The Nation: McCain and the POW Cover-up

[babylonsister]

McCain and the POW Cover-up
By Sydney H. Schanberg

This article appeared in the October 6, 2008 edition of The Nation.
September 17, 2008

Research support provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute; a longer version of this article is available at nationinstitute.org.


John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn't return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero people would logically imagine to be a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.

Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain's role in it, even as McCain has made his military service and POW history the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War have also turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn't talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.

The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a Special Forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington and even sworn testimony by two defense secretaries that "men were left behind." This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number--probably hundreds--of the US prisoners held in Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain.

The Pentagon had been withholding significant information from POW families for years. What's more, the Pentagon's POW/MIA operation had been publicly shamed by internal whistleblowers and POW families for holding back documents as part of a policy of "debunking" POW intelligence even when the information was obviously credible. The pressure from the families and Vietnam veterans finally produced the creation, in late 1991, of a Senate "Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs." The chair was John Kerry, but McCain, as a POW, was its most pivotal member. In the end, the committee became part of the debunking machine.

Included in the evidence that McCain and his government allies suppressed or tried to discredit is a transcript of a senior North Vietnamese general's briefing of the Hanoi Politburo, discovered in Soviet archives by an American scholar in the 1990s. The briefing took place only four months before the 1973 peace accords. The general, Tran Van Quang, told the Politburo members that Hanoi was holding 1,205 American prisoners but would keep many of them at war's end as leverage to ensure getting reparations from Washington.

more...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081006/schanberg

[pinkpops]

1. Youtube page with interesting perspective from POW families

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1AWeZrdxfQ

and here, berating the sister of a missing pilot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CazKanlYDg&feature=related

with his curses bleeped:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwTKM_u-7j4&feature=related

[patrice]

2. Why, Why, Why, Why, Why? What could this possibly mean? It simply makes NO sense!

Why would a hero be against people knowing about POWs?

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Because some of the POW's knew things about him.

It would be inadvisable for him to permit them to get near a microphone.

I have no proof, and many will doubt me, but ask yourself why all of his military records, including information about the POW years, is kept under wraps. Doesn't a picture emerge?

[babylonsister]

4. That's exactly what I got out of this, too. What's he hiding? nt

[Jackpine Radical]

5. So we're back to doing that mind-meld thing again, huh?

[babylonsister]

7. Ha!

:hi:

[Jackpine Radical]

8. Hiya, Sis.

:hug:

[patrice]

6. It seems so obvious that you'd think he'd wish to avoid this perception, but I guess Occam's Razor

does apply: the simplest explanation is also the MOST likely.

[Waiting For Everyman]

9. McCain is done.

When this story gets picked up by other outlets and circulated, he's a cooked goose. Schanberg's reputation can't be laughed away. McC won't be able to discredit him as he has done to everyone else who brought these same things to light. And coming after so many people have seen how he lies to get what he wants in this campaign, it will be taken seriously ths time as it never was before.

I wonder if McC knew about this before it came out - in the last few days or the last week or so? I wonder if this is why he has seemed like he's in a meltdown? I assumed it was because of the financial news, but maybe not.

This is a major, major story.

[babylonsister]

10. You do mean 'if' this story gets picked up; as noted, there are so

many journos out there that won't touch this for whatever reason. We're only talking about a possible future president of the US, so why bother? :eyes:

[Waiting For Everyman]

11. I think they will.

They'll think about it long and hard first b/c it's serious, but so is Schanberg. Slowly, I think it'll catch fire. And I think McC is VERY worried about this right now. It's a nuke for him.

[williesgirl]

12. Why isn't this a "nat'l security" issue? If McSame were President, they could blackmail him w/this

info. This needs to come out NOW and be aired fully.

[aldo]

13. Be sure to read the full version in the nationinstitute.org website

http://www.nationinstitute.org/p/schanberg09182008pt1

This issue reaches across the red/blue state divide. Those convinced this whole issue is a hoax (I thought that way once), please read this slowly with an open mind.

[karynnj]

14. The people behind these charges are largely discredited

The effort to determine if POWs was held was led by John Kerry and almost every Vietnam vet in the Senate was on the committee. They all signed off on the final report - including Bob Smith, the extremely conservative Senator who came in as the clear proponent of the believe that people were left behind.

