Frontpagemag Editors’ note: Yesterday, on Thursday, April 9, 2020, our nation solemnly marked National Former Prisoner of War Recognition Day,
during which we honored all American prisoners of war and expressed our
deep gratitude and respect for what they endured and -- as empirical
evidence suggests -- in some cases may very well be continuing to
endure.
Indeed, we pay tribute to those who never returned -- and, of
course, also to their suffering families. In honor of this sacred day, Frontpage has deemed it important to run Jamie Glazov's Symposium Why We Left Our POWs Behind.
Four distinguished experts tell a tragic and unconscionable inside
story. We hope that our leadership and citizens will take serious action
on this issue. We will always remember and we will never forget.
*
Symposium: Why We Left Our POWs Behind.
Four distinguished experts tell the tragic and unconscionable inside story.
By Jamie
Glazov
In this special edition of
Frontpage
Symposium, we have assembled a panel of four distinguished guests to
reveal the tragic truth about what really happened to our POWs. Our
guests today are:
Dr. Joseph Douglass, an investigator who has been
engaged mainly in learning what happened to thousands who were left
behind in the hands of various Communist captors. His work led to the
identification of the one former Communist official who was personally
involved in the efforts to capture American soldiers and what their
captors did to them and correlating this with other information. He is
the author of the book
Betrayed, a comprehensive account of the abandonment of American POWs and their subsequent betrayal by the U.S. government.
Jay Veith, the author of
Code-Name Bright Light: The Untold Story of U.S. POW Rescue Efforts During the Vietnam War.
He has appeared on Fox News and other radio and TV stations, and
testified twice on the POW/MIA issue before the U.S. House of
Representatives. He has been invited to speak at the American Legion
National Conference, the National League of POW/MIA Families and
National Alliance of Families annual meetings, and many other venues.
His latest book,
Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-75, will be published in November 2011 by Encounter Books.
Michael D. Benge,
a former POW in North Vietnam (1968-1973). He is now a board member of
the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Missing
Servicemen and Women WWII - Korean - Cold War - Vietnam War - Persian
Gulf. The organization is having its annual meeting on July 21-23, 2001
at the Holiday Inn National Airport, Washington, DC.
and
Bill Dumas, a filmmaker in Los Angeles and former Fellow at the American Film Institute. He is the producer of
Missing, Presumed Dead: The Search For America's POWs.
FP: Dr. Joseph Douglass, Jay
Veith, Michael D.
Benge and Bill Dumas, welcome to
Frontpage Symposium.
Jay
Veith, let’s begin with you.
What is the best way to start a panel discussion on America’s
missing POWs? Share with us your expertise on this issue and what your
research has led you to discover.
Veith: I
think there are several threads one must review concurrently to
understand this tragedy. First, what do we know of Communist policy
regarding POWs? Were they trying to exploit them for propaganda or other
security related areas? If so, what does that mean for post-war
releases or non-releases? Second, what evidence do we have for the
Communist's withholding American POWs after the end of various
conflicts? Lastly, how cooperative have these Communist governments been
over the years in providing answers about our missing men? I think that
if one looks at this great mystery from those perspectives, i.e.,
motive, evidence, and lack of cooperation, one is led to the conclusion
that American POWs have been secretly held back by different regimes for
different purposes. One can get lost in a maze trying to unravel what
happened to various individuals, but if you step back and look at the
whole picture, I think a clear outline emerges of a deliberate policy to
hold back prisoners. I'm curious what my colleagues think.
FP: Bill Dumas, how would you begin to approach the pertinent questions Jay
Veith raises?
Dumas: These are three key points that Jay raises.
The question is, on what stage does this discussion take place? As Joe
Douglass states in my documentary film, our government doesn't
acknowledge leaving POWs behind, therefore there's nothing to look for
(nothing to talk about.) It's remarkable that so few of our legislators
know so little (if anything) about the POW/MIA issue. And when they
become informed and sincerely try to investigate the situation they
almost always hit a wall and drop their pursuit. That "wall" is usually
the Pentagon's
DPMO (Defense Department POW/Missing Personnel Office.)
DPMO has two main functions. One is the recovery of remains mostly in SE Asia and North Korea. Many dedicated individuals at
DPMO do a great job in that capacity. The other function of
DPMO (performed by what could be referred to as the "shadow
DPMO" - the long-term bureaucrats who handhold the revolving door, Presidentially appointed
DASDs
[Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense] who operate as figureheads of
the office.) Their mission is to ensure the American public (and maybe
more so, the currently serving military personnel) that we do not leave
soldiers behind.
Last year I received an email from Ron Paul asking if I would talk
to Congressman Walter Jones of North Carolina (I was a senior staffer
for the Ron Paul 2008 Presidential campaign and I inspired Ron to talk
about POW/
MIAs in several campaign rally speeches). Rep. Jones had just learned that POW/
MIAs
were abandoned in SE Asia and N. Korea. He was outraged and was intent
on getting to the bottom this issue. We had a long phone conversation
and I gave him the Reader's Digest version of the POW/MIA story. Rep.
