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by Edward Morgan
\nPrepare for Change<\/p>\n
INTRODUCTION:<\/p>\n
John McCain was a \u2018rat\u2019 or \u2018stoolie\u2019 telling on other U.S. officers being held captive at the Hanoi Hilton prison.\u00a0 When McCain first went to congress, members of congress turned their backs on him and did not communicate with him because of this, and also how he disgraced the military and his fellow officers who were severely punished by the North Vietnam guards and commanders of the Communist prison by McCain ratting them out.\u00a0 I am also led to believe that McCain was referred to as \u2018the canary\u2019 by the other officers for telling or squealing on the others.\u00a0 If you search the internet you will find some of these articles about what McCain did to his fellow officers in captivity and the stories of the other brave officers who reported on McCain upon returning to the United States.\u00a0 He was also given special treatment by the communists while in prison, because his father was a 4 star Admiral.\u00a0 Donald Trump was and is\u00a0CORRECT<\/u>!<\/strong><\/p>\n Dr. James P. Wickstro<\/strong><\/p>\n Navy Releases McCain\u2019s Records<\/a><\/p>\n McCain was personally responsible for the deadliest fire in the history of the US Navy. That catastrophe, with 27 dead and over 100 wounded trumps McCain\u2019s record as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.<\/strong><\/p>\n http:\/\/rockcreekfreepress.<\/a>tumblr.com\/post\/35321150\/navy-<\/a>releases-mccains-records<\/a><\/p>\n * * * * * * * * * * * * *<\/p>\n USS Forrestal, July 29, 1967 \u2013 The worst accident aboard a US Navy surface vessel since WWII<\/strong><\/p>\n BY WAYNE MADSEN\/WAYNE MADSEN REPORT<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Navy released John McCain\u2019s military record after a Freedom of Information Act request from the Associated Press. The record is packed with information on McCain\u2019s medals and commendations but little else.\u00a0 The one thing that the McCain campaign does not want to see released is the record of McCain\u2019s antics on board the USS Forestal in 1967.\u00a0 McCain was personally responsible for the deadliest fire in the history of the US Navy.\u00a0 That catastrophe, with 27 dead and over 100 wounded trumps McCain\u2019s record as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.<\/p>\n WMR has learned additional details regarding the deadly fire aboard the Navy aircraft carrier, the USS Forrestal, on July 19, 1967 in the Gulf of Tonkin.\u00a0 The additional details point to then-Lt. Commander John McCain playing more of a role in triggering the fire and explosions than previously reported.<\/p>\n On January 16, 2006, WMR reported that according to a US Navy sailor who was aboard the Forrestal on the fateful day of the fire, \u201cMcCain and the Forrestal\u2019s skipper, Capt. John K. Beling, were warned about the danger of using M-65 1000-lb. bombs manufactured in 1935, which were deemed too dangerous to use during World War II and, later, on B-52 bombers.\u00a0 The fire from the Zuni missile misfire resulted in the heavy 1000 pound bombs being knocked loose from the pylons of McCain\u2019s A-4 aircraft, which were only designed to hold 500-pound bombs.\u201d<\/p>\n WMR further reported, \u201cThe unstable bombs had a 60-second cook-off threshold in a fire situation and this warning was known to both Beling and McCain prior to the disaster.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 WMR also cited the potential that McCain\u2019s Navy records were used against him by the neo-cons in control of the Pentagon. \u00a0\u201cThe neo-cons, who have had five years to examine every file within the Department of Defense, have likely accessed documents that could prove embarrassing to McCain, who was on board the USS Forrestal on July 29, 1967, and whose A-4 Skyhawk was struck by an air-to-ground Zuni missile that had misfired from an F-4 Phantom.\u201d<\/p>\n WMR has been informed that crewmen aboard the Forrestal have provided additional information about the Forrestal incident.\u00a0 It is believed by many crewmen and those who have investigated the case that McCain deliberately \u201cwet-started\u201d his A-4E to shake up the guy in the plane behind his A-4.\u00a0 \u201cWet-starts\u201d, done either deliberately or accidentally, shoot a large flame from the tail of the aircraft.<\/p>\n In McCain\u2019s case, the \u201cwet-start\u201d apparently \u201ccooked off\u201d and launched the Zuni rocket from the rear F-4 that touched off the explosions and massive fire.\u00a0 The F-4 pilot was reportedly killed in the conflagration. \u00a0\u201cWet starting\u201d was apparently a common practice among young \u201chot-dog\u201d pilots.<\/p>\n McCain was quickly transferred to the USS Oriskany (the only Forrestal crewman to be immediately transferred).\u00a0 Three months later, McCain was shot down over North Vietnam on October 26, 1967.<\/p>\n As WMR previously reported, at the time of the Forrestal disaster, McCain\u2019s father, Admiral John McCain, Jr., was Commander-in-Chief of US Naval Forces Europe (CINCUSNAVEUR) and was busy covering up the details of the deadly and pre-meditated June 8, 1967, Israeli attack on the NSA spy ship, the USS Liberty.\u00a0 [John McCain\u00a0is one of the best cases against military \u2018nepotism\u2019 in\u00a0American history<\/em>.<\/strong>]<\/p>\n The fact that both McCains were involved in two incidents just weeks apart that resulted in a total death count of 168 on the Forrestal and the Liberty, with an additional injury count of 234 on both ships (with a number of them later dying from their wounds) with an accompanying classified paper-trail inside the Pentagon, may be all that was needed to hold a Sword of Damocles over the head of the \u201cfamily honor\u201d-oriented McCain by the neo-cons.<\/p>\n WMR has also been informed by knowledgeable sources, including an ex-Navy A-4 pilot, the \u201cwet-start game\u201d was a common occurrence.\u00a0 However, it is between \u201cvery unlikely\u201d and \u201cimpossible\u201d for the Forrestal \u201cwet start\u201d to have been accidental. \u00a0\u201cWet starts\u201d were later rendered impossible by automated engine controls.<\/p>\n Wayne Madsen reports on military and political affairs in Washington at his website, WayneMadsenReport.com.<\/i><\/p>\n http:\/\/rockcreekfreepress.