EVENTS | 1954
The issue surrounding American prisoners of war (POWs) from the Vietnam War is marked by allegations of a deliberate government cover-up concerning hundreds of servicemen who were intentionally abandoned in Southeast Asia at the close of the conflict.
Abandonment of POWs
Investigative material suggests that hundreds of American POWs were condemned to death at enemy hands by top American leaders. Evidence accumulated through years of exhaustive research demonstrates that the Nixon administration deliberately left many hundreds of American POWs in Vietnam at the conclusion of the war.
This abandonment is regarded as a colossal act of national dishonour, and the underlying rationale for this betrayal were a political embarrassment.
- Reparations and Political Liability:
Following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the Vietnamese refused to return their French POWs until Paris paid financial compensation for the war, which the French ultimately did. Similarly, the Vietnamese refused to return American POWs unless the US government paid reparations. President Richard Nixon signed a document promising to pay, but Congress refused to authorise the funds, operating under the principle that America does not lose wars. The Vietnamese, exercising caution, retained many POWs until the money was delivered.
- Continued Existence as a Threat:
As years passed, the continued existence of these captives became a major liability to powerful political figures whose careers and reputations would have been destroyed if the prisoners returned home and revealed the true story to the American people. Therefore, none of them ever came home.
The enduring popular belief that POWs remained alive in Vietnam, often ridiculed at the time, was portrayed on screen in 1980s action films such as _Rambo_, _Missing in Action_, and _Uncommon Valor_, suggesting that these mindless action films were depicting reality while official policy was disseminating propaganda.
The Cover-Up and John McCain’s Central Role
The cover-up of this monumental act of betrayal persisted for decades.
- John McCain’s Involvement:
Senator John McCain is identified as the central figure in the subsequent official cover-up of this betrayal. McCain utilised his national reputation as the most famous former POW to effectively bury the story of the abandoned prisoners, thereby allowing America’s political establishment to avoid serious embarrassment.
- Media Silence:
This central role in the cover-up was ignored by the national media during McCain’s campaigns. One highly regarded journalist published this expose, providing massive evidence, yet the media received it with absolute silence. The total silence and unwillingness to investigate this enormous story by leading newspapers, magazines, and websites constitutes an extremely strong indictment of the candour and reliability of the entire American mainstream media.
- Evidence Ignored:
Journalists avoided the mountain of hard evidence, including approximately 1,600 firsthand live sightings of American prisoners after the war. Many Vietnamese witnesses who provided testimony were interrogated by US intelligence officers and passed lie-detector tests, with interrogators grading the bulk of witnesses as credible. Other ignored intelligence included official radio intercepts of prisoners being moved to and from labour camps in Laos, satellite photos, conversations overheard by Secret Service agents inside the White House, and ransom offers from Hanoi through third parties. Three US defence secretaries who served during the Vietnam era provided sworn public testimony that men were left behind.
- Kremlin Confirmation:
In 1993, the front page of _The New York Times_ reported the discovery of a Politburo transcript in the Kremlin archives that fully confirmed the existence of additional POWs. When interviewed on the Public Broadcasting Service _Newshour_, former National Security Advisors Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted that the document was very likely correct and that hundreds of American Vietnam POWs had indeed been left behind.
McCain's Wartime Record
The narrative of Senator John McCain's heroic war record is also subject to scrutiny, with considerable evidence suggesting that his activities were far from heroic.
- Collaboration Allegations:
Evidence suggests that McCain spent his wartime captivity collaborating with his captors and broadcasting [[Communist]] propaganda. These Communist propaganda broadcasts were reportedly played in the prisoner camps to break the spirits of American POWs who resisted collaboration. The alleged headline of a 1969 UPI wire story referred to him as a PW (Prisoner of War) Songbird Is Pilot Son of Admiral.
- Torture Claims:
Although torture of American POWs in Vietnam is acknowledged, it is far from clear that McCain was among those tortured. For almost the entire war, McCain was held in a special section reserved for the best-behaving prisoners, where he allegedly produced his propaganda broadcasts. Top-ranking former POWs held at the same prison, such as Colonels Ted Guy and Gordon Swede Larson, stated they were very skeptical of McCain's torture claims.
- Fabricated Narrative:
The lurid tales of personal suffering and torture were concocted and promoted in the media to preempt the danger of his propaganda broadcasts becoming known. This strategy quickly established McCain as the highest-profile torture victim among the returned POWs. Once the public accepted this narrative, any later release of his propaganda tapes could be dismissed as merely proving that even brave men have a breaking point.
- Father’s Influence:
McCain’s father, Admiral John S. McCain, Senior, who served as the commander of all American forces in the Pacific Theater, likely intervened to hush up the scandal of his son being a collaborator and Communist propagandist. The Admiral was previously involved in arranging the official board of inquiry that whitewashed the deliberate 1967 Israeli attack on the _USS Liberty_. His high rank gave him the power to transmute his son’s wartime record from traitor to war-hero, facilitating the younger McCain's political career.
- Former Captors’ Testimony:
When interviewed in 2008, McCain’s former jailers seemed enthusiastic about the prospect of him reaching the White House, stating they hoped he would win because they had become such good friends during the war and had worked closely together. They dismissed his claims of cruel and sadistic torture as the kind of total nonsense politicians spout to win popularity.
The evidence suggests that McCain’s history can only be understood in the context of his father's powerful position and influence. The notion that an individual could nearly reach the presidency based on a war record that considerable evidence suggests was normally punishable by hanging for treason leads to the suspicion that the national political system had become extremely compromised.