And it was reported that Frances Zwenig, Senator John Kerry's chief of staff for the now defunct Senate Select Committee on POW/MIAs, served for a short-time in the Vietnam interests section of Commerce until someone figured this might be viewed as a conflict of interest. As Kerry's aide, Zwenig, according to documents, coached the North Vietnamese to concoct plausible stories on the fate of POW/MIAs in order to show that Hanoi was cooperating to resolve the POW/MIA issue, a hurdle in the diplomatic dance to lift the trade embargo and renew relations with Vietnam.
Senator Kerry was caught on camera making a promise to the North Vietnamese communists that he would ensure that they weren't embarrassed by their concocted stories. Zwenig went on to serve with Madeleine Albright at the UN. Zwenig is now reportedly working with the Washington-based U.S.-Vietnam Trade Council, a group that lobbied heavily for lifting the trade embargo and renewing relations with Vietnam. Now their focus is to win most-favored nation (MFN) for the draconian communist regime in Vietnam, which recently burned a Buddhist Monastery in Hue and jailed the monks and nuns for advocating improved human rights, freedom of religion and democracy.