and they wanted them withdrawn. That
was the negotiations we worked on.
Q Captain, do you feel the President has been
made a political victim in this instance?
CAPTAIN MILLER: Well, looking back on the
situation as a Monday morning quarterback, I can say I
would have done a lot of other things. I would not have
been six and a half miles off the island of Paulo Wei,
to begin with. I would have been outside 12 miles,
although I still have the right of what we call innocent
passage, and it is out of the United Nations and the
Geneva Convention. It is negotiated for all ships to
come as long as we don't violate the three-mile territorial
limit, and I used their landmarks as a navigation purpose.
Q
What is the answer to the question?
CAPTAIN MILLER: What question was that?
Q
Do you think this report has been issued
at this time to hurt the President politically?
CAPTAIN MILLER: Well, I don't know too much
about politics. The only thing that I became over-
heated about was the headlines in the paper where 18
young American boys were lost in the nation of Kohtang
and they put headlines in the paper that the MAYAGUEZ
dead were wasted.
This is 17 months after the situation, and I
think the next of kin of these young American Marines,
Air Force and Navy men that were killed and injured -- I
don't see any sense in bringing it up, and I think this
report coming out at the time it did is to embarrass
the President in this foreign debate tonight.
MORE
- 9 -
Q
Are you a registered Republican or
Democrat?
CAPTAIN MILLER: I have been a registered
Democrat for around 32 years. I changed to Republican
in 1975.
Q
Captain, what did you tell the President
this morning?
CAPTAIN MILLER: I told the President this
morning that I would like to have a press conference --
it was okayed through my company that I could talk to
the press --- and put the situation in perspective as the
way it has happened. The article that I read is just a
situation that is not true at all.
Q
Captain, you say the military build-up
in the area did not contribute to your release,
but the fact is 18 Marines died on Kohtang and you were
not on Kohtang to be released at that time, so how can
you say those lives were not wasted?
CAPTAIN MILLER: As I told you, we were held
under close security. Our aircraft, when they flew over
the MAYAGUEZ or over the island of Kohtang were
fired on. They looked like 20-millemeter cannon shells
to me, plus machine-gun fire, Our aircraft couldn't
come too low. The first aircraft that did fly over
the MAYAGUEZ to make sure it was the ship, a P-3 Orion,
and she was hit on the stabilizers and had to limp back
to Utapao air base. She was out of the Navy base in
Subic Bay.
They could not keep track of this when they
were flying up 8,000 or 10,000 feet and then dive-bombing
and going 700 or 800 miles an hour. The pilot that saw
us on the fishing boat reported he saw around 10 or 12
Caucasians and there were 40 in the crew, so they figured
half the crew was on the island of Kohtang and half was
being taken into Komponsom.
Q
Captain, how often have you spoken about
this publicly before?
CAPTAIN MILLER: I was back in Washington
July 23, 24 and 25, and then I made a tour around the
United States for about three weeks -- Pittsburgh,
Philadelphia, Minneapolis.
Q
Did you say to them the same thing you
are saying now?
MORE
- 10 -
CAPTAIN MILLER: Essentially the same thing.
There was a book written about the four days of the
MAYAGUEZ by author Roy Rowan, and I publicized his book.
The book gives the exact details in it of what all the
crew members that were on the MAYAGUEZ thought at the
time.
Q
Would you give us your age, Captain?
CAPTAIN MILLER: I am 63 years old.
Q
Captain, did you suggest the presence of
U.S. aircraft in the area--the continuing presence of
the aircraft in the area--was responsible for your release
and that your release was being affected while the attack
was being carried out? Is that a fair characterization?
CAPTAIN MILLER: That isa fair question.
Q. Is that a fair description of your
interpretation?
CAPTAIN MILLER: That is my interpretation, that our
negotiations -- with the aircraft and bombing their gun-
boats and as they claim we injured 100 friendly Cambodians
at the time -- that they wanted to sit down and negotiate
as long as I promised them I would withdraw the aircraft
out of the sky.
Q
So, it was the military presence in the
area rather than the specific attack?
CAPTAIN MILLER: Yes, sir. I did not know
about the attack so I can't say whether it was the
specific attack that forced Phnom Penh to release us.
Q
Captain, in consideration of what you
said to the committee, how do you explain that the
committee came out with completely different conclusions
from yours?
CAPTAIN MILLER: I don't know why. I told the
committee -- I sat there for about five or six hours in
front of this congressional subcommittee and talked to
Congressman Fascell, Congressman Winn and Congressman
Riegle. Riegle was the man who more or less claimed I
was a CIA agent and, if not, was an FBI agent. I am a
civilian. I have been a civilian all my life. I never
belonged to any military organization in the United
States.
MORE
- 11 -
Q
Are you going to be in the theater tonight?
CAPTAIN MILLER: Yes.
MR. NESSEN: Either in the theater or at the
President's house. He will be a guest at one place or
the other. We have not worked it out yet.
CAPTAIN MILLER: It seems all American captains
sailing--not only American flagships when they are
threatened on the high seas, have a lot more confidence
in their Governments today after the situation than I
was in when President Ford sent people in to rescue us.
I think the President showed great courage in the action
he did take to rescue the 40 men, and I thank God that the
President did that. Otherwise, I don't think I would be
here talking to you today.
THE PRESS: Thank you, Captain Miller.
END
(AT 1:30 P.M. PDT)