McCain Suppressed Info on Fellow Vietnam POWs Left Behind

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* Report: McCain Suppressed Info on Fellow Vietnam POWs Left Behind *

We speak to Pulitzer-winning journalist Sydney Schanberg about how the "war
hero" candidate Sen. John McCain buried information about POWs left behind in
Vietnam. Writing for The Nation magazine, Schanberg reveals that McCain "worked
very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners
in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn't return home."

Listen/Watch/Read
* Report: McCain Suppressed Info on Fellow Vietnam POWs Left Behind *

Well, it’s a long and complicated story, but I’ll try to do it in brief. In 1973, we were at the—early ’73, we were at the negotiating table with the Hanoi government, and we weren’t doing very well. We bombed them in December of 1972 to try to get them to be more reasonable. That didn’t happen. They were going to stick it out and stick to their positions. And one of their positions was that they linked the prisoner issue very, very closely to the issue of reconstruction money, reparations, and they never let those two be separated.


So, when it came down to us pushing for a final version of this treaty, they refused to tell us, before we signed, how many prisoners they were returning. And we accepted that condition. It was said they would tell us after we signed. So, we signed, and they give us a list, which had 591 names on it. This astounded people in our intelligence community, because their list showed several hundred more.


And there was this back-and-forth that the American public never saw, because it took place at higher levels. Nixon wrote a letter to Pham Van Dong, the prime minister, in which he said, we have, in Laos alone, a list of 311 prisoners held alive, and you are sending back nine prisoners from Laos. Quote: “That is inconceivable.” That’s what he wrote. And it was inconceivable. But when it came time to explain to the American people whether we were getting all of our prisoners back, Nixon went to the television set and gave a national speech on television saying all of our prisoners are on their way home. He knew that was a lie.


Now, I don’t know what was in Nixon’s head or Kissinger’s head. Maybe they thought they could get them back later. But our position was no ransom. And so, there never was any ransom, unlike the French, who, after their defeat at Dien Bien Phu, they had many, many soldiers held back, all of whom—well, I don’t know if it’s “all of whom,” but most of whom were ransomed, privately, secretly, by back channel sources and so forth, but that’s how they got out. And we refused, and there were several ransom offers, and they were never made public. In fact, Richard Allen testified under oath—he was the National Security Adviser in the Reagan administration, and he testified under oath, behind closed doors, again, not seen by the American public, that prisoners—that there was a ransom offer in early 1972 and that nothing was done about it. And on and on and on....

Peace

Strangest Tribe

I feel sorrow for those POW's and their families caught up in the poor politics of the Vietnam war.

I can't imagine being in such a situation and ever come out of it completely sane.