Posted on 05/30/2007 5:12:16 AM PDT by kellynla
An Enormous Crime is nothing less than shocking. Based on thousands of pages of public and previously classified documents, it makes an utterly convincing case that when the American government withdrew its forces from Vietnam, it knowingly abandoned hundreds of POWs to their fate. The product of twenty-five years of research by former Congressman Bill Hendon and attorney Elizabeth A. Stewart, An Enormous Crime brilliantly exposes the reasons why these American soldiers and airmen were held back by the North Vietnamese at Operation Homecoming in 1973 and what these men have endured since.
Despite hundreds of postwar sightings and intelligence reports telling of Americans being held captive throughout Vietnam and Laos, Washington did nothing. And despite numerous secret military signals and codes sent from the desperate POWs themselves, the Pentagon did not act. Even in 1988, a U.S. spy satellite passing over Sam Neua Province, Laos, spotted the twelve-foot-tall letters “USA” and immediately beneath them a huge, highly classified Vietnam War-era USAF/USN Escape & Evasion code in a rice paddy in a narrow mountain valley. The letters “USA” appeared to have been dug out of the ground, while the code appeared to have been fashioned from rice straw.
Tragically, the brave men who constructed these codes have not yet come home. Nor have any of the other American POWs who the postwar intelligence shows have laid down similar codes, secret messages, and secret authenticators in rice paddies and fields and garden plots and along trails in both Laos and Vietnam.
An Enormous Crime is based on open-source documents and reports, and thousands of declassified intelligence reports and satellite imagery, as well as author interviews and personal experience. It is a singular work, telling a story unlike any other in our modern history: ugly, harrowing, and true.
From the Bay of Pigs, where John and Robert Kennedy struck a deal with Fidel Castro that led to freedom for the Bay of Pigs prisoners, to the Paris Peace Accords, in which the authors argue Kissinger and Nixon sold American soldiers down the river for political gain, to a continued reluctance to revisit the possibility of reclaiming any men who might still survive, we have a story untold for decades. And with An Enormous Crime we have for the first time a comprehensive history of America’s leaders in their worst hour; of life-and-death decision making based on politics, not intelligence; and of men lost to their families and the country they serve, betrayed by their own leaders.
— Publishers Weekly, week of April 9, 2007
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A sprawling indictment of eight U.S. administrations. Hendon and Stewart…appear nonpartisan in their disdain for governmental inaction and double-dealing. A convincing, urgent argument.
— Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2007
I’ve always suspected this.
And we were impressed with Henry Kissinger exactly why?
BUMP
I heard this during the night on the radio. That bottom item is the “Walking K” and is known to be a signal that it is indeed a pilot waiting to be rescued.
I demand a complete investigation!
I don't care if we find that Ronald Reagan himself is partly to blame. I want my government held accountable. EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM!
According to the book and the evidence, there are between 650 and 850 POWs still alive and being held, or at least there were.
John McCain and John Kerry refused to accept any of the evidence presented. In fact, McCain claims that the ultra
secret code “Walking K” in the rice paddy was done by a child
in Laos.
Right, John! How much did you tell the North Vietnamese while you were getting preferential treatment?
I listen to coasttocoast on my way to work on this subject. You the author?
ping
You the author?
no
This is another reason to detest McCain and Kerry.
Ask John Kerry and John McCain where those prisoners are.
They headed a Congressional task force to find them. They ended up destroying all the records of sightings ,but they came home with a trade deal for Kerry’s cousin.
What is frightening is that both these men have run for President after the way they stabbed POW,and MIA’s in the back. John McCain is now giving away our country to Mexicans while holding hands with the murderer of Mary Jo Kopechne. If the Amnesty bill is passed this killer and this slime will stand next to the President while he signs the give away bill and they will all 3 be grinning like skunks eating crap.
I have disliked (to say the least) McCain ever since this sell out. IIRC many documents that had been used to research missing POW/MIA's were destroyed as part of their agreement, so we could get a fresh start with Vietnam (a Communist dictatorship), or some such ridiculous reason.
Preferential treatment? They tried to release McCain and he wouldn't go. He told them he would not leave until everyone imprisoned before him was released. I don't much care for McCain, but it took enormous courage to voluntarily stay in prison and be tortured more.
Funny thing, even while his committee under John Kerry as chairman, McCain refused to accept the evidence of other POWs left behind. There are witnesses who saw them shredding the evidence.
What they didn't count on was an investigator coming forward now with mounds of evidence.
Not having read further, so not knowing what was written, I can relate my own experiences in the late eighties, on this matter.
Back then I worked at the Pentagon with a close friend, a senior Marine officer, who was trying to help the families of the POW’s. From him, I heard the stories, at the time, hugely politically incorrect, about 312 POW’s known to be left behind and alive and in a camp. He understood the lives of these had been negotiated away at the bargaining table by Kissinger, but was trying to break through the barriers to get some sunlight on the issue.
But it was not to be. Every step of the way, he was thwarted by an unseen hand at times and by one in a key position to smother any such rebellion, Richard Armitage. Sound familiar?? As I recall either he or another friend also thought the same was operating out of the embassy in Thailand earlier and was blocking investigations back then.
I guess sources available now could confirm or deny the accuracy of these stories.
My friend who is a faithful and practicing Christian and fine family man was finally just shoved aside, left the Pentagon, and that was that.
I just renewed my faded POW flag. The black bleaches out fairly quickly in the weather. God bless and help those poor souls.
8mm
The Vietnam-Era Prisoner-of-War/Missing-in-Action Database
This database contains 145,954 records.
Last Update: April 2007
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pow/powhome.html
Biographies on Prisoners of War and Missing in Action
[POW/MIA]
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http://www.pownetwork.org/bios.htm
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