(snip)
Besides evidence contrary to DPMO's stated position on the "Cuban Program," the documents I examined reveal:
the possibility that a number of American POWs from the Vietnam War had been held in Los Maristas, a secret Cuban prison run by Castro's G-2 intelligence service. The Cuban who claims to have seen them later escaped and made it to the United States, and was reportedly debriefed by the FBI;
a Cuban Official had offered the State Department to ransom some American POWs from Vietnam, but there was no follow up;
that Cubans, along with Russians, guarded a number of American POWs in Laos;
the Cubans photographed a number of American POWs in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia;
that besides the "Cuban Program," the Cubans were very heavily involved in Vietnam. They had several thousand "engineers" in Vietnam constructing, repairing and guarding the Ho Chi Minh Trail where a large number of Americans disappeared; the possibility that American POWs were "treated" in Cuban hospitals in Hanoi;
the Cubans had a permenant DGI agent assigned to the COSVN headquarters in Cambodia, the North Vietnamese command center directing the war in South Vietnam.
(Snip)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1209454/posts?page=201#201
(snip)
The loss of pilots was further exacerbated by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's Dr. Strangelove-like obsession of directing targets to be bombed at the same time every day. To some, it seemed as if DOD, led by McNamara, was intentionally aiding the communists by providing them with some of our best and brightest military minds [e.g., one F-111 pilot was shot down over North Vietnam shortly after leaving the Gemini space program.] Concurrently the Soviet equivalent to the Gemini program made quantum leaps over the next two years in the area of the F-111 pilot's specialty. An F-111 capsule was found in a Russian museum by U.S. investigators. There are several other similar examples of vast improvement in communist technologies after the capture of these pilots. According to DIA's "asset", the American POWs were "a gold mine of information to brief ... specialists in the technologies used by the enemy."
Michael D. Benge
2300 Pimmit Drive, #604-W
Falls Church, VA 22043
Tel: (703) 698-8256 (H)
(202) 712-4043 (W)
October 4, 1999
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Michael D. Benge spent 11 years in Vietnam, over five years as a prisoner of war--1968-73, and is a diligent follower of the affairs of the region. While serving as a civilian Foreign Service Officer, he was captured in South Vietnam by the North Vietnamese, and held in numerous camps in South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and North Vietnam. He spent 27 months in solitary confinement and one year in a "black box." For efforts in rescuing several Americans before being captured, he received the Department of State's highest award for heroism and a second one for valor.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1209454/posts?page=204#204