<\/a>tumblr.com\/post\/35321150\/navy-<\/a>releases-mccains-records<\/a><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n VIEW VIDEO:<\/strong><\/p>\n McCain Lies About Being Tortured As\u00a0 A\u00a0 P.O.W.<\/p>\n Source:\u00a0CONTACT: THE PHOENIX PROJECT<\/i>, October 27, 1997, Volume 18, Number 9, Page 10.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Feb. 3, 2015<\/p>\n Earl Hopper spent 30 years with the Army in Airborne Special Services and with Army Intelligence and he was a founding member of the National League of Families, dedicated to returning living POWs and MIAs of the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n He and those interviewed allege that the narrative propagated by McCain, of his five and a half years as a Prisoner of War in North Vietnam is about as far from the truth as one could possibly imagine.\u00a0 They allege that McCain, from the very first moments of his capture behaved as a COLLABORATOR and propaganda tool for his North Vietnamese captors.<\/p>\n McCain is described as engaging in no less than 30, and up to 38 anti-American propaganda broadcasts for Radio Hanoi during the period of his captivity.<\/p>\n Far from the image of the dedicated American \u201chero\u201d sweating it out in a North Vietnamese prisoner\u2019s \u201chotbox\u201d for five and half years, McCain was observed by fellow prisoners to be receiving special treatment by his captors, who were fully aware of his father\u2019s and grandfather\u2019s 4-star Admiral positions with the US Navy.<\/p>\n Not a single contemporary captive interviewed here ever witnessed McCain\u2019s alleged \u201ctorture\u201d at the hands of his jailers and the consensus opinion of the other POWs in McCain\u2019s camps was that McCain was actually NEVER tortured by the North Vietnamese.<\/p>\n McCain\u2019s disgraceful and wholly reprehensible conduct (along with that of John Kerry) during the 1991-93 Senate Committee on POW\/MIAs, where McCain made massive efforts to block the release of classified documents and is described here as the person who did the \u201cmost harm\u201d to the movement of families who wanted to rescue any remaining loved ones, left behind in Vietnam and Laos.<\/p>\n McCain is described by those interviewed in this clip as perhaps the person who did the most to quash this movement \u2013 and they suspect that this was because he didn\u2019t want the truth to be revealed by them.<\/p>\n To them, his actions leave no doubt that McCain is a traitor to this country and its veterans and especially, to the [POWs and MIAs and their families].<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n John Mccain Traitor- By Vietnam Vets And Pow\u2019s<\/u><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n By Sydney Schanberg<\/strong><\/p>\n July 1, 2010<\/p>\n [QUOTING:]<\/p>\n The \u201cwar hero\u201d candidate buried information about POWs left behind in Vietnam.<\/strong><\/p>\n Eighteen months ago,\u00a0<\/em>TAC\u00a0publisher Ron Unz discovered an astonishing account of the role the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, had played in suppressing information about what happened to American soldiers missing in action in Vietnam.\u00a0 Below, we present in full Sydney Schanberg\u2019s explosive story.<\/em><\/p>\n * * *<\/strong><\/i><\/p>\n 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\u2019t return home.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Thus the war hero who people would logically imagine as a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.<\/p>\n Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain\u2019s role in it, even as the Republican Party has made McCain\u2019s military service the focus of his presidential campaign.\u00a0 Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War turned their heads and walked in other directions.\u00a0 McCain doesn\u2019t talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.<\/p>\n The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small.\u00a0 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\u2014and even sworn testimony by two Defense secretaries that \u201cmen were left behind.\u201d\u00a0 This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number\u2014the documents indicate probably hundreds\u2014of the U.S. prisoners held by 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.<\/p>\n Mass of Evidence<\/strong><\/p>\n The Pentagon had been withholding significant information from POW families for years. \u00a0What\u2019s more, the Pentagon\u2019s POW\/MIA operation had been publicly shamed by internal whistleblowers and POW families for holding back documents as part of a policy of \u201cdebunking\u201d POW intelligence even when the information was obviously credible.<\/p>\n The pressure from the families and Vietnam veterans finally forced the creation, in late 1991, of a Senate Select Committee on POW\/MIA Affairs. \u00a0The chairman was John Kerry. \u00a0McCain, as a former POW, was its most pivotal member. In the end, the committee became part of the debunking machine.<\/p>\n One of the sharpest critics of the Pentagon\u2019s performance was an insider, Air Force Lt. Gen. Eugene Tighe, who headed the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) during the 1970s.\u00a0 He openly challenged the Pentagon\u2019s position that no live prisoners existed, saying that the evidence proved otherwise.\u00a0 McCain was a bitter opponent of Tighe, who was eventually pushed into retirement.<\/p>\n Included in the evidence that McCain and his government allies suppressed or sought to discredit is a transcript of a senior North Vietnamese general\u2019s briefing of the Hanoi politburo, discovered in Soviet archives by an American scholar in 1993.\u00a0 The briefing took place only four months before the 1973 peace accords.\u00a0 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\u2019s end as leverage to ensure getting war reparations from Washington.<\/p>\n Throughout the Paris negotiations, the North Vietnamese tied the prisoner issue tightly to the issue of reparations.\u00a0 They were adamant in refusing to deal with them separately.\u00a0 Finally, in a Feb. 2, 1973 formal letter to Hanoi\u2019s premier, Pham Van Dong, Nixon pledged $3.25 billion in \u201cpostwar reconstruction\u201d aid \u201cwithout any political conditions.\u201d\u00a0 But he also attached to the letter a codicil that said the aid would be implemented by each party \u201cin accordance with its own constitutional provisions.