Jones went to lengths assuring me that he is the kind of person that
will not back off of an issue he commits himself to. He said that
absolutely he would do what he had to do to resolve this enormous
national tragedy.
Knowing that Rep. Jones would be contacting
DPMO for the official government position on the status of our POW/
MIAs
(i.e. "There are none except those who died on the battlefield.") I
wrote an email to Rep. Jones giving him a primer on the function of
DPMO
and the reasons to be cautious of their PR narrative. I also sent him
supporting documents, my documentary film DVD and a document I wrote a
while back titled, "Korean War POW/MIA Peace Treaty Initiative" which
proposes that no peace treaty be signed with North Korea before the
POW/MIA issue is negotiated and resolved (this was the main unresolved
issue that prevented a peace treaty from being signed in 1953). I also
told him it was imperative that H. Res. 111 be brought to the floor for a
vote, which if passed, would create a House select committee to
investigate the POW/MIA issue. Hopefully a House Select Committee would
complete the job that the Senate Select Committee in the early
1990s
refused to do but instead skimmed over the evidence and swept it back
under the carpet. And by the way, many were able to blame Nancy Pelosi
for not bringing this bill to the floor for a vote even though the bill
continues to acquire over 260 co-sponsors year after year. But why is
John Boehner following in her footsteps?
Rep. Jones said we would talk again on the phone after he reviewed
all the materials I was sending. That was over a year ago. I never
heard back from Rep. Jones. I finally wrote him a long letter asking
for an explanation of his abandoning his investigation and I had Ron
Paul hand deliver the letter to him. Still I received no response. The
only word I received from Rep. Jones' office was copy of a letter he
authored that was sent to David
Gompert, Acting Director of National Intelligence, requesting the declassification of all documents pertaining to POW/
MIAs. The letter was also signed by Ron Paul, Dennis
Kucinich and Jim McGovern.
That letter was dated June 23, 2010. I never heard anything more about the letter or any response from David
Gompert.
The nagging question for me is, what is the mechanism that
completely shuts down any attempt by our legislators to take up the
POW/MIA issue? What does
DPMO
say to inquiring Congressional leaders that stops them in their tracks?
And not just legislators but also top-tiered journalists excited to
find such a potentially explosive story. I've seen this scenario
repeated over and over to the same end.
So, back to Jay's points. These are critical issues in beginning
the dialogue that will hopefully resolve the POW/MIA dilemma.
Unfortunately, what we have is more of a monologue than a dialogue. We
know the issues, we have the evidence and documentation. But we don't
have the government participants for a dialogue.
I'd like to throw that ball to Dr. Douglass who also stated in the documentary that any solution to finding abandoned POW/
MIAs
would have to happen outside of government. (Perhaps later we can talk
about private missions underway today in the search for POW/
MIAs - without jeopardizing those operations - at least the legitimate ones.)
I have had encouraging dialogue with Sen. Dick Lugar's staff as has
my uncle Bob Dumas whose brother was last seen alive in N. Korea when
the war ended but never came home. Last week I received a statement
written by Lugar and read at the Korean War Memorial in Washington, DC
by foreign relations staffer Keith
Luse. It called on North Korea to account for POW/
MIAs including live POW/
MIAs.
It's very rare to hear any government official even imply the
possibility there is a live POW/MIA being held anywhere in the world.
Lastly, yesterday in the LA Times Sen. John Kerry called for direct
negotiations with the North Koreans and they should start with the
recovery of POW/
MIAs
remains. There seemed to be a hint of including the issue of live
POWs, though you'd be hard pressed to make that argument. This position
by Kerry is rather ironic since he was such an obstacle in the Senate
select committee hearings on POW/
MIAs that he chaired in the early
1990s.
During those hearings Bob Dumas testified that the only way to
communicate with the North Koreans is through one-on-one dialogue on the
Executive level. He should know, he's probably had more conversations
with the North Korean ambassadors to the
DPRK
U.N. Mission than any other American. And now, twenty years later our
government may be starting to understand how to communicate with the
North Koreans.
Benge: It’s unfortunate that so many nations don’t play by the Marcus of
Queensbury
rules or those of the Geneva Convention on POWs. There are too many
nations which in the first place socially/culturally have little regard
for human life in the first place, and then this inhumanity is
compounded by the brutality of political regimes such as Nazism,
communism, and
jihadism
and then superimposed upon this societal weakness. Then to add fuel to
the fire you have individual vindictiveness with the desire to make
people suffer even more by seeking revenge for some perceived wrong
against themselves, their people or their country.
