Paul L.E. Helliwell was sent to Miami in 1960 to build a cover for anti-Castro activitries. Helliwell had been an OSS officer, and was the chief architect the C.I.A.’s drug money laundering operations. He owned Castle Bank in the Bahamas. It was a despository for mob money, and his partner was Burton Kanter, a Chicago lawyer who specialized in legalizing money from organized crime. Prominent people from the legitimate business world also put money there including Thomas Corcoran and the Fords. “Tommy the Cork” had run FDR’s informal spying operations before the OSS was created. Corcoran, working with Chiang Kai-shek’s brother, T.V. Soong, was financing the American Volunteer Group, that carried out sabotage operations against Red China. Another Helliwell operation was the Bank of Pirenne in Key West, "a two-time laundromat for the Lansky mob and the C.I.A.. " The latter was tied to the Bank of Cutler Ridge. The Bank of Pirenne received money from Lansky’s Bank of Internal Commerce, a bank the C.I.A. sometimes used. The Lansky bank also had business relations with drug interests in France and Lebanon. Helliwell’s Sea Supply Corporation sent arms to the Nationalist Chinese in Burma and to Thailand’s police. In return, the company received China White heroin.
Wallace Groves, an ex-convict, operated another C.I.A. money laundering operation called Intercontinental Diversified (I.D.C.) . He sold his 46% share in 1978 for $33 million. In an SEC hearing, C.I.A.officials admitted using $5 million of I.D.C’s funds and claimed Groves went along out of friendship. I.D.C. was a spin-off of an Asian mining company and was represented by a Helliwell firm. Groves also fronted Resorts International, owned largely by the mob. Resorts International, formerly the Mary Carter Paint Co., operated the Paradise Island resort. The C.I.A. had to be aware that money from the Paradsise Island Bridge Company and the resort was being delivered to Nixon. This situation most likely was an important element in the tension between the president and the agency.
James Jesus Angleton, head of Counter Intelligence, also maintained ties with the Mafia through New York lawyer Mario Brod. On one occasion money was moved through these channels to pay thugs to beat up leftists in Mareselles. Sometimes, the mob was used to help feret out Communist agents in the United States.
Agents Ted Shackley and Thomas Clines, and Richard Armitage were the major operatives, responsible for shipping tons of raw opium. Years later Ross Perot learned of Armitage's activities and unsuccessfully tried to get the government to move against Armitage. Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci warned Perot to leave it alone. The eccentric millionaire said he had stumbled into a’snake pit without bottom.” Armitage became very close to the Bush family, and would later b ecome involved with the drug trades in Albania and Russia. In the former, he worked closely with the Russian mafia. General Colin Powell was to call him “my white son.” <>
Ted Shackley
Rafael Quinteros worked under Shackley and would later be part of Oliver North's Central American operation which would be called the National Program Office (NPO); it was ultimately run by Vice President George H. Bush. Shackley director of “Operation Phoenix,” which was created by William Colby. Shackley and Climes operated Operation Mongoose from 1962 to 1965, which was targeted at assassinating Fidel Castro. Shackley was a talented and zealous operative who was being groomed by some superiors for high posts in the agency. AS Saigon station chief, he moved to place Operation Phoenix under the military, but it continued to be operated by men with C.I.A. links. Some of the South Vietnamese thugs them employed were so depraved that they devoured their enemies organs. Prior to his arrival in Saigon in 1966, the assassination program was carried out by Military Assistance Command, Vietnam -- Special Operations Group (MACV-SOG) under General John Singlaub. Shackley probably had to find some way to keep the military involved while taking control himself. His next job was cleaning up the mess in the western hemisphere that occurred when Philip Agee spilled numerous secrets.