\u201d\u00a0 That meant Congress would have to approve the appropriation, and Nixon and Kissinger knew well that Congress was in no mood to do so.\u00a0 The North Vietnamese, whether or not they immediately understood the double-talk in the letter, remained skeptical about the reparations promise being honored\u2014and it never was.\u00a0 Hanoi thus appears to have held back prisoners\u2014just as it had done when the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and withdrew their forces from Vietnam. In that case, France paid ransoms for prisoners and brought them home.<\/p>\n In a private briefing in 1992, high-level CIA officials told me that as the years passed and the ransom never came, it became more and more difficult for either government to admit that it knew from the start about the unacknowledged prisoners.\u00a0 Those prisoners had not only become useless as bargaining chips but also posed a risk to Hanoi\u2019s desire to be accepted into the international community.\u00a0 The CIA officials said their intelligence indicated strongly that the remaining men\u2014those who had not died from illness or hard labor or torture\u2014were eventually executed.<\/p>\n My own research, detailed below, has convinced me that it is not likely that more than a few\u2014if any\u2014are alive in captivity today.\u00a0 (That CIA briefing at the Agency\u2019s Langley, Virginia, headquarters was conducted \u201coff the record,\u201d but because the evidence from my own reporting since then has brought me to the same conclusion, I felt there was no longer any point in not writing about the meeting.)<\/p>\n For many reasons, including the absence of a political constituency for the missing men other than their families and some veterans\u2019 groups, very few Americans are aware of the POW story and of McCain\u2019s role in keeping it out of public view and denying the existence of abandoned POWs.\u00a0 That is because McCain has hardly been alone in his campaign to hide the scandal.<\/p>\n The Arizona senator, now the Republican candidate for president, has actually been following the lead of every White House since Richard Nixon\u2019s, and thus of every CIA director, Pentagon chief, and national security adviser, not to mention Dick Cheney, who was George H.W. Bush\u2019s Defense secretary.\u00a0 Their biggest accomplice has been an indolent press, particularly in Washington.<\/p>\n McCain\u2019s Role<\/strong><\/p>\n An early and critical McCain secrecy move involved 1990 legislation that started in the House of Representatives.\u00a0 A brief and simple document, it was called \u201cthe Truth Bill\u201d and would have compelled complete transparency about prisoners and missing men.\u00a0 Its core sentence reads: \u201c[The] head of each department or agency which holds or receives any records and information, including live-sighting reports, which have been correlated or possibly correlated to United States personnel listed as prisoner of war or missing in action from World War II, the Korean conflict and the Vietnam conflict, shall make available to the public all such records held or received by that department or agency.\u201d<\/p>\n Bitterly opposed by the Pentagon (and thus McCain), the bill went nowhere. Reintroduced the following year, it again disappeared.\u00a0 But a few months later, a new measure, known as \u201cthe McCain Bill,\u201dsuddenly appeared.\u00a0 By creating a bureaucratic maze from which only a fraction of the documents could emerge\u2014only records that revealed no POW secrets\u2014it turned the Truth Bill on its head.\u00a0 The McCain bill became law in 1991 and remains so today. So crushing to transparency are its provisions that it actually spells out for the Pentagon and other agencies several rationales, scenarios, and justifications for not releasing any information at all\u2014even about prisoners discovered alive in captivity.\u00a0 Later that year, the Senate Select Committee was created, where Kerry and McCain ultimately worked together to bury evidence.<\/p>\n McCain was also instrumental in amending the Missing Service Personnel Act, which had been strengthened in 1995 by POW advocates to include criminal penalties, saying, \u201cAny government official who knowingly and willfully withholds from the file of a missing person any information relating to the disappearance or whereabouts and status of a missing person shall be fined as provided in Title 18 or imprisoned not more than one year or both.\u201d\u00a0 A year later, in a closed House-Senate conference on an unrelated military bill, McCain, at the behest of the Pentagon, attached a crippling amendment to the act, stripping out its only enforcement teeth, the criminal penalties, and reducing the obligations of commanders in the field to speedily search for missing men and to report the incidents to the Pentagon.<\/p>\n About the relaxation of POW\/MIA obligations on commanders in the field, a public McCain memo said, \u201cThis transfers the bureaucracy involved out of the [battle] field to Washington.\u201d\u00a0 He wrote that the original legislation, if left intact, \u201cwould accomplish nothing but create new jobs for lawyers and turn military commanders into clerks.\u201d<\/p>\n McCain argued that keeping the criminal penalties would have made it impossible for the Pentagon to find staffers willing to work on POW\/MIA matters. That\u2019s an odd argument to make.\u00a0 Were staffers only \u201cwilling to work\u201d if they were allowed to conceal POW records?\u00a0 By eviscerating the law, McCain gave his stamp of approval to the government policy of debunking the existence of live POWs.<\/p>\n McCain has insisted again and again that all the evidence\u2014documents, witnesses, satellite photos, two Pentagon chiefs\u2019 sworn testimony, aborted rescue missions, ransom offers apparently scorned\u2014has been woven together by unscrupulous deceivers to create an insidious and unpatriotic myth. He calls it the \u201cbizarre rantings of the MIA hobbyists.\u201d\u00a0 He has regularly vilified those who keep trying to pry out classified documents as \u201choaxers,\u201d \u201ccharlatans,\u201d \u201cconspiracy theorists,\u201d and \u201cdime-store Rambos.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of McCain\u2019s fellow captives at Hoa Lo prison in Hanoi didn\u2019t share his views about prisoners left behind.