The Troubling Story Of John McCain & The Vietnam Prisoners of War Cover-Up

I have long been puzzled by the troubled relationship that John McCain, a war hero by virtue of his five-and-a-half year incarceration in a North Vietnamese POW camp, has had with veterans in general and Vietnam veterans in particular.

The friction has typically been over medical benefits and expanding the GI Bill, but McCain also has a dirty little secret when it comes to his fellow Vietnam era POWs and MIAs.

While he has resorted to bullying journalists by playing the POW Card for years and not just in this presidential election year, his efforts to help the Pentagon hide important information about POWs who arguably were abandoned is shameful.

Well, the lid is about to be blown off of that secret.

Veteran journalist and Southeast Asia hand Sydney Schanberg, author of The Killing Fields, has written “McCain and the POW Cover-Up,” a copiously documented 9,000-word expose appearing in the October issue of The Nation.

First some background: At the official end of the Vietnam War in 1975, some 2,583 Americans still were missing. Their fate remains a powerful issue three-plus decades on as can be seen in the proliferation of POW/MIA flags, bumper stickers and patches. While the Pentagon ostensibly has sought to account for these POWs, the real story is shocking.

While the remains of about 450 POWs who died in Vietnam proper have been repatriated as relations between the U.S. and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam thawed, there has been little movement on POWs who went missing in Cambodia and Laos. A major reason is that these troopers were in those countries on secret missions that the Pentagon still is covering up. (Read this sidebar for one such example.)

The most troubling aspect of the POW saga are persistent reports that some are still alive and many more were left behind.

While I personally believe that very few — if any — may be alive and that POW groups have done survivors’ families a grave disservice by stoking the fires of hope, I also believe that many were left behind. And were executed. Schanberg’s assessment is the same.

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