To further compound the problem, in past conflicts/wars much of the
time, the US has not been the clear winner, leaving us with little or no
bargaining power. Although the US and its allies won the war against
the Germans in WWII, we capitulated to the Russians regarding the US and
Allied POWs that were captured by the Germans and recaptured by the
Russians in their sector of operations. There was/is little bargaining
power with the Koreans/China on recovering POWs because that war was a
stalemate. Regarding the Vietnam War, although the US pretty well won
it militarily, we lost it politically; therefore, we were in a very weak
position to bargain further for our POWs, and the politicians again
sold out the POWs and basically sent the message to the Communist
Vietnamese that the U.S. government was pretty well satisfied with what
we got. After all, weren’t the POWs just expendable, since none of
them were sons of major politicians? Few could care less (e.g.,
Eisenhower’s decision regarding American POWs captured in Germany by the
Russians). We have the
DPMO
(The Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office) on record that
they will not ask the North Koreans about live POWs, since their mission
is a humanitarian one for the recovery of remains.
While I was a POW, the
NVA
repeatedly told me that they were going to hold some of us forever and
someday try us in a Nuremberg-like trial for our war crimes. Did I
believe the vindictive bastards? “You
betchum Red Rider.” After I was released, I was told that my name did not appear on the first couple of
NVA
lists of POWs at the Paris conference. Do I believe POWs were left
behind. “Yes.” Are some still alive? Chances are, yes. How many? Who
knows, for DOD has told so many lies about the number of
MIAs/POWs. Are they being held in Vietnam? I do not believe so. More probable they are being held in
NVA-held territory in Laos, to give Hanoi plausible deniability. However, I can assure you they aren’t being held in Billy
Hendon’s
so-called underground prison in Hanoi. The facility he is talking
about is the standard issue for all communist and fascist regimes that
are aided by Russia in the form of a deep hardened bunker for the top
Echlon of communist governments, such as the one for Saddam Hussein’s in Iraq.
DOD is not looking for POWs, only remains, and many of their staff were/are enablers who provided cover for the
NVA,
and should never have received security clearances for those
positions. After Bill Bell testified on live POWs at the Kerry/McCain
charade, he was fired from his position as head of the POW/MIA office in
Hanoi. Bill tried to get funds to buy information and photographs on
POW/
MIAs, on the cheap, but DOD wouldn’t give him any. Rather,
DIA collaborated with the
NVA to write the book “Inside Hanoi’s Archives” and much of what was in it Bill could have bought “on the street.”
There were a bunch of snakes, posing as investigators, working for
DOD on the POW/MIA issue both in Washington and in Hanoi. Several of
them quit and received high paying jobs in Hanoi working for American
companies in Hanoi, such as Caterpillar and GE, when it was illegal for
them to do business in Hanoi. Another one was married to a North
Vietnamese “honey pot,” who’s sister (I believe) was married to a French
defector who worked for the Bureau for Enemy
Proslitization
that was in charge of POWs. Another evaluated the “Cuban Program” in
which a number of American POWs were severely tortured by the Cubans,
and said it was just an English Language instruction program that had
gone awry. Then you have the liars Kerry, McCain and Pete Peterson
(former POW and US Ambassador to Hanoi), who repeatedly testified and
stated that Hanoi was fully cooperating on resolving the POW/MIA issue.
To this day,
DPMO’s investigators have never gotten the records of, nor access to, the archives of the Bureau for Enemy
Proslitization.
Gentlemen, it’s a stacked deck.
Douglass: “Stacked deck” is a good way to describe the problem.
There has been a national policy going back to the
1920s to hide the crimes of the Communists, especially Russian Communists. One of the best statements of this is found in the
Black Book of Communism (Harvard
University Press 1997). This was a book based on the investigation of
half a dozen French academics, all former Communists or close fellow
travelers. As stated by the lead editor,
Stephane Courtois, in the introductory chapter:
The extraordinary attention paid to Hitler’s crimes is entirely
justified. It respects the wishes of the surviving witnesses, it
satisfies the needs of researchers trying to understand these events,
and it reflects the desire of moral and political authorities to
strengthen democratic values. But the revelations concerning Communist
crimes cause barely a stir. Why is there such an awkward silence from
politicians? Why such a deafening silence from the academic world
regarding the Communist catastrophe, which touched the lives of about
one-third of humanity on four continents during a period spanning eighty
years?[i]
To better understand what lies behind the cover-up, consider what is
implicit in the silence of politicians and academics. When the
politicians are silent, there is a reason. They know that speaking out
will not bring them good press and, indeed, may signal the end of their
careers. Just consider what has happened to the careers of those whom
the news media labeled “anti-Communist.” Similarly, when the academics
are not addressing an issue of such a magnitude, there is also a reason.