\u00a0 Before he died of leukemia in 1999, retired Col. Ted Guy, a highly admired POW and one of the most dogged resisters in the camps, wrote an angry open letter to the senator in an MIA newsletter\u2014a response to McCain\u2019s stream of insults hurled at MIA activists. Guy wrote, \u201cJohn, does this [the insults] include Senator Bob Smith [a New Hampshire Republican and activist on POW issues] and other concerned elected officials?\u00a0 Does this include the families of the missing where there is overwhelming evidence that their loved ones were \u2018last known alive\u2019?\u00a0 Does this include some of your fellow POWs?\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear whether the taped confession McCain gave to his captors to avoid further torture has played a role in his postwar behavior in the Senate. That confession was played endlessly over the prison loudspeaker system at Hoa Lo\u2014to try to break down other prisoners\u2014and was broadcast over Hanoi\u2019s state radio.\u00a0 Reportedly, he confessed to being a war criminal who had bombed civilian targets.\u00a0 The Pentagon has a copy of the confession but will not release it.\u00a0 Also, no outsider I know of has ever seen a non-redacted copy of the debriefing of McCain when he returned from captivity, which is classified but could be made public by McCain.<\/p>\n [In an interview with 60 Minutes in 1997, McCain mentioned the confession his North Vietnamese captors forced him to write:\u00a0\u201cI was guilty of war crimes against the Vietnamese people.\u00a0 I intentionally bombed women and children.\u201d<\/strong><\/i>\u00a0The truth, of course, is that what McCain wrote under duress is actually an accurate statement. \u2013http:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/<\/a>\u00a02008\/ 09\/ laurence-]<\/p>\n All humans have breaking points.\u00a0 Many men undergoing torture give confessions, often telling huge lies so their fakery will be understood by their comrades and their country.\u00a0 Few will fault them. But it was McCain who apparently felt he had disgraced himself and his military family.\u00a0 His father, John S. McCain II, was a highly regarded rear admiral then serving as commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific.\u00a0 His grandfather was also a rear admiral.<\/p>\n In his bestselling 1999 autobiography,\u00a0Faith of My Fathers<\/em>,\u00a0McCain says he felt bad throughout his captivity because he knew he was being treated more leniently than his fellow POWs, owing to his high-ranking father and thus his propaganda value.<\/strong>\u00a0 Other prisoners at Hoa Lo say his captors considered him a prize catch and called him the \u201cCrown Prince,\u201d something McCain acknowledges in the book.<\/p>\n Also in this memoir, McCain expresses guilt at having broken under torture and given the confession.\u00a0 \u201cI felt faithless and couldn\u2019t control my despair,\u201d he writes, revealing that he made two \u201cfeeble\u201d attempts at suicide. \u00a0(In later years, he said he tried to hang himself with his shirt and guards intervened.)\u00a0 Tellingly, he says he lived in \u201cdread\u201d that his father would find out about the confession. \u00a0\u201cI still wince,\u201d he writes, \u201cwhen I recall wondering if my father had heard of my disgrace.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n He says that when he returned home, he told his father about the confession, but \u201cnever discussed it at length\u201d\u2014and the admiral, who died in 1981, didn\u2019t indicate he had heard anything about it before.\u00a0 But he had.\u00a0 In the 1999 memoir, the senator writes, \u201cI only recently learned that the tape \u2026 had been broadcast outside the prison and had come to the attention of my father.\u201d<\/p>\n Is McCain haunted by these memories?\u00a0 Does he suppress POW information because its surfacing would rekindle his feelings of shame? \u00a0On this subject, all I have are questions.<\/p>\n Many stories have been written about McCain\u2019s explosive temper, so volcanic that colleagues are loath to speak openly about it. \u00a0One veteran congressman who has observed him over the years asked for confidentiality and made this brief comment: \u201cThis is a man not at peace with himself.\u201d<\/p>\n He was certainly far from calm on the Senate POW committee. He browbeat expert witnesses who came with information about unreturned POWs. Family members who have personally faced McCain and pressed him to end the secrecy also have been treated to his legendary temper. \u00a0He has screamed at them, insulted them, brought women to tears.\u00a0 Mostly his responses to them have been versions of: How dare you question my patriotism?\u00a0 In 1996, he roughly pushed aside a group of POW family members who had waited outside a hearing room to appeal to him, including a mother in a wheelchair.<\/p>\n But even without answers to what may be hidden in the recesses of McCain\u2019s mind, one thing about the POW story is clear: if American prisoners were dishonored by being written off and left to die, that\u2019s something the American public ought to know about.\u00a010 Key Pieces of Evidence That Men Were Left Behind<\/strong><\/p>\n 1.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In Paris, where the Vietnam peace treaty was negotiated, the United States asked Hanoi for the list of American prisoners to be returned, fearing that Hanoi would hold some prisoners back.\u00a0 The North Vietnamese refused, saying they would produce the list only after the treaty was signed. Nixon agreed with Kissinger that they had no leverage left, and Kissinger signed the accord on Jan. 27, 1973 without the prisoner list.\u00a0 When Hanoi produced its list of 591 prisoners the next day, U.S. intelligence agencies expressed shock at the low number.\u00a0 Their number was hundreds higher.\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0published a long, page-one story on Feb. 2, 1973 about the discrepancy, especially raising questions about the number of prisoners held in Laos, only nine of whom were being returned.\u00a0 The headline read, in part, \u201cLaos POW List Shows 9 from U.S.\u2014Document Disappointing to Washington as 311 Were Believed Missing.\u201d\u00a0 And the story, by John Finney, said that other Washington officials \u201cbelieve the number of prisoners [in Laos] is probably substantially higher.\u201d\u00a0 The paper never followed up with any serious investigative reporting\u2014nor did any other mainstream news organization.<\/p>\n 2.