Shackley then became deputy director of the C.I.A. under George H.W. Bush. Shackley’s drug operation and Project Phoenix was coordinated with the White House through liason officer Eric Von Arbond, who also handled the “40 Committee,” which carried out murders and assassinations. It had an interesting history. Before Dien Bien Phu in 1954, French intelligence ( SDECE) ran drugs out of Southeast Asia to Europe. When the United States assumed French responsibilities in the area, the C.I.A. took over the drug operation. It is unclear how many SDEC people were still used. Also involved was Etienne Tarditi of the Corsican mob and some of his American counterparts. Carmel Offie, a C.I.A. person operating an export-import firm, coordinated operations and worked with another agent, Irving Joseph Brown, the AFL’s top man abroad. He often recruited diplomats to bring in drugs. However, Maurice Rosal Bron, the most famous diplomat ever caught, was recruited by Tarditi. Rosal had a great weakness for young boys, and Tarditi used this Guyatemalan ambassador to the Netherlands as a mule to New York. In 1960, Tarditi, the diplomat, and several others were caught. This was the beginning of the famous French Connetion Case, which became the basis for the 1971 movie. Brown was persona non grata in France and Algeria because Prersident De Gaulle knew the C.I.A. was using drug money to finance the Secret Army Organization, which tried to kill the French president.
The heroin was taken out by the C.I.A.’s Air America choppers and taken off to be refined into heroin. Sometimes the heroin was refined in Vietnamese Pepsi Cola plants, and some insist that these plants were used in Asia for refining heroin long after that. Investigative reporter Carlos Pacelli was to talk to vets who talked “about their personal experiences in loading raw opium or heroin onto Agency-controlled aircraft during the Vietnam conflict.”. The C.I.A. share of the drug profits was largely used to finance Project Phoenix, which handled the political assassination of between 27,000 and 60,000 Vietcong communist leaders in Laos and Cambodia, as well as thousands of innocent people. However, writers friendly to the agency admit only that Laotian tribesmen allied to the US may have been moving drugs and that the C.I.A. disregarded it. John Singlaub took care of the murders, and Secord saw to moving arms and drugs. A great deal of the drugs went to American troops in South Vietnam, and some angry American soldiers shot down Air America aircraft in protest. Santos Trafficante, a mafia don, visited Vang Pao, and saw to getting the drugs to the USA and wider world.
There was little to worry about from US based drug enforcementofficials. Too many of them became quickly seduced by big money and life in the underworld. In 1970, John Ingersoll, head of Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs recruited the C.I.A. to help him root out corruption in the BNDD. He brought in a close friend , Patrick Fuller to act as chief inspector. The joint effort was called Operation TwoFold. Little did he know that the C.I.A. had many reasons to prevent the anti-drug agency from becoming efficient. Several major allies were moving drugs into the United States at that time, and the C.I.A. was also involved in peddling drugs from the Golden Triangle. The operation resulted in no convictions. One of the top C.I.A. people in Operation TwoFold was Evan Parker, who was the first C.I.A. agent to run the Phoenix Program foa assassinating Viewtnamese dissidents, which had been financed by drug money. By 1977, 125 “former” C.I.A. people were working for the DEA ( it now had a new name.) They were busy emasculating the anti-drug agency; however, they did use DEA cover to search out some drug king pins around the world and execute them. As late as 2008, the DEA in South Asia and Afghanistan is thoroughly infiltrated by the C.I.A.. The C.I.A. also stole hundreds of tons of equipment and supplies from the military and moved it to secret storage in Thailand.
Drug money was deposited in the Nugan Hand Bank as well as some of the proceeds of covert arms sales to China. It was founded in Australia in 1973 by ex-Green Beret Michael Hand and Australian lawyer Frank Nugen, a produce salesman. Four officers of the C.I.A. proprietary company Air America were also involved in establishing this bank. It was established around the time when drug money bank, Castle Bank and Trust Company of Nassau, went into eclipse when it was exposed as a receptacle for C.I.A. drug money. The F.B.I. has learned that it was laundering money for mob figures. It was founded former OSS officer Helliwell, who had been part of an operation that included Howard Hunt and had paid informants in opium. His bank laundered drug money that came out of the trade in southeast Asia and it worked closely with the Nationalist Chinese. A lawyer, Helliwell moved drugs into Miami through his Sea Supply, Inc. When the C.I.A. started moving drugs from IndoChina in 1965, their operations meshed with his in moving drugs to the US. His bank also mov ed money to the accounts of Washington politicians to protect its operations.
