 |
| Abandoned by our Government |
------------------------------
This is another in our series of Guest Posts
which highlight disclosures of relevance;
[I've supplemented with commentary for clarification]
This [2002] article, by J.D. Douglass, Jr, exposes the issue of American POWs
dating back to World War I, to reveal that most of our captured
soldiers were abandoned and ignored by our government.
 |
Rolling Thunder
Continues to Remind Us |
[I had the pleasure to speak at the XXXIII Rolling Thunder event]
Note: I take special interest in this topic since my Intelligence
operations [1970 - 1990] were heavily focused on identifying and
possibly recovering US POWs; my colleague, Sedgewick D Tourison,
managed the Pentagon's POW/MIA office for many years.
I was captured while I operated in Laos in 1972-73,
but managed to escape; the experience helped me
to later focus on the US POW situation.
From 1984 - 1990, I directed the operations of the newly [1984]
formed Defense Clandestine Service [DCS] to collect intelligence
of direct impact on National Security which could require
a response by the US Military.
A direct mission was the collection and dissemination of actionable
intelligence on the recovery of US POWs, a mission which I pursued
with great frustration as our operational efforts were stymied directly by
the J2 of the Pacific Command [(then MG James Clapper], and by
the Director of DIA [(then) LTG James Williams],
and later by senior Pentagon and White House officials.
The official policy line was -- there are NO US POWs
in captivity in Vietnam [or elsewhere],
even when we presented definitive evidence of the
existence and location of these American prisoners!
________________
Our POWs WERE Abandoned!
Remembering Those We Left Behind
By Joseph D. Douglass Jr.
[Written in 2002]
As we prepare to send tens of thousands of young men into war, it seems only fitting that we honor and remember those left behind in prior wars.
The words of Navy Captain "Red" McDaniel, who survived six years as a POW in North Vietnam, sums up the issue:
"I was prepared to fight, to be wounded, to be captured, and even prepared to die, but I was not prepared to be abandoned."
This story reveals what happened to over 30,000 American servicemen, beginning in WW-I and continuing through the first Gulf War. With the exception of the Gulf War, all were left behind in the hands of Communist regimes, whose brutality exceeded, by any measure, that demonstrated by the Nazis in World War II.
Little has been said by Washington officialdom to acknowledge the men had been left behind, abandoned. An exception to the rule is Senator Herb Kohl, who wrote in 1992:
"[Military] service is based on a belief in, and trust of, their government: that it will train them well, equip them superbly, and do everything it reasonably can to protect them and care for them. It is the credibility of those promises which the POW/MIA issue strains.
"For if, after all, the government does not keep its promises, then why should our soldiers honor their pledge to follow orders, even at the risk of their own lives.
"This Report [Final Report of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs] demonstrates that the government has not kept its promises to those who served in Vietnam. Even more disturbing, is the evidence which suggests - strongly suggests - that that the government failed to keep its promises to those who served in World War II, the Korean War, and the Cold War as well."
What lies behind this embarrassing state of affairs is well-connected treachery and connivance. The directing forces are not easily pin-pointed -
"The issue is being manipulated by unscrupulous people in the Government, or associated with the Government; [they] ...have maintained their distance and remained hidden in the shadows.
"This [POW/MIA] 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.
"From 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 "smoke and mirrors", to stall the issue until it dies a natural death."
In 1920, shortly after WW I, Russia was hit by a devastating famine.
Just prior, the Russians had denied holding American captives. When the Russians asked for food and medical assistance, a sharp U.S. official gave them an offer they could not refuse: release the American prisoners and we will send you food. Russian officials agreed to return the men when the food shipments commenced. We started shipping food, and they released 100 men.
Then, they stopped. No more were released, but the U.S. continued shipping food, ignoring the Russian duplicity. The official position pronounced by the State Department was that no American servicemen were still held captive.
Following the victory in Europe in 1945, both Presidents Roosevelt and Truman sent directives to US commands in Europe that said there would be
"...no criticism of treatment [of American POWs] by the Russians"
and that there would be
"no retaliatory action to Russian failure to cooperate,"
which referred to Russian failure to give the United States access to American POWs in the German POW camps the Russians had captured.