In this case, there are several reasons; to wit, major foundations that
sponsor their research – for example, the Ford, Rockefeller, and
Carnegie foundations – are not funding anti-Communist research,
main-stream publishers are not publishing anti-Communist works, and the
news media are not reviewing the books nor promoting the issue.
Additionally, silence is only one of the problems, equally in use to
hide the crimes are lies, deception, burying data, and simple denial,
as demonstrated in the efforts of CIA officials in the
1970s and
1980s to kill consideration of the Soviet role in organizing and supporting international terrorism.
Another example of this policy was White House directives not to
confront the Russians respecting the missing American prisoners of war
during and following World War II. The policy stated that with respect
to Americans liberated from German prison camps by the Russians, there
would be “no criticism of treatment by the Russians.”
[ii] This was followed by a direction on April 1 that there would be no retaliatory action to Russian failure to cooperate.
[iii]
None of these were spur-of-the-moment decisions. The United States and
British had known at least since October 1944 that the Russians were
most unlikely to turn over more than a token number of American
prisoners of war.
[iv]
As described in
Moscow Bound[v] and
Soldiers of Misfortune[vi],
the moment of truth came only weeks after V-E day when American,
British, and Soviet negotiators met at Halle, Germany, to negotiate the
prisoner of war problem. The conference ended on May 22. The Americans
were permitted to visit the POW camp at
Reisa.
Permission to visit four other German POW camps where Americans were
held was rescinded the next day. Only 4,165 American prisoners, all from
Reisa, were released out of 25,000.
What took place afterwards is succinctly described in
Soldiers of Misfortune
as follows: “After the Halle exchange ended, the United States and
Britain knew that documents must be manufactured to downgrade the
numbers. They had to provide a plausible explanation that would stand
the test of time and permanently bury the 23,500 Americans and 31,000
British non-returnees.”
[vii] These are directives signed first by President Roosevelt, and later by President Harry Truman.
Lower level directives have been identified from the Korean War and
from President Nixon following the Vietnam War when he stated that all
our POWs had been returned, although this was clearly known to not be
the case.
Following the “end” of the Cold War in 1989-1991, U.S. policy as explained by Robert Gates in an interview with Robert
Buchar in
Reality be Damned.
The U.S., in coordination with talks with First Secretary Gorbachev,
agreed to remain silent and “not get involved” in the Soviet Union to
Russia transition, because they (U.S. leaders Bush, Gates, and Rice) did
not want to risk upsetting the transition to a “democratic” Russia. To
further cement-in this policy, the head of the CIA’s Operations
Directorate was directed to close down listening posts, safe houses, and
associated intelligence collection directed against the former Soviet
Union and related Eastern European satellites. Likewise, the FBI removed
1000 of its agents from their tasks in watching the Soviet Union and
reassigned them to the ever present street crime task. The fight against
Communism and its history of crimes came to a swift and quiet end.
What was also killed in the process was work underway to expose a
myriad of covert Russian intelligence operations to attack and destroy
the U.S. during the Cold War, or perhaps more realistically, under cover
of the Cold War. These attacks were designed to destroy the U.S. from
within, via numerous mechanisms such as narcotics trafficking, organized
crime, terrorism, and a wide array of various attacks that, in effect,
constituted a broad-base Cultural War designed to undermine from the
inside American strengths such as our industries, religious beliefs,
education, unions, law& order, and political processes to facilitate
the growth of corruption, crime, and compromise within the U.S.,
including within the leadership elite. Major propaganda offensives were
unleashed in parallel to mask the source of these activities and
seriousness of their growth, which has continued following the so-called
“end of the Cold War.”
Why there was a special effort to “help” the POW/MIA issue die a
slow death was the underlying magnitude of the issue – thousands of
American
GIs an officers
knowingly left behind and
the truth of what happened to them,
which was their valuable use as human guinea pigs to the Russian and
Chinese intelligence services to test ability of U.S. soldiers to
withstand the rigors of nuclear war (which involved extensive physical
and mental torture), to test the effectiveness of new chemical and
biological warfare agents on U.S. soldiers, to train hundreds of trained
agents to insert back in the U.S., and to learn more about the effects
of atomic radiation on the human body and exposing scores of Americans
to actual atomic boom effects. How could anyone associated with such
knowledge not undertake whatever was required to bury such horrible
information? All such knowledge had to be suppressed.
FP: Thank you Joe Douglass.
In this last round I would like our guests to comment on the
contributions of the others, to give some more evidence of what they
know about our missing POWs and, finally, to tell us what, if anything,
can still be done – and what those who want to make a change can do.
Veith: My
fellow contributors all make valuable points. I've always focused more
on the perpetrators, i.e., the Communist governments, rather than on the
enablers, i.e., the United States government bureaucracy and elected
officials. After so many years in this issue, I agree with my old friend
Dr. Douglass that the best option for uncovering the truth lies in
private missions. Despite the great opportunity for fraud inherent in
such operations, if you think about it, most of the stunning POW/MIA
revelations of the last twenty years have come from private
investigators. Think of the 1205 document and many others. Bob Dumas'
long search for his brother, and his attempts at interaction with North
Korean officials, are also commendable and quite frankly, awe-inspiring.