The Nugyen Hand Bank soon had branches wherever the C.I.A. had large stations. Some called it the “Green Beret Bank” because so many Green Berets were employed by it. Its CEO was retired Rear Admiral Earl Yates, who operated out of Virginia Beach Virginia. Other rankingofficials were retired military people or C.I.A. officers. An active duty army officer Earl Cocke ran its Washington branch. Cocke was to retire as a Brigadier General. He was also tied closely with Project Hammer, an interagency operation moving legitimate and illegitimate funds. He was once the top US representative to the World Bank. Former C.I.A. director William Colby was its lawyer. It laundered drug money and funneled C.I.A. money. Alexander Butterfield, who was responsible for Nixon’s taping system, was a former intelligence officer in Asia who had much knowledge of the bank’s operations. Edwin Wilson became Associated with the bank when it facilitated moving arms into Angola in 1974. By the 1980s, Wilson had a large horse farm in Virginia hunting country and a lavish DC townhouse. In the interim, he had gone into business with Egyptian Defense Minister Mohammed Abu Ghazala, who was also dealing with the US government and the agency.
In 1975, it funded the election defeat of Gough Whitlam’s government in Australia. The bank unsuccessfully tried to frame an anti- organized crime attorney general Frank Walker in New South Wales by opening a Swiss bank account in his name. The bank smuggled marijuana and the Victoria police reported that it moved $110,000,000 worth of heroin in 1978. It also engaged in global arms smuggling.
Some of the bank’s people were also involved in the C.I.A. investment bank, Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald Dillingham and Wong The political payments for the arms deals routed to the United States, often by Merrill Lynch. The Chinese had made a practice of donating heavily to the Republican party, but beginning in 1992 they moved beyond given mere tokens to the Democrats. In that year they channeled a six figure contribution as insurance.
Michael Hand was to play a major role in exploiting oil and gas resources. Beginning in 1967, there was an effort to acquire major nga and petroleum assets in Australia by a consortium of the C.I.A., oilman Nelson Bunker Hunt, Aristotle Onassis, and the Rockefellers. Efforts focused on the Great SouthBasin discovery and plans to monopolize it. Mitsubishi and Mitsui of Japan also became partners. As part of this huge operation, the Rockefellers and Onassis helped Adnan Khashoggi, a very rich man and C.I.A. asset, gain control of the United California Bank and Security National Bank, also of California. They were used in pay-ffs to Japanese politicians and others. The coalition also gained control of several banks in Australian and New Zealand. These banks joined the Nugyen Hand Bank in laundering drug money from both the C.I.A. and Onassis operations in the Golden Triangle.
On January 27, 1980, Nugan was found dead in his Mercedes, 100 miles west of Sydney. It was said to be a suicide, and Hand said his partner had stolen vast sums . Two days later, Hand met with directors, and allegedly said they must do as they were told or "finish up with concrete shoes" and they would be "liable to find their wives being delivered to them in pieces". He then fled Australian authorities, but was able to meet with Bill Casey in Panama several times. The bank was $50 million in debt Thousands of investors in the United States and elselwere lost money. The bank went out of business, and money disappeared from its vaults all ov er the world. Its records were destroyed. Australian authorities found a long list of their own politicians along with the bribes they had received. The bank had ties with over 25 separate drug trading entities. It was found that the bank defrauded US citizens working in Saudi Arabia. These people were encouraged to buy government bonds through the bank, but the money disappeared. Its branch in Chiang Mai, TailandBin the heart of drug countryB was on the same floor of a building where the Drug Enforcement Agency maintained an office.
Australian banks took up some of the slack left by the collapse of the Nugyan Hand Bank, and Richard Armitage, took care of U S financial transactions with them. Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham and Wong (BBRDW) in Hawaii was used for a time as a C.I.A. drug bank. It soon had branch offices in Austgralia and elsewhere in Asia. There was also information on the overseas bank accounts of U Sofficials. George H.W. Bush had accounts under two aliases; Richard Armitage was Mr. Branch; Bill Case was Mr. Denile. President and Mrs. Marcos also had money there.
Showing posts with label Vietnam War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vietnam War. Show all posts
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
An Ugly Secret Unearthed by John McCain’s Primary Opponent
Senator John McCain’s primary opponent, J.D. Hayworth, is talking the 2008 Republican nominees’ many efforts to cover up the fact that the United States left hundreds of POWs behind in North Vietnamese hands. Tea Baggers are wrong about many things, but Hayworth is right on target about the abandonment of those American soldiers and McCain’s sordid role in the cover-up.