Kerry had Nixon administration people testify before the committee and even had questions submitted to Nixon. With his history, both in supporting veterans and having been personally targeted by Nixon, he had no reason to let them off the hook. In addition, Kerry gave Smith, who was the ranking member (not McCain, who thought it politically risky) half the staff of the committee - in stead of having more staff himself.

Kerry negotiated the ability of the Senate team and the investigators to go anywhere with no notice. CSPAN had a long (several hours) video replayed sometime last year that showed one trip over there by Kerry, Bob Smith and another Senator. The impression I got was how immense the job was. They had taken the reports of any sightings and mapped them and concentrated on those areas. (Later the investigators looked into each individual account and did there best to determine the circumstances.) All the committee members made trips to Vietnam. Kerry made 14, some to areas he was in. Bob Smith, at one point in the CSPAN footage, speaking of how hard this was for him spoke of how tough this had to be for Kerry. For all of them, this was a difficult, grueling effort that was always seen as a no win situation. (Kerry's entire staff was said to have wanted him not to accept the committee assignment, much less the chairmanship. It was Kerry's managerial skill that designed a process that the others agreed with and his diplomatic skills that kept the committee fights from destroying the effort.

Kerry also pushed the Vietnamese and neighboring countries to undertake a more concerted effort to repatriate remains. This effort was later included in the treaty. At this point, a MUCH lower percent of Americans unaccounted for exists from the Vietnam War than from the Korean War and WWII.

So, why do these stories exist. The reason that committee started was a Newsweek cover that purported to show three POWs still in captivity. The committee debunked this ultimately showing the picture was a fraud, they were not American and it was not Vietnam. What there was were various conscienceless people who raised money from the families and friends of the missing soldiers - saying they would do the investigation the country didn't do. Shapley was one of the most prominent of these and he verbally attacked McCain at many of these hearings - to the point where he was ordered thrown out by Kerry. The committee proved many of these people were con men and that they had actually done nothing other than raise money.

In addition to the conmen were the conned. Some were people who had lost people and who, not only never had the cloture that a body would provide, but had people holding out hope that they were still alive. Then throw in people on both the far left and the far right who are intensely suspicious of the government.

Now, take it a step forward, what is the gain to Vietnam to keep these men for what is now more than 3 decades after the war. During that time, they would need to pay guards and costs of shelter. In addition, as it is secret, they can't be put to work in the country and they can't be used as a bargaining chip. The committee checked every large building in the areas where there were rumours and they interacted with people in the area to learn what they knew - knowing they might not get the full truth.

In the CSPAN video tape, you have the Senators, especially Kerry speaking (through a US interpretor) with citizens everywhere - often with not Vietnamese officials. In a very cute segment, Kerry had a large group of little kids following him. At the beginning, he pointed to an animal and said a name and the kids corrected his pronunciation. Both the kids and Kerry were laughing. Later, he asked if they had seen Americans like him and they hadn't. (Seeing this reminded me of how my kids (then 6,8 and 11) were asked if they knew Hebrew by El AL when we flew out of NYC on a trip that was to Eqypt, where my sister was living and Israel. The 8 year old said yes, so they switched to Hebrew, and she stammered she only knew things like (Jewish prayers). That guy then came over spoke to our questioner and the tone changed immensely - they knew from the innocent 8 year old that we were a Jewish family with kids. In this case, if there were Americans - a kid might have blurted it out - especially to the Senator, who they were fascinated by.

In addition, you need to find a reason why not just McCain, but all the members of that committee could either be conned by the Vietnamese or lying on purpose. I seriously doubt either Kerrey, who spoke of hating Nixon, or Kerry would have any interest in covering up for Nixon. (Kerry was still pushing the real time investigation of BCCI, which was showing a huge amount of corruption from both Democrats and Republicans. That investigation was hard to understand, where the POW one wasn't. Kerry had also exposed the (then) ongoing gun and drug running to illegally support the Contras. So, you can't claim he didn't have the guts to expose something as awful as Americans spending over 2 decades in captivity.)