As a result, only the 4,165 American prisoners were released, those from the one camp visited (at Reisa). The remaining 21,000 Americans prisoners in German camps taken over by the Russians were abandoned to the Russians. They were shipped to Russia to lives worse than death. Records were then falsified by US and British intelligence (an equivalent number of British POWs were also abandoned) in an effort to hide what had happened.
 |
| Colonel Corso |
Following the Korean War, Colonel Phil Corso was on Eisenhower's White House staff, in charge of the POW issue. In Senate and House hearings in 1992 and 1996, he explained how Eisenhower made the decision to leave the missing American POWs behind after he, Corso, had explained to Eisenhower that thousands were missing, that US intelligence knew they had been shipped to Russia and China, and that achieving their return would be difficult.
US policy was clear, he explained:
"We couldn't put pressure on the Soviet Union or the satellites, we couldn't - they had our prisoners and we couldn't put pressure on them. That was it. Our policy forbid us from doing it. If you did it, you were disobeying national policy."
In implementing this policy, US executive agencies - State, Intelligence, and Defense - subsequently denied any American POWs were left behind. This is still taking place today [2002].
In 1973, at the time of Operation Homecoming following the end of the Vietnam War, President Nixon was told by Secretary of Defense Laird's point man on the POW issue, Dr. Roger Shields,
"Mr. President, we do have two missing for every man who did come home."
President Nixon said, "Right," and then changed the subject.
US policy stated by the State Department the next day said no American captives remained in Vietnam. Add to this President Nixon's clear statement that all our POWs have been returned.
[NOTE: National Archive records since that event revealed Henry Kissinger's secret [1972] letter to Chou En Lai] advising that the US had no further interest in Southeast Asia and would not interfere with China's expanding influence in the region -- in exchange for opening US-China economic relations]
Vietnam remains a bitter example of our government's failure to honor its commitment to those who served our country. There has never even been a full accounting of those missing. The official numbers of those missing are only about a third of what they should be. Thousands of the missing are not counted, including special operations forces, military deployed in civilian garb, those listed as killed-in-action-body-not-recovered who were not killed but rather captured, intelligence operatives and administrators, State Department and AID employees, civilian contractors, and even many so-called deserters who were missing - not because they deserted but because they were captured as in the case of Bobby Garwood
[Ed NOTE: the US Military went to great lengths to discredit Garwood throughout his absence to ensure he could not testify about the number of unrecovered US POWs].
[Ed NOTE: In 1973, I interrogated a Pathet Lao [PL] prisoner who had served as the Public Relations officer at the the PL headquarters in Xiang Khuang, Laos. In response to our interest in US POWs, he advised that he had visited a special prison camp just south of the PL headquarters and photographed about 13 US prisoners during a visit by a delegation of Italian Communists. He noted that the camp was heavily guarded, and that the US POWs were, as far as he knew, not yet turned over to the North Vietnamese Army.
The IIRs [Intelligence Information Reports I submitted elicited no [repeat NO] response from DIA, DOD, or, the White House. The US Department of State apparently made no effort to consult with the Italian government or Intelligence agency to pursue this information about US POWs as published in Italian communist publications]
Moreover, government efforts to lie about those abandoned, hide information, sweep live sightings of POWs under the rug, and order people who knew what happened to remain silent have been legion and personally experienced and documented by nearly every investigative reporter who became interested in the POW issue.
One by one, these investigators became enraged as they witnessed first hand how the government ran roughshod over honor and principle, and over many of the investigators.
Similarly, there has been no attempt to identify or count those captured during the 40-year Cold War. These missing Americans figures include not only those captured while on missions in or over enemy territory but also hundreds if not thousands of men and women who were abducted in neutral and friendly countries and then drugged and taken away behind the Iron and Bamboo curtains. These captives may number in the thousands, but no one in Washington has cared enough to even try and add up the totals.
In all cases, the official government position, or policy, has been that no men were knowingly left behind and, thus, none will be found. This is why so little has been accomplished in the $100 million per year search for bones, which remains a living example of Colonel Peck's "illusion of progress through hyperactivity."
[NOTE: In 1985, DEA provided my Defense Clandestine Service office with imagery of a rice field in North Vietnam in which the letters USAF had been tramped by foot into the field, most likely by a US POW. I briefed the Deputy Director of DIA and proposed a no-risk operation to investigate the incident and the area further, from which a recovery plan could be created; the Deputy Director dismissed the report and our proposed operation, and directed us to not bring up the issue again. This policy position was reinforced by DIA Director LTG Williams.]