The United States signed a peace agreement with the North Vietnamese in Paris on January 27, 1973. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger promised the North Vietnamese $3.25 billion in reconstruction funds if they returned all of our POWs. At one point, the North Vietnamese said they had 368 captives, but they refused to provide a list. Kissinger signed anyhow. Then the North Vietnamese released 591 Americans, including John McCain. The Vietnamese retained the rest as bargaining chips to make sure they got their reparations money. After the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, they held on to French captives until France paid reparations.
On February 2, 1973, President Richard Nixon wrote to Premier Pham Van Dong that we knew for certain that they held at least 317 Americans in Laos, and he complained that they had only released 10. Yet, Nixon told the public that all of the POWs had been released.
Admiral Thomas Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, knew that almost all of the known captives in Laos had not been returned and he said in 1992 that he wanted to resume bombing the north but that Nixon would not go along. He then sent a “back-channel” message about this to ranking officers, saying “Nixon and Kissinger are at it again.”
Ignored Evidence
There were sightings of prisoners and some electronic messages were received. The National Security Administration had a listening post in Saigon until 1975, when it fell. Thereafter, we relied upon the Thai to intercept electronic messages. They passed on much evidence about the POWS, but the authorities in Washington rejected it all because it came from a “third party.” On December 27, 1980, the Thais intercepted a North Vietnamese message that said that American prisoners were being relocated via air from a camp at Attopeu, Laos. Four days later, the CIA Bangkok station reported to Langley about this relocation and about other camps in Laos.
In early, 1981, the Vietnamese told the Reagan administration that it would return the remaining prisoners for $4 billion dollars. Robert Syphrit, a Treasury Secret Service Agent, eventually said he heard the offer being discussed in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. At the time, the Secret Service officer was wiring some equipment and was stunned by what he heard. Present were President Ronald Reagan, Vice President George H.W. Bush, William Casey, Richard Allen, and some cabinet officers. Allen, then national security advisor, testified about the meeting behind closed doors on June 23, 1992. He later retracted his sworn testimony. Somehow journalist Robert Caldwell learned about the meeting and published an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune. He later recanted.
Two Secretaries of Defense, James Schlesinger and Melvin Laird, admitted under oath and on television that the United States left men behind in Vietnam. There have been 1,600 first hand sightings, and many of these people passed lie detector tests. There 14, 000 second hand reports. Satellite photographs show symbols US aviators had been taught to use to identify themselves. An outside consultant was paid to look at all of the photographs, and he said they were just grass and rice formations. But Bob Taylor, a highly regarded Senate staff investigator said,” If grass can spell out people’s names and secret digit codes, then I have a newfound respect for grass.”
In 1981 and 1982, there were two planned rescue missions that were to be led by Delta Force Sgt. Major Eric Hanley. Both were aborted.
As time passed, both the United States government and Vietnam came to share a common policy of denying that there were any remaining U.S. prisoners in Vietnam. The North Vietnamese wanted to gain a place in the community of nations. Some speculated that by 1990 the hostages were probably executed.
McCain’s War with the POW/MIA People
Senator John McCain played the role of the Pentagon’s point man in denying that prisoners had been left behind. Having been a prisoner for five and a half years, he was the perfect figure to lead the effort to keep the lid on this story. Time and again, he was successful in blocking efforts to bring the surface vital pieces of the missing POW story. But who could believe that this hero was not interested in helping these prisoners and their grieving families?
McCain took to attacking POW/MIA advocates, saying they were perpetrators of fraud and profiteers. In the 1970s, Air Force Lt. General Eugene Tighe, once head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was the main uniformed soldier who defended the efforts of the POW-MIA families to learn what happened to the missing soldiers. McCain became Tighe’s bitter enemy, and the general eventually went into retirement. Later, he attacked former Navy Captain Eugene “Red” McDaniel for drafting a letter against lifting the trade embargo on Vietnam. It was signed by fifty former POWs. Red McDaniel has been described as “one of the most tortured Americans in the history of war.” There seems to be no clear reason why McCain is so hostile to the POW/MIA advocates and opponents of Vietnam.
