Was Perot Looking For More Than Missing G.I.S In Vietnam?

If anything has helped catapult Ross Perot into the political limelight, it has been the POW-MIA issue. Perot first earned his reputation as a POW champion during the Christmas season of 1969, when he flew to Indochina with planeloads of medicine and food for captured U.S. servicemen. Although the Vietnamese didn't let Perot into the country, the spectacular gesture eventually led to better treatment of POWs and gave Perot a cause he has trumpeted ever since.

But now, senior Vietnamese officials say Perot's relations with Hanoi extend beyond the POW or MIA cause. In interviews with BUSINESS WEEK, Le Bang, the director of the Americas department at Vietnam's Foreign Ministry in Hanoi, says that Harry McKillop, a Perot representative, has visited Vietnam 13 times in four years. And starting in 1990, Bang says he detected a shift in Perot's interests. According to Bang, McKillop asked Hanoi to give Perot the O.K. to put together deals with U.S. companies on behalf of the Vietnamese government once the U.S. trade embargo was lifted. McKillop, Bang says, also visited the Heavy Industry Ministry and others during his trips.