At the same time, the unofficial word has been,
"Sure we left hundreds behind, but what do you want us to do, start another war?"
Or,
"Sure there are hundreds still captive, but we cannot say anything because it might mess up our efforts to try and get them back."
Or,
"We know that there are hundreds of POWs still alive. But these guys are leading very different lives, they have local wives, and we just don't want to shed light on them at this point." [ii]
 |
| US Discredited Garwood |
One of the most deplorable, yet representative examples, is what happened to Bobby Garwood, who was captured when on a mission for a US general in intelligence.
He did not return from the mission, which was only a week prior to his scheduled return to the States, and was listed as a deserter. Evidently no one wanted to tell what really happened and explain why he was sent into a known hostile region without an armed escort.
Later, US intelligence painted him a deserter and instigated a Special Forces mission to assassinate him. [Fortunately, it was not successful.]
When informed in 1978 that Garwood was still a prisoner, the State Department discarded the message. Only when Garwood managed to get a second message out in 1979 was he released. He managed to slip a note to a Finnish executive who was in Hanoi. The Finn made the note public and Garwood was released to avoid the embarrassment. Upon his return, the Marine Corps put him on trial for behavior unbecoming a prisoner of war and seized all his back pay. Then they rigged the trial and prevented those who could attest to his prisoner status, e.g., former North Vietnamese Army Colonel Tran Van Loc, from telling the truth at the trial.
 |
| Colonel Guy |
Former POW Colonel Ted Guy later explained, "Garwood had to be discredited so that he would not be believed." Among other things, Garwood had personally witnessed roughly 100 American POWs still in captivity in Vietnam in 1979, as reported by the Wall Street Journal's Bill Paul in a feature news story in 1984.
The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, General Tighe, tried to stop the court marshal after Garwood was released. He believed Garwood was telling the truth and that Garwood should be carefully debriefed because of his valuable knowledge about missing Americans. But, no one else in the government wanted to know what Garwood knew, especially the Marine Corps brass.
 |
| General Tighe |
Later, after he retired, Tighe himself debriefed Garwood and attested to the reliability and importance of Garwood's knowledge.
Subsequently, the US Government did its best to discredit General Tighe.
[Senator John McCain and John Kerry led that effort to discredit General Tighe.]
Our government's handling of the POW/MIA issue for the past 50 years will continue to "obfuscate the question of live prisoners, create the illusion of progress through hyperactivity, and stall the issue until it dies a natural death."
The federal government attacks any information that men were left behind (to include "debunking" live sighting reports).
In diverting attention from the full truth, bogus stories of the fate of the American POWs have been propagated.
1) First, the men were sent to Chinese and Russia slave labor camps [or Gulags]
2) Following the Vietnam War, this "explanation" declared those missing were only deserters who were now involved in the illegal drug trade and did not want to come home.
3) Beginning in the latter days of the Reagan Administration [by VP Bush] the bogus story was promoted that those missing had taken wives, were raising families, and did not want to return, or, as implied by Bush, were living nicely in Russia in make-believe American towns where they were helping to train Russian spies, such as is depicted in the novel The Charm School.
What they did not tell was the devastating part of the reality, which begins in World War II with the use of American POWs in medical experiments by the Japanese in Unit 731 that was based in China and for live vivisection in a Japanese university hospital.
 |
General Shero Ishil
Unit 731 Commander |
In both cases, these crimes were deliberately kept secret from the American people by U.S. political, military, and intelligence officials; all the responsible Japanese were set free and protected in the case of Unit 731, and, in the case of those who conducted the live vivisections, freed after minor prison terms. [George H.W. Bush did his best to cover up these Japanese atrocities since the crew members he forced to eject from his "disabled" aircraft were captured and tortured by the Japs. His story was told, in detail, by his fellow pilot, LCDR Ellsworth Theim.]
All such information was classified and hidden by General MacArthur.
There was no public trial or accountability as took place in Nuremberg.
[Ed Note: These files were retrieved and are maintained, along with the medical/psychiatric files from the Nazi concentration camps, in the Medical Intelligence Library at Walter Reed Hospital]
These Japanese atrocities can't compare with the scale and magnitude of the atrocities our American POWs suffered at the hands of the Communists as early as the 1920s.