In 1990, at the urging of the families of the missing prisoners, Congress considered “The Truth Bill,” which McCain managed to kill. It was replaced in 1991 by the “McCain Bill, which did nothing to unseal records.
In August, 1991, the Senate Established a Select Committee to look into the problem. Senator John Kerry, who was deeply committed to normalizing relations with Vietnam, was chairman. Senator Bob Smith was vice-chairman, and Senator McCain – who had asked to be appointed chairman--was its driving force. The families demanded that records be unsealed, particularly those regarding a program called Pave Spike.
It involved dropping electronic motion sensors along the Ho Che Minh Trail. They had spikes on them and were supposed to stick in the ground. Their primary purpose was to alert Americans to enemy troop movements. However, they had another use. Americans on the ground could manually enter data, such as authentication numbers. Planes passing overhead would pickup the information from the devices. By 1974, twenty individual authentication numbers had been entered. There is no record that the committee looked into this.
McCain got into an argument with Dolores Alfond, the sister of a missing airman, woman who wanted the files de-classified. The senator, whose conduct was ugly and shocking, reduced her to tears. His approach was that anyone who disagreed with him impugned his honor and patriotism. Biu Tin, a former North Vietnamese colonel and interrogator of prisoners, appeared at the hearings to say that all the POWs had been sent home in 1973. Mc Cain hugged him. Bin Tin had also told an interviewer that McCain had never been tortured.
Ronald Reagan refused to talk to the Select Committee, and the panel never asked Presidents Nixon and Bush to appear. Vice Chairman Smith spoke to Henry Kissinger by telephone, and a footnote on page 91 of the report indicates that Kissinger said there was a time when Nixon considered bombing Vietnam to retrieve prisoners. Senator Mc Cain fought mightily to remove the note, but it remained. Buried in the report is the estimate that between 150 and 600 might retained by the Vietnamese. The official conclusion was that “a small number” could have been left behind. The Kerry committee essentially accept with little complaint the failure of the Pentagon and Langley to provide critical files. At the time, Richard Cheney was Secretary of Defense and Robert Gates was Director of the CIA.
Congress passed the Missing Personnel Act in 1996, but Mc Cain added an amendment that rendered it unenforceable. A group of about 15 POW/MIA supporters awaited McCain in the Russell Senate Office Building on June 20, 1996 to ask him to drop the amendment. When he realized who they were, his face reddened aqnd he exploded in anger, brushing aside a woman in a wheelchair. These folks thought he had assaulted the lady and filed charges with Capitol Police.
Bell Bell, former head of the Office of POW/MIA Affairs, relates how he was in Hanoi in 1993 with McCain and Ambassador Bill Peterson. Bell said that both Mc Cain and Peterson were very interested in reaching an agreement that POW records from the war never be made public.
Also in 1993, Stephen Morris, a Harvard researcher, found the transcript of a Hanoi politburo briefing in May, 1973. General Tran Van Quang reported that the army held 1,205 prisoners, and noted that they had only admitted to having 368. He said that more than that would be returned, but that a large number would be retained until the United States paid reparations. Since the Vietnamese returned 591, this would mean that they retained 614. The government of Vietnam said the document was a forgery, but it did not explain who produced it and was able to place it in the Soviet archives.
The Defense Intelligence Agency has a Special Office fir Prisoners of War and Missing in Action. Critics have long said that its function was to bury leads about what happened to our missing men. In 1990, Colonel Millard Peck asked to be made head of the office. He intended to what went on there and to see that all leads were thoroughly investigated. He resigned and retired on February 12, 1991, calling the office a “black hole” that was involved in “ a cover-up.” He said he was never really in control of the office and noted that officers who “rocked the boat quickly come to grief.”
What Can Be Learned from this Sad Story?
For decades, the mainstream press has ignored this story. Sydney Schanberg, the Pulitizer Prize winning journalist, has consistently followed it in his Newsday and in The Nation and American Conservative. The present piece is grounded in his hard work. He has written about his failures to interest other many other publications in this cause. He concludes that mainstream journalists are simply lazy. But more is involved. There is a clear pattern of ignoring stories and evidence that would anger the powers that be and the Right. The reader might look into what happened to the journalists who exposed the Iran/Contra Scandal to find examples.