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Two Defense secretaries who served during the Vietnam War testified to the Senate POW committee in September 1992 that prisoners were not returned. James Schlesinger and Melvin Laird, both speaking at a public session and under oath, said they based their conclusions on strong intelligence data\u2014letters, eyewitness reports, even direct radio contacts. Under questioning, Schlesinger chose his words carefully, understanding clearly the volatility of the issue: \u201cI think that as of now that I can come to no other conclusion \u2026 some were left behind.\u201d\u00a0 This ran counter to what President Nixon told the public in a nationally televised speech on March 29, 1973, when the repatriation of the 591 was in motion:\u00a0\u201cTonight,\u201d Nixon said, \u201cthe day we have all worked and prayed for has finally come.\u00a0 For the first time in 12 years, no American military forces are in Vietnam.\u00a0 All our American POWs are on their way home.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 Documents unearthed since then show that aides had already briefed Nixon about the contrary evidence.<\/p>\n Schlesinger was asked by the Senate committee for his explanation of why President Nixon would have made such a statement when he knew Hanoi was still holding prisoners.\u00a0 He replied, \u201cOne must assume that we had concluded that the bargaining position of the United States \u2026 was quite weak. We were anxious to get our troops out and we were not going to roil the waters\u2026\u201d This testimony struck me as a bombshell.\u00a0 The New York Times appropriately reported it on page one but again there was no sustained follow-up by the Times or any other major paper or national news outlet.<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Over the years, the DIA received more than 1,600 first-hand sightings of live American prisoners and nearly 14,000 second-hand reports. \u00a0Many witnesses interrogated by CIA or Pentagon intelligence agents were deemed \u201ccredible\u201d in the agents\u2019 reports. \u00a0Some of the witnesses were given lie-detector tests and passed.\u00a0 Sources provided me with copies of these witness reports, which are impressive in their detail.\u00a0 A lot of the sightings described a secondary tier of prison camps many miles from Hanoi.\u00a0 Yet the DIA, after reviewing all these reports, concluded that they \u201cdo not constitute evidence\u201d that men were alive.<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>In the late 1970s and early 1980s, listening stations picked up messages in which Laotian military personnel spoke about moving American prisoners from one labor camp to another.\u00a0 These listening posts were manned by Thai communications officers trained by the National Security Agency (NSA), which monitors signals worldwide.\u00a0 The NSA teams had moved out after the fall of Saigon in 1975 and passed the job to the Thai allies. But when the Thais turned these messages over to Washington, the intelligence community ruled that since the intercepts were made by a \u201cthird party\u201d\u2014namely Thailand\u2014they could not be regarded as authentic. That\u2019s some Catch-22: the U.S. trained a third party to take over its role in monitoring signals about POWs, but because that third party did the monitoring, the messages weren\u2019t valid.<\/p>\n Here, from CIA files, is an example that clearly exposes the farce. On Dec. 27, 1980, a Thai military signal team picked up a message saying that prisoners were being moved out of Attopeu (in southern Laos) by aircraft \u201cat 1230 hours.\u201d\u00a0 Three days later a message was sent from the CIA station in Bangkok to the CIA director\u2019s office in Langley. \u00a0It read, in part: \u201cThe prisoners \u2026 are now in the valley in permanent location (a prison camp at Nhommarath in Central Laos). \u00a0They were transferred from Attopeu to work in various places \u2026 POWs were formerly kept in caves and are very thin, dark and starving.\u201d \u00a0Apparently the prisoners were real. \u00a0But the transmission was declared \u201cinvalid\u201d by Washington because the information came from a \u201cthird party\u201d and thus could not be deemed credible.<\/p>\n 5<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A series of what appeared to be distress signals from Vietnam and Laos were captured by the government\u2019s satellite system in the late 1980s and early \u201990s.\u00a0 (Before that period, no search for such signals had been put in place.) \u00a0Not a single one of these markings was ever deemed credible. To the layman\u2019s eye, the satellite photos, some of which I\u2019ve seen, show markings on the ground that are identical to the signals that American pilots had been specifically trained to use in their survival courses\u2014such as certain letters, like X or K, drawn in a special way.\u00a0 Other markings were the secret four-digit authenticator numbers given to individual pilots.\u00a0 But time and again, the Pentagon, backed by the CIA, insisted that humans had not made these markings.\u00a0 What were they, then?\u00a0 \u201cShadows and vegetation,\u201d \u00a0the government said, insisting that the markings were merely normal topographical contours like saw-grass or rice-paddy divider walls.\u00a0 It was the automatic response\u2014shadows and vegetation.\u00a0 On one occasion, a Pentagon photo expert refused to go along. \u00a0It was a missing man\u2019s name gouged into a field, he said, not trampled grass or paddy berms.\u00a0 His bosses responded by bringing in an outside contractor who found instead, yes, shadows and vegetation. \u00a0This refrain led Bob Taylor, a highly regarded investigator on the Senate committee staff who had examined the photographic evidence, to comment to me: \u201cIf grass can spell out people\u2019s names and secret digit codes, then I have a newfound respect for grass.\u201d<\/p>\n 6.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>On Nov. 11, 1992, Dolores Alfond, the sister of missing airman Capt. Victor Apodaca and chair of the National Alliance of Families, an organization of relatives of POW\/MIAs, testified at one of the Senate committee\u2019s public hearings.\u00a0 She asked for information about data the government had gathered from electronic devices used in a classified program known as PAVE SPIKE.<\/p>\n The devices were motion sensors, dropped by air, designed to pick up enemy troop movements.