The use of prisoners in communist medical experiments - e.g., the development of assassination techniques and work with chemical and biological agents - had begun at least by 1928. Russia deliberately built chemical and biological warfare laboratories near prisons and GULAG facilities to be near a supply of human guinea pigs. American POWs were also shipped to facilities where these experiments were conducted during and following World War II.
Details of the horrendous nature of the Russian experiments became known to U.S. intelligence, military, and political officials early in the Korean War, as Colonel Corso testified to Dornan's Committee in 1996.
During the Korean War, Colonel Corso was on CinCPac intelligence staff.
"I received numerous reports that American POWs had been sent to the Soviet Union . These POWs were to be exploited for intelligence purposes and subsequently eliminated."
Corso described medical experiments that were performed "Nazi style," about which he was particularly upset. "The most devilish and cunning were the techniques of mind altering. [Later publicized as MK-Ultra]
"Many of our POWs died under such treatment. I was getting reports that came from enemy territory in Korea, that they had some sort of a hospital up there. We sent out agents to try to get the information and I never did get much information on the hospital itself.
"I passed that [intelligence on the mind-control and other experiments] on to C. D. Jackson [a special assistant to the President] and other administration officials when I was at the White House."
Shortly after a special Senate Select Committee for POW/MIA Affairs was established to investigate the missing American POW/MIAs issue in late 1991, information from a top-level Czech official who had defected to the United States in 1968 began to surface.
 |
| General Jan Sejna |
This source, General Major Jan Sejna, had been personally involved in sanitizing the Korean War hospital that Corso had targeted in North Korea. Corso explained that the hospital was built for the purpose of conducting medical experiments upon captured Americans.
The Americans were used as guinea pigs for testing the effects of high radiation exposure. They were used in testing the effects of chemical and biological warfare agents and as expendable subjects in the development of an important new class of chemical warfare agents, psychoactive drugs for use in covert "mind-control" operations.
The US POWs were also used as live cadavers upon which the military doctors could practice various operations such as amputations and organ removal. Finally, they were used in graduated torture experiments to determine the limits of psychological and physiological "stress" the Americans could endure. Several thousand Americans were killed in the North Korean hospital!
At the conclusion of the Korean War, roughly 100 Americans who were still of experimental value were shipped to Russia through Prague.
This process continued in Vietnam.
Czechoslovakia assisted the Russians in the development of chemical and biological warfare agents and psychoactive drugs and in the human experiments conducted in Vietnam, Laos and Russia.
Sejna himself witnessed 600 American POWs as they transited through Prague on their way to Russia. He documented such information during his 20 year debriefing period.
At the time he defected, 1968, and through the end of the Vietnam War,
U.S. intelligence did not question him respecting American POW/MIA.
His CIA handlers were not interested in any information of strategic significance. (Details on the Soviet operations and development projects using the US POW guinea pigs are included in the book:
Betrayed: The Story of Missing American POWs [by J.D. Douglass, Jr].
When Sejna's knowledge began to surface, the response of the various executive agencies was to discredit him, silence him, bury his testimony, and tell the Czech and Russian intelligence services what he was saying so that they could police up their own records and sabotage any sources that might confirm or extend his information.
Their only mission was to silence Sejna, discredit him
In 1996, Congressman Bob Dornan asked Sejna to testify. This is when a 1992 DIA memo surfaced. It was signed by DIA director, Lieutenant General Clapper, stating that Sejna was subjected to a 4-hour hostile polygraph, during which he "showed no signs of deception." DIA's offer to assist the debriefing of Sejna with Military Intelligence officers was rejected by CIA.
Slightly less than a year following his testimony, Sejna was dead.
Alternatively, never have any of those [e.g., Senator McCain or John Kerry] who lied, including under oath, blocked the release of information requested under FOIA, destroyed information and files, threatened witnesses, directed many with personal knowledge to keep silent or lose their jobs, and all the other nefarious activities encountered by the numerous investigative researchers ever been punished or held accountable.
Only those who tried to get at the truth have suffered grief.