This tale also underscores how people like John McCain own to the press for favorable treatment. His days as an irresponsible young pilot wrecking planes and possibly causing a massive carrier fire have not been carefully explored. Though he was the key player in the Keating Five Scandal, an adoring press helped transform his image to that of a fighter for integrity in the Senate. When he ran for president, there was no exploration with ties with criminal elements or the possibility that his intense interest in gambling made him the wrong person to regulate Indian casinos.
J.D. Hayworth probably will not take the Republican nomination away from McCain. To the extent that he focuses on McCain and the POWs, he is making a great contribution to the public discourse and showing why it is sometimes necessary to distrust government. The trouble is that to date, Tea Baggers have very rarely questioned militarism and imperialism.
McCain’s Democratic opponent in the general election should talk about this case. So long as the nation’s chief priority is serving its military machine, there will be too few resources to rebuild here at home. So long as Democrats fail to demand an end to our wars, their domestic agenda is imperiled.
This is the story of a militarist who cares little about what war does to soldiers or to this nation. Voters need to take off their rose-colored glasses and begin to see that reality is quite different from what is presented in the mainstream media and in the so-called conventional wisdom. John Mc Cain has been one of the chief spear carriers for the military industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned about. The economy is remains in serious peril now because of the de-regulatory policies that McCain pushed at the behest of corporate America.
McCain’s conduct in this matter is as old as history, going back to that of the Roman aristocrats who cared little for what happened the ordinary men in the legions. In this case, a man born to privilege suffered in a prisoner of war camp but, once liberated, he commanded the effort to discredit those who sought answers about the Missing in Action and the POWs who were never repatriated. As one might expect, his record on veterans concerns is indifferent to so-so. He was not there when they most needed him. He refused to co-sponsor the Agent Orange Bill in 1984 or the Gulf Veterans Health Care Act of 1998. Today, he is the chief spokesman for continuing the Afghan War indefinitely.
Mc Cain says he does not like war, but American promotes it more. But as the prototypical militarist, John Mc Cain shows too little interest in the cost of war and what it does to its victims.
Some say McCain’s recent postures show he no longere has integrity. Maybe he lacked it all along.
The United States signed a peace agreement with the North Vietnamese in Paris on January 27, 1973. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger promised the North Vietnamese $3.25 billion in reconstruction funds if they returned all of our POWs. At one point, the North Vietnamese said they had 368 captives, but they refused to provide a list. Kissinger signed anyhow. Then the North Vietnamese released 591 Americans, including John McCain. The Vietnamese retained the rest as bargaining chips to make sure they got their reparations money. After the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, they held on to French captives until France paid reparations.
On February 2, 1973, President Richard Nixon wrote to Premier Pham Van Dong that we knew for certain that they held at least 317 Americans in Laos, and he complained that they had only released 10. Yet, Nixon told the public that all of the POWs had been released.
Admiral Thomas Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, knew that almost all of the known captives in Laos had not been returned and he said in 1992 that he wanted to resume bombing the north but that Nixon would not go along. He then sent a “back-channel” message about this to ranking officers, saying “Nixon and Kissinger are at it again.”
Ignored Evidence
There were sightings of prisoners and some electronic messages were received. The National Security Administration had a listening post in Saigon until 1975, when it fell. Thereafter, we relied upon the Thai to intercept electronic messages. They passed on much evidence about the POWS, but the authorities in Washington rejected it all because it came from a “third party.” On December 27, 1980, the Thais intercepted a North Vietnamese message that said that American prisoners were being relocated via air from a camp at Attopeu, Laos. Four days later, the CIA Bangkok station reported to Langley about this relocation and about other camps in Laos.
In early, 1981, the Vietnamese told the Reagan administration that it would return the remaining prisoners for $4 billion dollars. Robert Syphrit, a Treasury Secret Service Agent, eventually said he heard the offer being discussed in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. At the time, the Secret Service officer was wiring some equipment and was stunned by what he heard. Present were President Ronald Reagan, Vice President George H.W. Bush, William Casey, Richard Allen, and some cabinet officers. Allen, then national security advisor, testified about the meeting behind closed doors on June 23, 1992. He later retracted his sworn testimony. Somehow journalist Robert Caldwell learned about the meeting and published an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune. He later recanted.
