Posted on 05/28/2007 6:23:37 PM PDT by kellynla
Unless you are prepared to learn how your government callously abandoned hundreds of your fellow Americans to decades of continued imprisonment at the hands of their brutal captors and jailers in Vietnam and Laos, you may prefer to ignore America's shame and avoid reading this shocking book.
Read it you must, however.
America needs to know about one of the sorriest chapters in our history, and what has to be done to make amends.
"An Enormous Crime — The Definitive Account of American POWS Abandoned in Southeast Asia" is a bone-chilling account of one of those crimes that call to heaven for vengeance. It is an incredibly well-researched documentary that spells out in frightening detail how a nation that prides itself on its compassion for others turned its back on hundreds of its own. [Editor's Note: to get your copy of "An Enormous Crime — The Definitive Account of American POWS Abandoned in Southeast Asia, Click Here Now.]
For the past 25 years, authors Bill Hendon and Elizabeth Stewart doggedly pursued the mystery of what happened to hundreds of American POWs missing in Vietnam and Laos in the wake of the Vietnam war.
Shockingly, their research has revealed that they were simply abandoned by the United States government. Then, the government devoted 30 years to keeping the fate of these men secret, according to Hendon and Stewart.
Captives Held for Ransom
In a forward to the book, the authors explain that while hundreds of Americans were captured, imprisoned and released at war's end at the so-called " ‘Operation Homecoming,' hundreds more were similarly captured and imprisoned but were held back by the communists at Homecoming to ensure payment of billions of dollars in postwar reconstruction aid promised them by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.
Watergate intervened, the aid was not paid, and these prisoners have never — never — been released."
While the federal government continued to deny that any POWs have been unaccounted for, Hendon and Stewart provide convincing evidence that hundreds of them have remained captive long after the end of the war. They provide evidence of hundreds of post war sightings and intelligence reports revealing that Americans were being held throughout Vietnam and Laos, yet Washington did nothing about their plight.
There were numerous secret military signals and codes which were sent by the desperate POWs themselves, yet the Pentagon still did not act. As late as 1988 a U.S. spy satellite passing over Sam Neua Province in Laos, spotted the 12-foot-tall letters "U.S.A." and immediately beneath them a huge highly classified Vietnam war-era I SAF/USN "escape and invasion" code in a rice paddy in a narrow mountain Valley.
As the authors say, tragically, the brave men who constructed these codes have yet to come home.
Among the horrifying revelations in this book:
Acting on advice of the Fidel Castro, the North Vietnamese from the very beginning of the war set out to capture American servicemen with the intent of ransoming them for postwar reconstruction aid, just as Castro had ransomed the Bay of Pigs prisoners. According to the authors, classified evidence shows that just as Castro did with the Bay of Pigs prisoners, the Vietnamese by late 1972 held more than 1,200 American Prisoners.
The U.S. pledged in accords and a secret presidential letter at the January 1973 Paris peace negotiations to pay the North Vietnamese a staggering $4.5 billion dollars to rebuild their war-damaged country. In return, the North Vietnamese promised to free all the American POWs they held. It was only after those accords were signed later that month that the North Vietnamese stated they only intended to set 577 Americans free during Operation Homecoming. Say the authors, U.S. officials privately agreed that the enemy had only released about half of all the prisoners they were holding.
One of the most shocking disclosures was that Nixon and Kissinger set out to make the promised multibillion dollar payments and obtain the release of the remaining POWs but in March of 1973 the Watergate scandal broke, rocked the Nixon White House, and the deal to get the remaining prisoners released collapsed, and Richard Nixon swept the whole thing under the rug when he blithely pronounced that the remaining POWs were dead.
For the next 15 years, the question of the fate of the remaining POWs sparked continued debate, fueled, as the authors say, by government intelligence reports about hundreds of U.S. prisoners remaining in captivity. In early 1991, the chief of the Pentagon POW-MIA office charged that the first Bush administration was covering up the whole matter. On the heels of that development, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmed the former chief's charges. Then in August of 1991, the Senate created a select committee to investigate the matter of the missing POWs.
At the time, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. David Boren, D-Okla., told reporters: "I think we are going to see a lot more prisoners were left in Laos. I simply think that — it has been true in administrations in both parties — when the peace agreements were made I think there were people involved that didn't want all the questions raised at that time . . . once they decided not to disclose that at the time of the agreement the next year they decided it was too embarrassing.
"The longer it went, the more embarrassing it got to be . . . piecemeal decisions came over a 10-year period of time. They always thought ‘well I [will] hand this on to the next guy to admit we really made a big mess.' Those who knew the truth kept handing it on. There are people, obviously in the military and otherwise, in the foreign policy establishment who are going to be embarrassed if this comes out and so they keep it secret. It has to come out, and it will."
Truth Not Be Told
Tragically, the truth did not come out, thanks, the authors charge, to two of the Committee's most powerful members, Chairman John Kerry and ex-POW Sen. John McCain. Both, the authors explain, were intent on "ending the war" and normalizing relations with Vietnam. They chose to perpetuate the cover-up rather than expose it.