In his study of rescue attempts, Code-Name Bright Light, Jay Veith could not find one example where a prisoner was found and freed. What he found was tremendous resistance in getting information out of CIA, command lack of attention, and, most disturbing, compromise.
 |
| USN Pilot Red McDaniel |
According to Red McDaniel regarding missing POWs:
"Someone in our government doesn't want those men to come home,"SF troops planned two different rescue missions into Southeast Asia. We knew where the men were. We knew how many men were there. We were ready to go. We were excited about it. But, at the last minute, both times, someone cancelled the mission."
 |
| Arthur "Bull" Simons |
[Ed Note: Some may remember the Son Tay raid, led by Colonel Bull Simons [his son Bruce was a classmate of mine].
Simons led the raid on the Son Tay Prison Camp in Vietnam, a well-thought out Top-Secret operation which included a mock-up of the camp, created at Fort Bragg, and was used as a prep for the troops in the assault.
General Westmoreland was quite impressed with the plan and the mock-up; he became the Toast of the Washington Cocktail Circuit bragging about this operation in the planning stage; he predicted that this future raid would result in the release of all the US POWs in this valiant effort that he blessed.
Oddly, after nearly a year of planning and delayed approvals, plus Westmoreland's cocktail bragging, Simons' raid found the prison camp empty!
[Westmoreland wanted no US POWs returned]
------------
Reports continue today that indicate American POWs remain captive in North Korea, Vietnam and Laos, China, Russia, and Iraq. Those still missing and alive could number in the hundreds.
These are the basic facts about our POW/MIAs:
1) Thousands of Americans were abandoned,
2) This was not due to accident or lack of intelligence,
3) The men were subsequently denied,
4) Information on their fate was buried or destroyed,
5) Families of the missing men were lied to and stonewalled,
6) Efforts to recovery POW/MIAs have been little more than a charade, designed to frustrate public and surviving family interest while the issue dies a natural death,
7) Maintain the silence respecting the crimes of the Communists, especially where economic interest might be adversely affected and,
8) The fate of servicemen left behind cannot be allowed to interfere with business and commerce.
It has become increasingly difficult to capture serious high-level attention because
1) The growing fraternity of top-level officials who have become compromised,
2) The devastating impact of the decisions to abandon the men,
3) The experience and justified arrogance of the faceless army of bureaucrats who have maintained the silence, and
4) Families and investigators have become increasing frustrated and distant from the suffering of those still captive, comforted by the belief that most are dead or living new lives with families, and don't want to be disturbed.
---------------------
[In the days following 9-11, (then) President George W Bush announced his determination to pursue this issue, and "encourage" a change in this POW denial process - after which there was no further discussion since there would be a direct connection between McCain's blockage of POW data, and former President George H.W. Bush's linkage to the narcotics distribution process from Colombia, via Central America, to Burma, to US soldiers in Vietnam.]
Red McDaniel held fast to the same principles that pulled him through the ordeal of Communist captivity.
"We have to keep trying to solve the riddle of the POWs.
"We have to keep trying." Isn't it time for all Americans to stand straight and demand the full release of all information respecting the men we left behind?
"Isn't it time to make the finding and release of all those men who remain captive a task that is at least as important as finding, capturing, and bringing to justice those responsible for 9-11?
"The fight for freedom and the human condition should begin at home."
"If our government does not keep its end of the bargain with our fighting men, it violates one of the principles that made America. We can have the biggest force in the world but we'll lose the battle if we lose our integrity. The POW issue is a question about the erosion of our country's fundamental values."
Spookd Note:
For years, we went up, unsuccessfully, against the CIA and [CIA-controlled DIA] during the Obama Administration to retrieve Intelligence reports [CIA] TD-FIRs and [DOD] IIRs which we wrote while assigned to field operations in Asia; these reports pertained to US Prisoners of War and those Missing in Action whom we identified and located - with no indication of follow-on actions by any US agency.
[Both agencies denied knowledge of the reports, even though we provided the Project Designators, Report numbers, and the dates of the reports.]
Currently, we continue to be engaged in this effort to, at best, retrieve the remains of our POWs since the families continue to grieve; we have provided reports of US POWs still in Southeast Asia working as slave labor in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
What we have learned in the intervening years -- and recently, is that there was a concerted effort by the US government to deny the existence of US POW/MIAs; these efforts were led by none other than Henry Kissinger early on, since he had cut a covert deal in 1972, in Nixon's name, with the Chinese Government to advise them that "the US government would not oppose Chinese incursions into Southeast Asia", and would in fact, give them a free hand to fulfill the Domino Effect -- i.e., making all of Southeast Asia a Communist entity.