\u00a0 Shaped on one end like a spike with an electronic pod and antenna on top, they were designed to stick in the ground as they fell.\u00a0 Air Force planes would drop them along the Ho Chi Minh trail and other supply routes.\u00a0 The devices, though primarily sensors, also had rescue capabilities. Someone on the ground\u2014a downed airman or a prisoner on a labor gang \u2014could manually enter data into the sensor.\u00a0 All data were regularly collected electronically by U.S. planes flying overhead. Alfond stated, without any challenge or contradiction by the committee, that in 1974, a year after the supposedly complete return of prisoners, the gathered data showed that a person or people had manually entered into the sensors\u2014as U.S. pilots had been trained to do\u2014no less than 20 authenticator numbers that corresponded exactly to the classified authenticator numbers of 20 U.S. POWs who were lost in Laos. \u00a0Alfond added, according to the transcript, \u201cThis PAVE SPIKE intelligence is seamless, but the committee has not discussed it or released what it knows about PAVE SPIKE.\u201d<\/p>\n McCain attended that committee hearing specifically to confront Alfond because of her criticism of the panel\u2019s work.\u00a0 He bellowed and berated her for quite a while.\u00a0 His face turning anger-pink, he accused her of \u201cdenigrating\u201d his \u201cpatriotism.\u201d\u00a0 The bullying had its effect\u2014she began to cry.<\/p>\n After a pause Alfond recovered and tried to respond to his scorching tirade, but McCain simply turned away and stormed out of the room.\u00a0 The PAVE SPIKE file has never been declassified. \u00a0We still don\u2019t know anything about those 20 POWs.<\/p>\n 7.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>As previously mentioned, in April 1993 in a Moscow archive, a researcher from Harvard, Stephen Morris, unearthed and made public the transcript of a briefing that General Tran Van Quang gave to the Hanoi politburo four months before the signing of the Paris peace accords in 1973.<\/p>\n In the transcript, General Quang told the Hanoi politburo that 1,205 U.S. prisoners were being held.\u00a0 Quang said that many of the prisoners would be held back from Washington after the accords as bargaining chips for war reparations.\u00a0 General Quang\u2019s report added:\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cThis is a big number.\u00a0 Officially, until now, we published a list of only 368 prisoners of war.\u00a0 The rest we have not revealed.\u00a0 The government of the USA knows this well, but it does not know the exact number \u2026and can only make guesses based on its losses.\u00a0 That is why we are keeping the number of prisoners of war secret, in accordance with the politburo\u2019s instructions.\u201d<\/em><\/b>\u00a0 The report then went on to explain in clear and specific language that a large number would be kept back to ensure reparations.<\/strong><\/p>\n The reaction to the document was immediate.\u00a0 After two decades of denying it had kept any prisoners, Hanoi responded to the revelation by calling the transcript a fabrication.<\/p>\n Similarly, Washington\u2014which had over the same two decades refused to recant Nixon\u2019s declaration that all the prisoners had been returned\u2014also shifted into denial mode.\u00a0 The Pentagon issued a statement saying the document \u201cis replete with errors, omissions and propaganda that seriously damage its credibility,\u201d and that the numbers were \u201cinconsistent with our own accounting.\u201d<\/p>\n Neither American nor Vietnamese officials offered any rationale for who would plant a forged document in the Soviet archives and why they would do so. \u00a0Certainly neither Washington nor Moscow\u2014closely allied with Hanoi\u2014would have any motive, since the contents were embarrassing to all parties, and since both the United States and Vietnam had consistently denied the existence of unreturned prisoners. \u00a0The Russian archivists simply said the document was \u201cauthentic.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n 8.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>In his 2002 book,\u00a0Inside Delta Force<\/em>, retired Command Sgt. Maj. Eric Haney described how in 1981 his special forces unit, after rigorous training for a POW rescue mission, had the mission suddenly aborted, revived a year later, and again abruptly aborted.\u00a0 Haney writes that this abandonment of captured soldiers ate at him for years and left him disillusioned about his government\u2019s vows to leave no men behind.\u00a0 \u201cYears later, I spoke at length with a former highly placed member of the North Vietnamese diplomatic corps, and this person asked me point-blank: \u2018Why did the Americans never attempt to recover their remaining POWs after the conclusion of the war?\u2019\u201d\u00a0Haney writes.\u00a0 He continued, saying that he came to believe senior government officials had called off those missions in 1981 and 1982. (His account is on pages 314 to 321 of my paperback copy of the book.)<\/p>\n 9.<\/strong>\u00a0There is also evidence that in the first months of Ronald Reagan\u2019s presidency in 1981, the White House received a ransom proposal for a number of POWs being held by Hanoi in Indochina.\u00a0 The offer, which was passed to Washington from an official of a third country, was apparently discussed at a meeting in the Roosevelt Room attended by Reagan, Vice President Bush, CIA director William Casey, and National Security Adviser Richard Allen.\u00a0 Allen confirmed the offer in sworn testimony to the Senate POW committee on June 23, 1992.<\/p>\n Allen was allowed to testify behind closed doors and no information was released. But a\u00a0San Diego Union-Tribune<\/em>\u00a0reporter, Robert Caldwell, obtained the portion relating to the ransom offer and reported on it.\u00a0 The ransom request was for $4 billion, Allen testified. He said he told Reagan that \u201cit would be worth the president\u2019s going along and let\u2019s have the negotiation.\u201d\u00a0 When his testimony appeared in the\u00a0Union-Tribune<\/em>, Allen quickly wrote a letter to the panel, this time not under oath, recanting the ransom story and claiming his memory had played tricks on him. \u00a0His new version was that some POW activists had asked him about such an offer in a meeting that took place in 1986, when he was no longer in government.