Say the authors "in the end they crafted a final committee report that declared (1) the postwar intelligence on live POWs was meaningless and that (2) no POWs remained alive and (3) that there had been no government cover-up. In a lengthy chapter entitled "The Fragging" the authors examine some of that intelligence and explain in detail extraordinary measures taken by Kerry and McCain to discredit it.
Former President Clinton gets his lumps at book's end when, ignoring what the authors call "the most compelling evidence ever received by the U.S. government that hundred of POWs were never released, he went ahead and normalized relations with their jailers in North Vietnam.
Disturbing Accounts
None of this is pleasant reading, but no history of the war in Vietnam is complete without including what the authors have revealed about this sorry chapter in America's history.
That war, the authors write, will never end until all the remaining POWs are returned safely to their homeland, or all possible avenues for their release have been explored — forthrightly, honestly, and thoroughly — by what would be by any measure, the most powerful and knowledgeable U.S. negotiating team ever assembled.
That, they say is when the Vietnam War will end for many Americans and not a minute sooner.
President George W. Bush alone can make it happen they conclude. But he must act now before, God forbid, the tapping from deep inside the wreckage of Indochina finally stops.
We must act so America once again can hold its head up.
It's just too damn bad that the American presidency has yet to be filled by a Viet Nam war combat veteran.
Semper Fi, Kelly
ping
What did John Kerry know about this and when did he know it? ;)
what a complete A ...hole Kerry is! this just makes me mad at him all over again. I will not read this book....don’t know if I could handle it.
Don't forget to include McLame. He was a participant in this one too.
If any but turn coats would run they just might get elected.
How John Kerry could show his face after his clandestine meetings with the Viet Cong and his disgraceful tarring of his fellow Marines I do not know and then we are suppose to let him run on his military service. Hell no, I’d have voted for someone who ran away to Canada before letting that trash in the White House. There is one thing in being a coward but an entirely another to be a traitor and that man was and is a traitor.
The left in this country and the Democrat congress who defunded Vietnam and led to the collapse of South Vietnam should not be able to say “Vietnam” without hanging their heads in shame for the millions of our so called friends who died because they left them to the Communist onslaught. It has been estimated that nearly 75 million people died throughout Asia because of our running away and allowing the whole region to fall to the Communists. Someday I hope they burn in hell for what they did and what they are doing even now.
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Our first 2 North Vietnamese Communist Army Regular POW’s we captured inside a then Free South Vietnam at the 1st Major Battle of the Vietnam War in November 1965:
http://www.lzxray.com/guyer_set3.htm
(See 5th Photo down)
NVA Soldiers that Communist North Vietnam’s Hanoi Radio kept telling the whole world were NEVER there all during the Vietnam War.
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How legit is this? Does anyone another source to corroborate this book? I am hesitant to believe, someone convince me.
Never realized that.
“What did John Kerry know about this and when did he know it? ;)”
You may find your comment funny. But I don’t
Kerry should have been court marshalled for treason.
And for you to even mention that POS in a thread regarding American POW’s & MIA’s is outrageous.
Semper Fi,
Kelly
“NVA Soldiers that Communist North Vietnam’s Hanoi Radio kept telling the whole world were NEVER there all during the Vietnam War.”
Well I know better because I was there and personally saw their dead bodies.
Semper Fi,
Kelly
This can’t be true...McCain & Kerry said so....
Somehow the only presidents who get blamed for this are Nixon and Bush.
Weren’t there a few other presidents in between? And could Nixon do anything when they railroaded him out of office with a Watergate scandal that was 99% faked up?
I would place the heaviest blame on the guys who were put in charge of investigating the POW/MIA problem and covered it up instead:
“Tragically, the truth did not come out, thanks, the authors charge, to two of the Committee’s most powerful members, Chairman John Kerry and ex-POW Sen. John McCain. Both, the authors explain, were intent on “ending the war” and normalizing relations with Vietnam. They chose to perpetuate the cover-up rather than expose it.”
John Kerry is John Kerry, and this is pretty much what you could expect of him. But the way John McCain betrayed his fellow POWs has always struck me as the ultimate treason.
Didn’t that arsehole Kerry assure us that none were left so his cousin could rake in big bucks over there?
Ah, Kelly, John Kerry is very relevant to this thread. From the article —
Tragically, the truth did not come out, thanks, the authors charge, to two of the Committee’s most powerful members, Chairman John Kerry and ex-POW Sen. John McCain. Both, the authors explain, were intent on “ending the war” and normalizing relations with Vietnam. They chose to perpetuate the cover-up rather than expose it.
I live in Cambodia and dabble in research on this issue in my free time. There are many accounts that provide detail on the POW/MIA issue and those that were left behind. A good start is:
http://www.taskforceomegainc.org/
There is plenty of blame to go around.
Bottom line, as I previously stated, the Viet Nam war American POW’s & MIA’s should have been fully accounted for after 30 friggin years! And to this date, THEY HAVE NOT!
Semper Fi,
Kelly
Should be "escape and evasion".
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