I also agree that not only is the deck stacked, but would propose
that since the Senate Select Committee, interest in the POW/MIA issue
has dramatically dropped. How then, to revive it? It seems to me that
well-defined, on-going research that produces documented evidence of
these crimes is one way. Perhaps HR 111, if finally enacted, might be
another. I had great hopes that the
JCSD
(Joint Commission Support Directorate, the section that searches for
evidence that American POWs were taken to the Soviet Union) might
uncover evidence in Russian archives, but the
DPMO
(Defense Prisoner Missing Personnel Office) managed to derail that
effort. Perhaps my fellow contributors are unaware that the new head at
the Defense Prisoner Missing Personnel Office, Robert Newberry, recently
defunded what was becoming a promising inquiry by
JCSD
within Ukrainian military archives. Moreover, the US government just
spent several million dollars on a new software system to help
facilitate information sharing between the
JPAC
(Joint Prisoner/Missing Accounting Command, the unit based in Hawaii
that conducts the investigations and crash site investigations), and
DPMO, a project that simply boggles my mind.
Lastly, in terms of private efforts, there are several organizations dedicated to locating and helping
JPAC
recover crashed aircraft, mostly of the WWII variety. Moore's
Marauders, Bent Prop, and a few others are doing work in this area. I
also know of several people doing research on Korea and elsewhere, but
they are lone individuals doing it on their own time and money. Perhaps
what is needed is for someone to attempt to bring everyone together to
share research and knowledge.
FP: Jay
Veith, what is the 1205 document?
Veith: The
1205 document was a report discovered in the Russian archives shortly
after the Soviet Union disintegrated. The report, ostensibly by a North
Vietnamese general named Tran Van
Quang
to the Politburo, claimed that they held 1205 American prisoners. This
was far greater than was generally acknowledged at the time, and far
more than was released in 1973.
FP: Bill Dumas, your final comments? And tell us
why something like 1205 document isn’t a huge story -- an undying huge
story -- throughout our media and literary culture, which it should be.
Dumas: It's difficult to understand why the
discovery of the 1205 document doesn't make the day's top story in the
media. When we talk about our free press, those of us working on issues
that are stamped "conspiracy theory" understand that we have a limited
free press, something I wouldn't have believed when I received my BA in
journalism in the late '
70s.
When we engage in a discussion about the media suppression of the POW/MIA issue we inevitably point fingers at the
CFR
(Counsel on Foreign Relations) as an explanation of the kind of an
all-encompassing entity that can actually control the fourth estate.
Most journalists would discount this censorship notion even as their
stories (should they happen upon a forbidden subject such as POW/
MIAs) are squelched by their editor/publishers.
During the 2008 presidential campaign Pulitzer Prize journalist, Sydney
Schanberg
(who exposed the "Killing Fields" massacre in Cambodia) could not get
his expose of John McCain published in any of the major dailies.
Finally, "The Nation" printed the story. And when that issue hit the
stands, the POW/MIA issue should have been thrust front and center in
the media. Instead McCain's betrayal of our POW/
MIAs registered not even a blip on the political news radar.
Had this been an isolated incident it could somehow have been
explained away (i.e. McCain's military record as sacred cow) but the
fact that it happens over and over again points to a conspiracy that is
beyond "theory."
Jay brought up some disturbing information about policy changes at the Defense Prisoner Missing Personnel Office (
DPMO),
under new director Robert Newberry. When Newberry was first appointed
by Obama I spoke with him about my Korean War POW/MIA Peace Treaty
Initiative. He was very supportive of the idea. Here is the email he
sent me after he reviewed the initiative:
Thanks Bill,
This looks like a good initiative and it certainly makes
sense. We should most assuredly learn from the past. Let me review it
more thoroughly with my staff and I will get back to you. I added Ed Frothingham to this e-mail, he is my Principal Director.
Thanks again,
Newbs
I knew once his handlers got a hold of the Initiative, Newberry
would have to backpedal and make sure the Initiative didn’t see the
light of day. Here’s his follow-up response. And look how fast they
instituted “damage control.” Nothing happens that fast in that office.
Bill,
I appreciated the opportunity to read your draft. We would
offer one recommendation. The issue you raise was also evident in the
peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese from 1968 to 1973. The part
that POWs and MIAs
played in the negotiations was examined by the Senate Select Committee
on POW/MIA Affairs and there is a good account of it in pages 6- 14 of
the Executive Summary of the Committees report (Senate Report 103-1,
January 13, 1993). The Summary may provide information useful for your
initiative.