Two Secretaries of Defense, James Schlesinger and Melvin Laird, admitted under oath and on television that the United States left men behind in Vietnam. There have been 1,600 first hand sightings, and many of these people passed lie detector tests. There 14, 000 second hand reports. Satellite photographs show symbols US aviators had been taught to use to identify themselves. An outside consultant was paid to look at all of the photographs, and he said they were just grass and rice formations. But Bob Taylor, a highly regarded Senate staff investigator said,” If grass can spell out people’s names and secret digit codes, then I have a newfound respect for grass.”
In 1981 and 1982, there were two planned rescue missions that were to be led by Delta Force Sgt. Major Eric Hanley. Both were aborted.
As time passed, both the United States government and Vietnam came to share a common policy of denying that there were any remaining U.S. prisoners in Vietnam. The North Vietnamese wanted to gain a place in the community of nations. Some speculated that by 1990 the hostages were probably executed.
McCain’s War with the POW/MIA People
Senator John McCain played the role of the Pentagon’s point man in denying that prisoners had been left behind. Having been a prisoner for five and a half years, he was the perfect figure to lead the effort to keep the lid on this story. Time and again, he was successful in blocking efforts to bring the surface vital pieces of the missing POW story. But who could believe that this hero was not interested in helping these prisoners and their grieving families?
McCain took to attacking POW/MIA advocates, saying they were perpetrators of fraud and profiteers. In the 1970s, Air Force Lt. General Eugene Tighe, once head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was the main uniformed soldier who defended the efforts of the POW-MIA families to learn what happened to the missing soldiers. McCain became Tighe’s bitter enemy, and the general eventually went into retirement. Later, he attacked former Navy Captain Eugene “Red” McDaniel for drafting a letter against lifting the trade embargo on Vietnam. It was signed by fifty former POWs. Red McDaniel has been described as “one of the most tortured Americans in the history of war.” There seems to be no clear reason why McCain is so hostile to the POW/MIA advocates and opponents of Vietnam.
In 1990, at the urging of the families of the missing prisoners, Congress considered “The Truth Bill,” which McCain managed to kill. It was replaced in 1991 by the “McCain Bill, which did nothing to unseal records.
In August, 1991, the Senate Established a Select Committee to look into the problem. Senator John Kerry, who was deeply committed to normalizing relations with Vietnam, was chairman. Senator Bob Smith was vice-chairman, and Senator McCain – who had asked to be appointed chairman--was its driving force. The families demanded that records be unsealed, particularly those regarding a program called Pave Spike.
It involved dropping electronic motion sensors along the Ho Che Minh Trail. They had spikes on them and were supposed to stick in the ground. Their primary purpose was to alert Americans to enemy troop movements. However, they had another use. Americans on the ground could manually enter data, such as authentication numbers. Planes passing overhead would pickup the information from the devices. By 1974, twenty individual authentication numbers had been entered. There is no record that the committee looked into this.
McCain got into an argument with Dolores Alfond, the sister of a missing airman, woman who wanted the files de-classified. The senator, whose conduct was ugly and shocking, reduced her to tears. His approach was that anyone who disagreed with him impugned his honor and patriotism. Biu Tin, a former North Vietnamese colonel and interrogator of prisoners, appeared at the hearings to say that all the POWs had been sent home in 1973. Mc Cain hugged him. Bin Tin had also told an interviewer that McCain had never been tortured.
Ronald Reagan refused to talk to the Select Committee, and the panel never asked Presidents Nixon and Bush to appear. Vice Chairman Smith spoke to Henry Kissinger by telephone, and a footnote on page 91 of the report indicates that Kissinger said there was a time when Nixon considered bombing Vietnam to retrieve prisoners. Senator Mc Cain fought mightily to remove the note, but it remained. Buried in the report is the estimate that between 150 and 600 might retained by the Vietnamese. The official conclusion was that “a small number” could have been left behind. The Kerry committee essentially accept with little complaint the failure of the Pentagon and Langley to provide critical files. At the time, Richard Cheney was Secretary of Defense and Robert Gates was Director of the CIA.
