Sidney Schanberg: Vietnam POWs and The Killing Fields

1. The Killing Fields

Sidney Schanberg won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the fall of Cambodia and the rise of the Khmer Rouge. His work chronicled the atrocities committed during the Cambodian genocide and the fate of his colleague, Dith Pran, a Cambodian journalist who survived the regime's brutality.

This reporting was later adapted into the acclaimed 1984 film The Killing Fields, which dramatized the personal and political consequences of U.S. intervention and abandonment in Southeast Asia.

2. Vietnam POWs and Government Cover-Up

In his later years, Schanberg turned to investigating one of the Vietnam War’s darkest secrets: the fate of American POWs left behind in Southeast Asia.

Summary of Schanberg’s Findings:

Hundreds of American POWs were knowingly left behind after the 1973 Paris Peace Accords.
Declassified intelligence reports and eyewitness accounts confirmed the ongoing captivity of U.S. servicemen in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
President Nixon and Henry Kissinger prioritized political face-saving and withdrew without accounting for all prisoners.
The U.S. government then engaged in a systematic cover-up, destroying evidence and silencing whistleblowers.
John McCain, a former POW, helped pass legislation that sealed POW/MIA files and blocked further investigation.

Schanberg’s most notable exposé, “McCain and the POW Cover-Up”, was published in 2008. It was a thoroughly documented indictment of bipartisan complicity in the betrayal of captured Americans. Schanberg called it one of the greatest moral and political scandals in modern U.S. history.

Conclusion

Sidney Schanberg’s career spanned two of the most damning case studies in U.S. foreign policy: the Cambodian genocide and the . In both, he exposed a pattern of imperial overreach, betrayal, and official deception, backed by rigorous documentation and moral clarity.

In fall of 1993 I was Flight Surgeon out of the 25th ID (L) AVN BDE in support of MIA-POW recovery in Cambodia. 1992 also but, in ‘93 we had reports of some very tall relatively light-skinned Hmong in a village not far above the border way the f*** up in the Dragon’s tail. We actually crossed the border by accident (stupid primitive GPS), but sent a local up ahead to check out the rumors as reported by some Christian missionaries.

Seems this one guy escaped a POW camp, worked his way west and north, settled in, had a family, went native.

We discussed this at the TOC that night. Do we inform the state department and DoD that yes, their guy was still alive and well, that he was owed 20+ years back pay, hazardous dutypay, clothing allowances, BAQ, etc., dragged back into uniform to his wife who had remarried, kids who wouldn’t remember him as they were very small when he left, etc.

What would you do?

The officer in charge of the op put it to a vote of everyone present (about 15 people, IIRC) and the decision was unanimous.

Not the guy. Some hippie draft dodger who left the country in ‘72 or whenever.

I imagine he’s still listed as MIA to this day.