That said, as part of the Department of Defense, we are not
in a position to endorse or co-sponsor your initiative. I personally do
want to assure you of the importance the Department attaches to the
accounting for our missing personnel and your efforts to assist.
Newbs
This is such a pile of useless, political-ease nonsense. My
documentary film is partly about the travesty that was the Senate Select
Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. He said he watched the film. How, with a
straight face, can he suggest I look at the Select Committee report?
A few years back I met with Newberry's predecessor, Ambassador
Charles Ray. We had a a face-to-face meeting for over an hour and a
half. Again, like Newberry, his initial response was favorable pending
review by his "staff". And again that's when it got shut down.
His final word on the matter was to speak with Congress about it because that's where
DPMO
gets their marching orders. Of course when you go to Congress, our
legislators first start looking into the issue by inquiring at
DPMO. And what they're told by
DPMO is that they have no evidence of live POW/
MIAs. So essentially,
DPMO
stops any possibility of ever getting marching orders from Congress.
And so the revolving door continues to spin insuring no further action
on the matter.
Right now my only hope within government rides with Sen. Lugar's
office because right now they at least seem to be skeptical of what
DPMO is telling them.
For a private initiative on the Korean War front, maybe some
"journalist" will walk into North Korea, get captured and one of our
former presidents will run over there on a rescue mission. And maybe
that "journalist" could say, "I'm not leaving without our POWs." Then
see our red-faced former president save face.
FP: Thank you Bill Dumas. Tell us how McCain betrayed our POW/
MIAs.
Dumas: McCain was intent of being the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs in the early
90s.
Bob Dole thought better of that prospect and wisely chose Sen. Bob
Smith who as one of only a few Senators on the committee who
wholeheartedly worked to bring all the evidence of abandoned POWs into
the open to conduct a full investigation.
As Sen. Smith would later say, "We never finished the job" and the
committee was disbanded a year after it began its work. Only one day of
the hearings focused on the Korean War. (Since one of the Clinton
administration's top priorities was to normalize relations with Vietnam,
the POW panel needed to go away. Also, co-chair, Sen. John Kerry's
wife's family landed the largest ever real estate deal with Vietnam
shortly after the hearings ended - see Sydney
Schanberg's revealing story in The Village Voice during the 2004 presidential campaign).
It was clear to all the POW/MIA advocates and investigators that
John McCain was more of an obstacle to the process which seemed an odd
contradiction since he was a POW in Vietnam. McCain would essentially
tell witnesses like retired Col. Phillip
Corso, who was President Eisenhower's POW/MIA liaison during the Korean War, that he was lying when he said the President (on
Corso's
recommendation) decided to abandon American POWs who were transferred
to the Soviet gulags (possibly over 1200 POWs and at least 800.) McCain
based his accusation that
Corso
was wrong about that assertion solely based on McCain's feeling that
"Eisenhower wouldn't do that." (Ironically, during the Senate hearings,
McCain treated his North Vietnamese POW camp interrogator like he was
his best friend and gave him a hug after his testimony. And then
brought the sister of an American MIA pilot to tears with his brutal and
insulting questioning of her before the panel.)
Aside from McCain's despicable treatment of POW/MIA family members
and advocates, he was able to use a stealth tactic to slip though an
amendment to a Senate bill that would keep millions of government
records pertaining to POW/
MIAs
classified. And this was at the same time that Sen. Smith and others
were attempting to declassify these documents to help in the research of
abandoned POWs. Clearly there are no national security concerns in
keeping these documents classified.
McCain benefited directly from his actions because his stealth bill
would insure that his POW records would never be declassified even after
he and all his next of kin are no longer alive. The question is, why
would McCain go to such extreme lengths to keep his records classified?
Could it be that the records reveal an alternate version of the
carefully crafted and exploited "war hero" story that McCain has
meticulously cultivated. As an aside, it should be noted that before
McCain served in Vietnam his top ambition was to be President of the
United States.
For details about McCain's "betrayal" of POW/MIA go to:
McCainBetraysPOWs.com.
Benge:
I agree with all of the contributors' statements and have little more
to say except perhaps a couple of things related to the 1205 document
mentioned by Jay. I wrote an article,
POW/MIAs: Don't Ask, Don't Tell for publication in the Washington Times a little after Bill
Gertz's article
State Department accused of stifling POW-MIA Probe was published on 1/12/99. In it, I mentioned the failure of
DPMO Russian division to investigate a case I reported (based on an
FBIS
report and an article in Pravda) regarding US Army Sergeant Jim Patrick
captured at the at the Elbe River in Germany in May of 1945.