\u00a0 \u201cIt appears,\u201d he said in the letter, \u201cthat there never was a 1981 meeting about the return of POW\/MIAs for $4 billion.\u201d<\/p>\n But the episode didn\u2019t end there.\u00a0 A Treasury agent on Secret Service duty in the White House, John Syphrit, came forward to say he had overheard part of the ransom conversation in the Roosevelt Room in 1981, when the offer was discussed by Reagan, Bush, Casey, Allen, and other cabinet officials.<\/p>\n Syphrit, a veteran of the Vietnam War, told the committee he was willing to testify, but they would have to subpoena him.\u00a0 Treasury opposed his appearance, arguing that voluntary testimony would violate the trust between the Secret Service and those it protects.\u00a0 It was clear that coming in on his own could cost Syphrit his career.\u00a0 The committee voted 7 to 4 not to subpoena him.<\/p>\n In the committee\u2019s final report, dated Jan. 13, 1993 (on page 284), the panel not only chastised Syphrit for his failure to testify without a subpoena (\u201cThe committee regrets that the Secret Service agent was unwilling \u2026\u201d), but noted that since Allen had recanted his testimony about the Roosevelt Room briefing, \u00a0Syphrit\u2019s testimony would have been \u201cat best, uncorroborated by the testimony of any other witness.\u201d\u00a0 The committee omitted any mention that it had made a decision not to ask the other two surviving witnesses, Bush and Reagan, to give testimony under oath. \u00a0(Casey had died.)<\/p>\n 10.<\/strong>\u00a0In 1990, Col. Millard Peck, a decorated infantry veteran of Vietnam then working at the DIA as chief of the Asia Division for Current Intelligence, asked for the job of chief of the DIA\u2019s Special Office for Prisoners of War and Missing in Action.\u00a0 His reason for seeking the transfer, which was not a promotion, was that he had heard from officials throughout the Pentagon that the POW\/MIA office had been turned into a waste-disposal unit for getting rid of unwanted evidence about live prisoners\u2014a \u201cblack hole,\u201d these officials called it.<\/p>\n Peck explained all this in his telling resignation letter of Feb. 12, 1991, eight months after he had taken the job. He said he viewed it as \u201csort of a holy crusade\u201d to restore the integrity of the office but was defeated by the Pentagon machine.\u00a0 The four-page, single-spaced letter was scathing, describing the putative search for missing men as \u201ca cover-up.\u201d<\/p>\n Peck charged that, at its top echelons, the Pentagon had embraced a \u201cmind-set to debunk\u201d all evidence of prisoners left behind. \u00a0\u201cThat national leaders continue to address the prisoner of war and missing in action issue as the \u2018highest national priority,\u2019 is a travesty,\u201d he wrote.\u00a0 \u201cThe entire charade does not appear to be an honest effort, and may never have been. \u2026\u00a0 Practically all analysis is directed to finding fault with the source.\u00a0 Rarely has there been any effective, active follow through on any of the sightings, nor is there a responsive \u2018action arm\u2019 to routinely and aggressively pursue leads.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI became painfully aware,\u201d his letter continued, \u201cthat I was not really in charge of my own office, but was merely a figurehead or whipping boy for a larger and totally Machiavellian group of players outside of DIA \u2026\u00a0 I feel strongly that this issue is being manipulated and controlled at a higher level, not with the goal of resolving it, but more to obfuscate the question of live prisoners and give the illusion of progress through hyperactivity.\u201d\u00a0 He named no names but said these players are \u201cunscrupulous people in the Government or associated with the Government\u201d who \u201chave maintained their distance and remained hidden in the shadows, while using the [POW] Office as a \u2018toxic waste dump\u2019 to bury the whole \u2018mess\u2019 out of sight.\u201d\u00a0 Peck added that \u201cmilitary officers \u2026 who in some manner have \u2018rocked the boat\u2019 [have] quickly come to grief.\u201d<\/p>\n Peck concluded, \u201cFrom what I have witnessed, it appears that any soldier left in Vietnam, even inadvertently, was, in fact, abandoned years ago, and that the farce that is being played is no more than political legerdemain done with \u2018smoke and mirrors\u2019 to stall the issue until it dies a natural death.\u201d<\/p>\n The disillusioned colonel not only resigned but asked to be retired immediately from active military service.\u00a0 The press never followed up.<\/p>\n My Pursuit of the Story<\/strong><\/p>\n I covered the war in Cambodia and Vietnam, but came to the POW information only slowly afterward, when military officers I knew from that conflict began coming to me with maps and POW sightings and depositions by Vietnamese witnesses.<\/p>\n I was then city editor of the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, no longer involved in foreign or national stories, so I took the data to the appropriate desks and suggested it was material worth pursuing.\u00a0 There were no takers.\u00a0 Some years later, in 1991, when I was an op-ed columnist at\u00a0Newsday<\/em>, the aforementioned special Senate committee was formed to probe the POW issue.\u00a0 I saw this as an opening and immersed myself in the reporting.<\/p>\n At\u00a0Newsday<\/em>, I wrote 36 columns over a two-year period, as well as a four-part series on a trip I took to North Vietnam to report on what happened to one missing pilot who was shot down over the Ho Chi Minh trail and captured when he parachuted down.\u00a0 After\u00a0Newsday<\/em>, I wrote thousands more words on the subject for other outlets.\u00a0 Some of the pieces were about McCain\u2019s key role.<\/p>\n Though I wrote on many subjects for\u00a0Life, Vanity Fair,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Washington Monthly<\/em>, my POW articles appeared in\u00a0Penthouse,\u00a0<\/em>the\u00a0Village Voice,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0APBnews.com.\u00a0<\/em>Mainstream publications just weren\u2019t interested.\u00a0 Their disinterest was part of what motivated me, and I became one of a very short list of journalists who considered the story important.<\/p>\n Serving in the Army in Germany during the Cold War and witnessing combat firsthand as a reporter in India and Indochina led me to have great respect for those who fight for their country.