I wish some of those old links at FR showed up on google. I remember reading a bunch of posts, and doing a lot of independent research on the issue. This article covers some of what I remember:
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/stock/040123
Senator Kerry can often be heard making the statement that the Bush Administration is controlled solely by ‘’special interests.’’ Of course, he is untouched by this disease that he says permeates the Republican Party.
The senator was the head of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs in 1992. He pushed vigorously to normalize relations with Vietnam. He visited Vietnam and praised them for being open and reported he was convinced they were not holding American POWs. Many families didn’t believe him then and don’t believe him now. But why would he be so anxious to normalize relations with the former enemy?
The answer is special interests and money. Collier’s International, based in Boston, was immediately awarded the exclusive contract to rebuild Vietnam’s infrastructure by the Vietnamese government. They made tens of millions of dollars from the contract. The chief executive officer of Collier’s International was a man named C. Stewart Forbes. Interestingly, Senator Kerry’s middle name is Forbes. There is a reason for that. C. Stewart Forbes is John Kerry’s cousin.
The New Yorker Magazine touted Kerry as the senator who defeated the ‘’mendacious POW lobby.’’ Yes, Kerry helped defeat those tenacious family members who wanted to know what happened to their missing loved ones. His strange bedfellow in this battle against POW families was none other than fellow Senator and former POW John McCain.
This committee’s final report in 1993 was chilling. It determined that American POWs were left alive in Viet Nam after the war but felt none were still alive. It makes no attempt to identify those left behind, how they died, who killed them, and where their remains are located. They were abandoned in life and death.
Is C. Stewart Forbes related to Malcolm Forbes?
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0408,schanberg,51276,1.html
When John Kerry’s Courage Went M.I.A.
Senator covered up evidence of P.O.W.’s left behind
February 24th, 2004
Senator John Kerry, a decorated battle veteran, was courageous as a navy lieutenant in the Vietnam War. But he was not so courageous more than two decades later, when he covered up voluminous evidence that a significant number of live American prisonersperhaps hundredswere never acknowledged or returned after the war-ending treaty was signed in January 1973.
The Massachusetts senator, now seeking the presidency, carried out this subterfuge a little over a decade ago shredding documents, suppressing testimony, and sanitizing the committee’s final reportwhen he was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on P.O.W./ M.I.A. Affairs.
Over the years, an abundance of evidence had come to light that the North Vietnamese, while returning 591 U.S. prisoners of war after the treaty signing, had held back many others as future bargaining chips for the $4 billion or more in war reparations that the Nixon administration had pledged. Hanoi didn’t trust Washington to fulfill its pro-mise without pressure. Similarly, Washington didn’t trust Hanoi to return all the prisoners and carry out all the treaty provisions. The mistrust on both sides was merited. Hanoi held back prisoners and the U.S. provided no reconstruction funds.
(snip)