After the discovery of the 1205 document, a Russian archivist stated
that there were a larger number of similar documents in the archives;
however, the Americans weren't interested in them. The Russian
archivist was immediately "silenced." A Russian parliamentarian stated
that during a meeting in Moscow last month (probably December 98) "...we
were told by your government, your State Department, not to pursue
these issues." In June 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin arriving in
the US made a stunning revelation on Dateline NBC that American POWs
had been taken to the Soviet Union: "Our archives have shown this to be
true." Immediately the
UAG launched a concert effort to debunk
Yelsin,
first the Administration claimed that Dateline had translated Yeltsin's
remarks incorrectly. After the translation was verified, Yeltsin was
then accused of having drunk too much Vodka and had misspoke. He too
was silenced. A former member of the US-Russian Joint Commission on
POW/
MIAs told
me that after Yeltsin returned to Russia, a cable was sent by DOD/State
warning him that further revelations on POWs could jeopardize aid to
Russia.
Later, KGB Major General
Oleg Kalugin,
a classic spy master and Soviet disinformation officer (control officer
for the honey pot scandal in the State Department), stated several
times, once on Australian TV, that he had "interviewed" a rather large
number of American POWs in Hanoi after 1975. For his silence, he was
given a green card and now owns half-interest in the spy museum in DC.
And the band plays on.
FP: This is very depressing.
Joe Douglas, last word goes to you.
Douglass: One of the characteristics a reader will
find in the POW/MIA non-fiction literature (now 25 to 30 books, several
documentaries, and numerous
op-ed
pieces) is a noticeable common belief reached by dozens of independent
researchers. This belief is also present in the above discussion and is
reflected the cry of “Foul!” in their analyses of the U.S. government’s
handling of this issue and the no-nonsense charges of “cover-up” and
thousands of missing POW/
MIAs
who were knowingly left behind. This cry is accompanied by a
tremendous number of high-quality facts. What is also clear is the
gradual emergence of additional facts, rarely given any “presence” in
the press or government announcements, respecting these American
soldiers who were knowingly left behind.
Sooner or later, with luck and unwitting publicity, some survivors
may emerge and gain the publicity they deserve. Should this take place,
as has already been the case in select cases, it will not be accompanied
by any positive media exposure because of what they tell us about both
our government and the Soviet’s and Russian’s government. Those who
returned have been threatened and told to keep quiet, and discredited by
a number of official professional Washington actors.
Thus, in their absence—and presence even more so should some more
return—those whose curiosity has been set in motion are invited to
carefully read one of the best eye-opening examples of what one
well-placed insider within the U.S. government had to say in writing in
his resignations about our governments duplicity. I refer to the
well-decorated former Army Green Beret solder, Col. Millard Peck, who
also volunteered to head the Defense Intelligence Agency POW-MIA office
that was responsible for actions respecting the missing POW/
MIAs. After two years he quit in disgust. His resignation is available on the Internet and in a Senate Republican Staff report,
An Examination of U.S. Policy Toward POW/MIAs, and as an appendix in my book,
Betrayed. This
Senate report, short and to the point, another government first, was
widely distributed by Senator Helms’ staff beginning on May 23,1991,
ultimately 120,000 copies. It was not long before those “in charge” got
to Helms, who then fired all those responsible. This short report is
what forced the formation of a Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA
Affairs in 1992, to learn the truth (that is, bury the issue for good).
Also, for those who are interested in what the highest positioned
Communist defector ever knew first-hand about what happened to a major
portion of the American POW/
MIAs who never returned, and why the US Government tried to silence and discredit this defector, his story is presented in full in
Betrayed and in several articles readily available on the Internet (See, for example, “
Remembering Those We Left Behind”),
including a detailed report submitted to the House Armed Forces
Personnel Subcommittee in testimony given under oath by the above key
Communist official, Col. Phil
Corso, and myself in September 1996.
But, beware. None of the books,
op-ed
pieces, and articles that tell the truth (rather than try to deny what
happened or bury the truth) are easy reading because of the horrendous
message they tell about our government’s propaganda: that none of our
military men were knowingly left behind—alive! They all tell the story
of betrayal. The trail of finding the truth starts with the following
legacy accumulated by 2002:
Larry J.
O’Daniel:
Missing In Action: Trail of Deceit (1979).
Bill Paul: “Robert
Garwood Says Vietnam Didn’t Return Some American POWs” and numerous other
Wall Street Journal articles (1984-1991).
Monica Jensen-Stevenson:
60 Minutes, “Dead or Alive” (1985).
Ted
Landreth: We
Can Keep You Forever Video (1987) Distribution in the U.S. blocked by the White House.
John M. G. Brown and Thomas G. Ashworth:
A Chain of Prisoners: From Yalta to Vietnam (1988)
.
Monica Jensen-Stevenson and William Stevenson:
Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POWs in Vietnam (1990).
Foreign Relations Republican Staff, U.S. Senate Committee:
An Examination of U.S. Policy Toward POW/MIAs (1991).
Nigel
Cawthorne:
The Bamboo Cage: The Full Story of the American Servicemen still held hostage in South-East Asia (1991).