\u00a0 To my mind, we dishonored U.S. troops when our government failed to bring them home from Vietnam after the 591 others were released\u2014and then claimed they didn\u2019t exist.\u00a0 And politicians dishonor themselves when they pay lip service to the bravery and sacrifice of soldiers only to leave untold numbers behind, rationalizing to themselves that it\u2019s merely one of the unfortunate costs of war.<\/p>\n John McCain\u2014now campaigning for the White House as a war hero, maverick, and straight shooter\u2014owes the voters some explanations.\u00a0 The press were long ago wooed and won by McCain\u2019s seeming openness, Lone Ranger pose, and self-deprecating humor, which may partly explain their ignoring his record on POWs.\u00a0 In the numerous, lengthy McCain profiles that have appeared of late in papers like theNew York Times<\/em>, the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>, and the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>, I may have missed a clause or a sentence along the way, but I have not found a single mention of his role in burying information about POWs.\u00a0 Television and radio news programs have been similarly silent.<\/p>\n Reporters simply never ask him about it.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t when he ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination in 2000.\u00a0 They haven\u2019t now, despite the fact that we\u2019re in the midst of another war\u2014a war he supports and one that has echoes of Vietnam.\u00a0 The only explanation McCain has ever offered for his leadership on legislation that seals POW files is that he believes the release of such information would only stir up fresh grief for the families of those who were never accounted for in Vietnam.\u00a0 Of the scores of POW families I\u2019ve met over the years, only a few have said they want the books closed without knowing what happened to their men.\u00a0 All the rest say that not knowing is exactly what grieves them.<\/p>\n Isn\u2019t it possible that what really worries those intent on keeping the POW documents buried is the public disgust that the contents of those files would generate?<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.fourwinds10.net\/resources\/uploads\/images\/Forrestalfire2.jpg\")
<\/p>\nUSS Forrestal Mishap July 29, 1967<\/u><\/span><\/h1>\n
From: NATIONAL VIETNAM P.O.W. STRIKE FORCE<\/h3>\n
To: CBS News, 10\/12\/97<\/h3>\n
You did not do your homework well enough on \u201cHanoi John\u201d McCain. If you had read the lengthy article about him in the April 1973 issue of\u00a0U.S. News and World Report<\/i>, you would have seen that in none of his quotes did he allege torture, except from the irate civilians at the scene of his crash. Once in captivity, he lived in relative splendor compared to his hapless cohorts who refused to denounce America on the radio and paid for their patriotism in blood, literally. Here are some other facts your sloppy journalism omitted:<\/h4>\n
(1) USAF Major Overly could not have cared for McCain\u2019s \u201cwounds\u201d for very long; he collaborated and accepted early release in less than five months from shootdown.<\/h4>\n
(2) Another of McCain\u2019s roommates \u201cdisappeared\u201d and was not released at Homecoming I. McCain was kept in the camp for \u201cprogressives\u201d (collaborators) and away from \u201creactionaries\u201d (John Wayne types who spit in the face of their torturers). Other roommates were Day and Flynn, both of whom made propaganda broadcasts along with McCain urging pilots to return to carriers and soldiers to surrender.<\/h4>\n
(3) McCain returned from communist captivity 10 pounds heavier.<\/h4>\n
(4) Patricia O\u2019Grady, daughter of a POW\/MIA, on a visit to Hanoi to look for her father, was given a tour of the \u201cHanoi Hilton\u201d prison. They showed her McCain\u2019s cell. It had a writing desk, a large bed, a goldfish bowl, a flush toilet and a nice window of downtown Hanoi out the window.<\/h4>\n
(5) Both North Vietnamese Generals Giap and Bui Tin met with McCain in his cell. No other returned POWs reported meeting with high-ranking generals. I have a picture of McCain enjoying a large plate of food while talking to a Soviet KGB officer in the Foreign Ministry. A Soviet doctor was rushed to Hanoi to treat his wounds.<\/h4>\n
(6) In personal conversations I have had with General Bui Tin, he assured me they never touched McCain, saying that since he was the son of the CINCPACFLT Admiral, \u201cHe too important\u201d.<\/h4>\n
(7) McCain said in 1973, he sustained his ordeal with his \u201clove for his wife\u201d. In a matter of months he had dumped her for a woman 1\/3rd his age whose father owned the Coors Beer franchise in Phoenix. (His good friend Senator Kerry, about the same time, dumped his wife after fornicating with Jane Fonda.) McCain also has a secret \u201cwife\u201d in Hanoi and an illegitimate son.<\/h4>\n
(8) McCain would sit beside with army officers at a table when newly-captured pilots arrived and urged them to cooperate.<\/h4>\n
(9) McCain viciously fought against the formation of the Senate Select Committee on POW\/MIA and then got on it and sabotaged any hopes of finding real answers. He called me and others crooks profiteering on the issue, yet he is the biggest loot recipient of the Keating Five.<\/h4>\n
(10) If the \u201cCrowned Prince\u201d of the \u201cPlantation\u201d does not stop his outlandish lies about his \u201ctorture\u201d, several of his fellow POW\u2019s \u201cwill\u201d soon break their \u201ccode of silence\u201d. McCain is a brainwashed Manchurian candidate who has fawningly supported Hanoi and the Communist Bloc countries ever since he entered congress. The man is a liar, a traitor and a crook. Any senator who uses the word \u201cscumbag\u201d 20 times a day addressing his employees is not fit to serve.<\/h4>\n
Also, CBS, you went on to a segment of a Latino who was on death row (wrongfully) in a \u201cmiscarriage of justice\u201d. The biggest \u201cMOJ\u201d of this decade would be for traitor and Hanoi lover McCain to continue in office after the 1998 elections.<\/h4>\n
Joe L. Jordan<\/h4>\n
USN Squadron VQ-1<\/h4>\n
Da Nang 1967-68<\/h4>\n
National Vietnam P.O.W. Strike Force<\/h4>\n
P.S. McCain is the only returned POW NEVER TO BE DEBRIEFED.<\/h4>\n
***<\/div>\n\n\n
\n<\/div>\nJohn McCain: Traitor<\/h3>\n
Forbidden Knowledge TV<\/h3>\n
\nMcCain and the POW Cover-Up<\/strong><\/div>\n