Vietnam: A Day for Remembering

My husband reminded me this Memorial Weekend to not forget the troops "left behind" in Vietnam.  This prompted research on my part to resurrect awareness that mostly has been forgotten... and some American citizens have never even heard about.  Those post-Vietnam babies who grew up not knowing.  

If I was a wife, mom, sister, daughter whose loved one never came back, dead or alive, I would have to know for my peace of mind.  We all deserve that.  Strong proof exists for unaccounted troops that other GIs knew about.  Their debriefing files are locked away securely.  Every one of them.  And the Pentagon, with John McCain and John Kerry's allegiance, wants to keep it that way.

An excerpt from "The War Secrets Sen. John McCain Hides:  Former POW Fights Public Access to POW/MIA Files," By Sydney Schanberger

"The Truth Bill
In 1989, 11 members of the House of Representatives introduced a measure they called “The Truth Bill.” A brief and simple document, it said: '[The] head of each department or agency which holds or receives any records and information, including live-sighting reports, which have been correlated or possibly correlated to United States personnel listed as prisoner of war or missing in action from World War II, the Korean conflict and the Vietnam conflict shall make available to the public all such records and information held or received by that department or agency. In addition, the Department of Defense shall make available to the public with its records and information a complete listing of United States personnel classified as prisoner of war, missing in action, or killed in action (body not returned) from World War II, the Korean conflict, and the Vietnam conflict.'

Opposed by Pentagon
Bitterly opposed by the Pentagon, 'The Truth Bill' got nowhere. It was reintroduced in the next Congress in 1991 — and again disappeared. Then, suddenly, out of the Senate, birthed by the Arizona senator, a new piece of legislation emerged. It was called 'The McCain Bill.' This measure turned 'The Truth Bill' on its head. It created a bureaucratic maze from which only a fraction of the available documents could emerge. And it became law. So restrictive were its provisions that one clause actually said the Pentagon didn’t even have to inform the public when it received intelligence that Americans were alive in captivity."Senator McCain's legal amendments to the 1995 version of the truth law actually lengthed the number of days a unit commander had to report to the theater commander that a person was missing and describe what rescue and recovery efforts were underway.  The McCain amendments upped the required time for reporting an MIA from two days to ten.

It doesn't make sense.  But the source states further:

In the 1995 act, the theater commander, after receiving the MIA report, would have 14 days to report to his Cabinet secretary in Washington. His report had to 'certify' that all necessary actions were being taken and all appropriate assets were being used 'to resolve the status of the missing person.'  This section was stricken from the act, replaced with language that made the Cabinet secretary, not the theater commander, the recipient of the report from the field. All the certification requirements also were stricken...This, said a McCain memo, 'transfers the bureaucracy involved out of the field to Washington.' He argued that the original legislation, if left intact, 'would accomplish nothing but create new jobs for lawyers and turn military commanders into clerks.'

In response, the backers of the original statute cited the Pentagon’s stained record on MIA’s and argued that military history had shown that speed of action is critical to the chances of recovering a missing man. Moving 'the bureaucracy' to Washington, they said, was merely a way to sweep the issue under a rug."

The American people will probably never know why the Senate Select POW/MIA Committee, with Vietnam War veteran John Kerry as Chairman, along with fellow member John McCain, want to wash their hands of the whole Vietnam affair, and why Sen. McCain felt he had to "...browbeat witnesses," according to another document by journalist Shanberg.  He goes on to report:

Family members who have personally faced McCain and pressed him to end the secrecy also have been treated to his legendary temper.  He has screamed at them, insulted them, brought women to tears...In 1996, he roughly pushed aside a group of POW family members who had waited outside a hearing room to appeal to him, including a mother in a wheelchair."

In their book, An Enormous Crime,from Chapter 21, "The 1983-1984 Cover-Up:  How it was Structured, How it was Sustained," Bill Hendon and Elizabeth Stewart write:

The newspaper Army Times reported that on 9 July 1982 … Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger told POW/MIA family members gathered in the Washington area for the 13th annual meeting of the National League of Families that the administration had changed official government policy on the POW/MIA issue and that '[w]e [now] proceed under the assumption that at least some Americans are still held captive by the Indochinese Communists.'...The Times said Weinberger cited 'over 400 first-hand sightings' as reason for the change and told the families that determining the fate of their loved ones was now 'a matter of the highest national priority. Weinberger’s speech, his statement on POWs was formally adopted as official U.S. policy and disseminated in written form."

What happened then, six months later, was "an awful dilemma," according to the book's authors, "An unsuccessful rescue group of former Green Berets was arrested in Thailand, one of them quoting Pres. Reagan's alleged orders that if they found one person he would "start WWIII. This ran in the Washington Post.

In addition America's government, then facing the Central America crisis, chose its stance "...And therein, of course, lay the dilemma: how could Weinberger send American servicemen to fight in the jungles of Central America while publicly acknowledging that other American servicemen were still being held against their will in the jungles of Southeast Asia ten years after Operation Homecoming?

"By the late 2000s, the remains of over 700 Americans killed in Southeast Asia had been returned and identified. Efforts continued to recover nearly 1,800 Americans who remained unaccounted for.  Working jointly, American and Vietnamese experts focus on 'Last Known Alive' cases, which involve missing Americans whom the U.S. believed might have survived their initial loss incident. Outcomes of these investigations helps resolve the live prisoners question. The U.S. has identified 296 individuals as Last Known Alive cases in all of Southeast Asia, and following full investigations, the Defense Department has determined that more than 190 are deceased."

  "Vietnam War Accounting History".

I hope there are others who especially remember those left behind.  It's an "awful dilemma."