Congress passed the Missing Personnel Act in 1996, but Mc Cain added an amendment that rendered it unenforceable. A group of about 15 POW/MIA supporters awaited McCain in the Russell Senate Office Building on June 20, 1996 to ask him to drop the amendment. When he realized who they were, his face reddened aqnd he exploded in anger, brushing aside a woman in a wheelchair. These folks thought he had assaulted the lady and filed charges with Capitol Police.
Bell Bell, former head of the Office of POW/MIA Affairs, relates how he was in Hanoi in 1993 with McCain and Ambassador Bill Peterson. Bell said that both Mc Cain and Peterson were very interested in reaching an agreement that POW records from the war never be made public.
Also in 1993, Stephen Morris, a Harvard researcher, found the transcript of a Hanoi politburo briefing in May, 1973. General Tran Van Quang reported that the army held 1,205 prisoners, and noted that they had only admitted to having 368. He said that more than that would be returned, but that a large number would be retained until the United States paid reparations. Since the Vietnamese returned 591, this would mean that they retained 614. The government of Vietnam said the document was a forgery, but it did not explain who produced it and was able to place it in the Soviet archives.
The Defense Intelligence Agency has a Special Office fir Prisoners of War and Missing in Action. Critics have long said that its function was to bury leads about what happened to our missing men. In 1990, Colonel Millard Peck asked to be made head of the office. He intended to what went on there and to see that all leads were thoroughly investigated. He resigned and retired on February 12, 1991, calling the office a “black hole” that was involved in “ a cover-up.” He said he was never really in control of the office and noted that officers who “rocked the boat quickly come to grief.”
What Can Be Learned from this Sad Story?
For decades, the mainstream press has ignored this story. Sydney Schanberg, the Pulitizer Prize winning journalist, has consistently followed it in his Newsday and in The Nation and American Conservative. The present piece is grounded in his hard work. He has written about his failures to interest other many other publications in this cause. He concludes that mainstream journalists are simply lazy. But more is involved. There is a clear pattern of ignoring stories and evidence that would anger the powers that be and the Right. The reader might look into what happened to the journalists who exposed the Iran/Contra Scandal to find examples.
This tale also underscores how people like John McCain own to the press for favorable treatment. His days as an irresponsible young pilot wrecking planes and possibly causing a massive carrier fire have not been carefully explored. Though he was the key player in the Keating Five Scandal, an adoring press helped transform his image to that of a fighter for integrity in the Senate. When he ran for president, there was no exploration with ties with criminal elements or the possibility that his intense interest in gambling made him the wrong person to regulate Indian casinos.
J.D. Hayworth probably will not take the Republican nomination away from McCain. To the extent that he focuses on McCain and the POWs, he is making a great contribution to the public discourse and showing why it is sometimes necessary to distrust government. The trouble is that to date, Tea Baggers have very rarely questioned militarism and imperialism.
McCain’s Democratic opponent in the general election should talk about this case. So long as the nation’s chief priority is serving its military machine, there will be too few resources to rebuild here at home. So long as Democrats fail to demand an end to our wars, their domestic agenda is imperiled.
This is the story of a militarist who cares little about what war does to soldiers or to this nation. Voters need to take off their rose-colored glasses and begin to see that reality is quite different from what is presented in the mainstream media and in the so-called conventional wisdom. John Mc Cain has been one of the chief spear carriers for the military industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned about. The economy is remains in serious peril now because of the de-regulatory policies that McCain pushed at the behest of corporate America.
McCain’s conduct in this matter is as old as history, going back to that of the Roman aristocrats who cared little for what happened the ordinary men in the legions. In this case, a man born to privilege suffered in a prisoner of war camp but, once liberated, he commanded the effort to discredit those who sought answers about the Missing in Action and the POWs who were never repatriated. As one might expect, his record on veterans concerns is indifferent to so-so. He was not there when they most needed him. He refused to co-sponsor the Agent Orange Bill in 1984 or the Gulf Veterans Health Care Act of 1998. Today, he is the chief spokesman for continuing the Afghan War indefinitely.
Mc Cain says he does not like war, but American promotes it more. But as the prototypical militarist, John Mc Cain shows too little interest in the cost of war and what it does to its victims.
Some say McCain’s recent postures show he no longere has integrity. Maybe he lacked it all along.
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