China fulfilled that contract with Kissinger, and upon removal of all US forces from SEA in 1974-75, plus Kissinger's forced closing of all US espionage networks in Southeast Asia [and many elsewhere in Eurasia and Africa], the Chinese forcefully invaded northern Thailand via north Laos with thousands of troops.
The Chinese faced a combined force of Thai, Nationalist Chinese [KMT], and Hmong tribesmen, and Australian advisors who fought valiantly until 1978, when the Chinese withdrew.
[Little, if any of the news of this Chinese invasion was reported in the US; there is, however, a memorial in northern Thailand, near Chiang Rai, posting photographs, details of the invasion, and listing the names of all those who were killed in the defense of Thailand]
The other barrier to action on reports of live sightings of US POW/MIAs was none other than Senator John McCain and his cohort, John Kerry.
Although there was a POW/MIA office in the Pentagon, the officer-in-charge resigned in frustration, followed by a second officer [Sedgewick (Wick) Tourison] who had served in Laos with me during the VN war as an interrogator of North Vietnamese soldiers [he was completely fluent in the Vietnamese language - particularly the North Vietnamese dialects]; he was also very effective in converting NVA POWs into double agents working for the US effort.
In Saigon, Tourison worked with Bill Colby on the Phụng Hoà ng [Phoenix] program designed to track Viet Cong leaders, but evolved into a political action assassination program to eliminate opponents of South Vietnamese leaders. Wick quit that program to come to Laos to track US POWs and stayed on for three years. He later noted that virtually every espionage operation CIA launched into North Vietnam failed due to the complete infiltration of the US Intelligence operations in Vietnam by the Viet Cong, the NVA, and communist elements of our "Allied Forces".
 |
| US POWs Still in VN |
In his role at the Pentagon POW-MIA office, Tourison constantly complained about McCain's interference, and noted that he had been part of the team debriefing the 519 US POWs, who returned, with McCain, from the Hanoi Hilton. The returning US POWs provided Tourison with detailed information on how McCain had betrayed them, and even participated in the NVA/KGB interrogations of the US POWs.
Negotiations between the US and North Vietnam concluded with the agreement that the US would pay $3.5 Billion in reparations.
The problem for the Administration was that it had announced, as a sop to McCain, that the 591 returned prisoners were the sum total of ALL the US prisoners held by the Vietnamese. No mention was made of the additional 1,205 POWs remaining in Vietnam.
After several years, it became clear that the US had reneged on the commitment, particularly since McCain convinced Congress that there were no more US POWs in Vietnam - in spite of numerous reports of sightings of US POWs remaining in camps performing slave labor [as recently as 2019].
All the returned US POW had been warned/threatened by Military Intelligence and FBI agents that they should not speak about McCain under pain of charges of Treason, loss of family and retirement benefits, and possible economic and physical attacks on their families; thus, none spoke against McCain, although none spoke in his favor during McCain's election campaign for POTUS.
Why this resistance from McCain?
It seems McCain cut a special deal with the North Vietnamese Intelligence officers to whom he revealed highly classified identification and also exposed the rescue arrangements to recover captured US pilots. These revelations resulted in the location and capture of downed US pilots, along with the details of Operations Pave Low [USAF search and rescue operations triggered by disguised technical communications Pave Spike devices along suspected paths taken with US prisoners en-route to the Hanoi Hilton].
Subsequent POWs were bewildered at how the NVA anticipated every escape move they planned, and how they could identify and locate the Pave Spike clandestine communications devices.
That, of course, was one aspect of McCain's treachery; the other was that McCain volunteered to the KGB officers at the Hanoi Hilton to become one of their double agents, in return, of course, for special treatment at the prison, as well as use of the KGB support network in the US as needed.
The "as needed" element came in the form of intimidation of his opponents in Congress, senior Military officers and their families, and of course, to obtain KGB's lifetime monetary payments.
It even involved McCain's staff physically assaulting a spokesperson for the National Alliance of Families trying to enlist McCain in recovering US POWs sighted in Vietnam after the war.
McCain, at the time, served on the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs with John Kerry; together, these two communist agents blocked all efforts to release the US POWs still in Vietnam.
