Scope and Contents

The collection consists of photographs documenting one of Hershel Gober's POW/MIA trips to Laos (ca. May 1995); a photo album documenting the opening of the U.S. Liaison Office and later U.S. Embassy in Hanoi (1995); and issues of the Saigon Post (1974-1975).

Biographical / Historical

Dennis G. Harter served in Vietnam as a CORDS officer in Ba Tri District, Kien Hoa Province from August 1968 to January 1970. From January 1970 to the summer of 1970, he served as one of Ambassador Colby’s special assistants. He was a State Department Foreign Service Officer on loan to USAID. In subsequent State Department assignments, he served as Deputy Director of the Vietnam Desk from 1978-1980 when the first talks with the Vietnamese on normalization of diplomatic relations began, as Director of the same expanded office from 1994-1996 when he was responsible for coordinating normalization of relations with Vietnam inside the USG, and finally as the first DCM at the Embassy in Hanoi under Ambassador Pete Peterson from 1998-2002.