Dorothy McDaniel:
After the Hero’s Welcome: A POW Wife’s Story of the Battle Against a New Enemy (1991).
Ted
Landreth:
Missing in Action: The Soviet Connection Australian
60 Minutes Video (1991-1992).
Red McDaniel (American Defense Institute):
Americans Abandoned Video (1992).
Sydney H.
Schanberg: Numerous
Newsday articles (1991-1993)
James D. Sanders, Mark A.
Sauter, and
Cort Kirkwood:
Soldiers of Misfortune: Washingon’s Secret Betrayal of American POWs in the Soviet Union (1992).
John M. G. Brown:
Moscow Bound: Policy, Politics and the POW/MIA Dilemma (1993).
Mark
Sauter and Jim Sanders:
The Men We Left Behind: Henry Kissinger, the Politics of Deceit and the Tragic Fate of POWs After the Vietnam War (1993).
Laurence
Jolidon:
Last Seen Alive: The Search for Missing POWs from the Korean War (1995).
Craig Roberts:
The Medusa File, (1997).
Frank Anton:
Why Didn’t You Get Me Out, (1997).
Monika Jensen-Stevenson:
Spite House: The Last Secret of the War in Vietnam (1997).
George J.
Veith:
Code-Name Bright Light (1998).
Timothy N. Castle:
One Day Too Long: Top Secret Site 85 and the Bombing of North Vietnam (1999).
[viii]
Larry
O’Daniel:
Trails of Deceit (2000).
Philip D.
Chinnery:
Korean Atrocity: Forgotten War Crimes 1950-1953 (2000).
Steve E.
Kiba:
The Flag: My Story, Kidnapped by Red China (2002).
And several more added since the above list was compiled, most
notably Bill Dumas' excellent documentary on the Korean War men left
behind.
Unfortunately, this issue and its handling has been an enormous
national disgrace going back to WWII and even WWI. This is message that
all of the discussants above are trying to explain in this virtual town
meeting. Also in common, we all give our thanks to our host Dr. Jamie
Glazov and
Front Page for helping to get this message out.
FP: Thank you Joe Douglass.
Before we depart, Bill Dumas can you kindly give us the link where we can watch your documentary or order it?
Dumas: My documentary film that contains a DVD Extra on McCain is available at
MissingPresumedDead.com The DVD can be purchased there or viewed streaming online at
vimeo.com. Please don't purchase the alternative version of the DVD on Amazon or
Ebay.
These DVDs are the result of a bad distribution deal that flooded the
discount DVD wholesalers and I don't see any revenue from these sales.
The official DVD is a blue cover.
Thank you, Jamie, for making this forum happen to keep alive the fight to find our POW/
MIAs and prevent the repeat of abandoning our soldiers. It was an honor participating in the discussion with Dr. Douglass, Mike
Benge and Jay
Veith.
FP: Thank you Bill Dumas.
We also encourage all of our readers to read Joe Douglass’s article, “
Remembering Those We Left Behind.”
Dr. Joseph Douglass, Jay
Veith, Michael D.
Benge and Bill Dumas, thank you so much for joining
Frontpage Symposium to discuss this tragic and appalling story.
Notes:
[i] Black Book of Communism, emphasis added, pp. 17-18.
[ii] Ibid., p. 204.
[iii] Ibid., p. 205. The
JCS memo that spelled this out was dated 1 April, 1945. As identified in
Soldiers of Misfortune,
Ambassador Harriman advised the Secretary of State only a few weeks
before, “no arguments will induce the Soviets to live up to our
interpretation of the agreement except retaliatory measures which affect
their interests.” p. 57.
[iv]
Secretary of War Henry Stimson noted in a memo the Russian threats not
to turn over American prisoners. This was also clear from the Russian
position that all Russian “citizens” were to be repatriated, which
included all former Russians who had fled Russia and taken up
citizenship in other countries. Roosevelt agreed to this, and only
reluctantly excepted former Russian citizens in the United States after
several top officials complained that it was illegal to turn over those
in the United States. None the less, in November, 1,179 Russians who had
fought against Stalin in the German Army were turned over to a Soviet
ship in Seattle. See
Soldiers of Misfortune, pp. 31-39.
[v] Moscow Bound, op. cit., p. 231-327.
[vi] Soldiers of Misfortune, op. cit., pp. 95-133.
[vii] Ibid, p. 96.
[viii]
Dr. Castle’s book is focused on Site 85 in Laos and its capture. It is
not on the POW/MIA problem in general, but on those missing from Site
85. It is included on this list because what happened at Site 85 fits
the “pattern” and is well researched. It also provides an excellent
characterization of the decision-making process that provides additional
insight into the POW/MIA problem in general.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/symposium-why-we-left-our-pows-behind-frontpagemagcom/