[Detailed information of McCain's KGB recruitment were provided by a senior NVA prisoner whom we interrogated/debriefed in Laos; this information was later verified with a recruited NVA source [a senior NVA field commander] who provided periodic updates to me on the NVA military situation in Laos and North Vietnam]; and, further verified when the USSR collapsed and KGB/GRU files came into the hands of US Intelligence officers].
Relating this horror story, lieutenant colonel Bo Gritz worked tirelessly to retrieve US POWs still held in Vietnam, but found himself targeted by McCain forces to discredit and neutralize his effort [the movie "Rambo" was reportedly created based on Gritz's endeavors.
[During this period, I was assigned to the Pentagon ; we were bombarded with reports from the CIA and Congress that Gritz was a phony and detrimental to our National Security. Notably, one of Gritz's connections was a with a drug lord in Burma who provided Gritz with a list of US officials who had received his bribes to move heroin into the US, but, that report was buried after it was forwarded to the White House [intercepted by Vice President Bush - whom I reveal as America's Drug King Pin in a blog post]
Thus, when we tie together multiple pieces of the puzzle, the picture of our betrayals in Vietnam tie back, once again, to both McCain, and to George H.W. Bush - two of America's most treacherous Manchurian candidates.
McCain's treachery was fully revealed in his trial by Tribunal, during which he was sentenced
to death. The exact time of his execution [hanging by the neck until dead] was announced, prior to reports of his "brain cancer".
His funeral [as a national hero], was carried out, but notably his coffin was draped with a severely wrinkled flag, and he was not allowed to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery [official records indicate he was buried at the Naval Academy].
[John Kerry played a pivotal role in this cover-up, and we've reserved a suite for him at The Spa]
---------------------------------Footnotes and other References------------------------------
Dr. Douglass is a national security affairs analyst and author. His book is "Betrayed: The Story of America's Missing POWs".
[i] The article above is a condensed version of a talk given to Indiana Chapter 1 of Rolling Thunder on November 9, 2002. The material is taken from Betrayed: The Story of Missing American POWs by Joseph D. Douglass Jr., published in 2002 and available through book stores (ISBN 1-4033-0131-X) or from the publisher at www.1stbooks.com/bookview/9840 on the Internet or toll free by phone at 1-888-280-7715.
[ii] "Reagan Admitted Hundreds of POWs Left Behind," NewsMax.com, September 2002, p. 50.
[iii] Also see
a) Missing In Action: Trail of Deceit by Larry J. O'Daniel,
b) "Robert Garwood Says Vietnam Didn't Return Some American POWs"
by Bill Paul in Wall Street Journal, 60 Minutes,
c) "Dead or Alive" produced by Monica Jensen-Stevenson,
d) "We Can Keep You Forever" produced by Ted Landreth,
e) "A Chain of Prisoners: From Yalta to Vietnam"
by John M. G. Brown and Thomas G. Ashworth,
f) Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POWs
in Vietnam by Monica Jensen-Stevenson and William Stevenson,
g) "An Examination of U.S. Policy Toward POW/MIAs"
by Foreign Relations Republican Staff,
h) "The Bamboo Cage: The Full Story of the American Servicemen
still held hostage in South-East Asia" by Nigel Cawthorne,
i) "After the Hero's Welcome: A POW Wife's Story of the Battle Against
a New Enemy" by Dorothy McDaniel,
j) Missing in Action: The Soviet Connection[ produced by Ted Landreth],
k) Americans Abandoned [produced by Red McDaniel],
l) Soldiers of Misfortune:
Washington's Secret Betrayal of American POWs in the Soviet Union
[by James D. Sanders, Mark A. Sauter, and Cort Kirkwood],
m) Moscow Bound: Policy, Politics and the POW/MIA Dilemma
[by John M. G. Brown],
n) The Politics of Deceit and the Tragic Fate of POWs After the Vietnam War
[by Mark Sauter and Jim Sanders]
o) Last Seen Alive: The Search for Missing POWs from the Korean War
by Laurence Jolidon, Left Behind and One Returned
p) The Medusa File by Craig Roberts,
Q) Why Didn't You Get Me Out by Frank Anton,
r) Korean Atrocity: Forgotten War Crimes by Philip D. Chinnery,
