“The truth is not hard to kill, and…a lie well told is immortal.” Mark Twain
I began researching the Vietnam POW mystery in 1991, when the Select Senate Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, headed by Senator John Kerry, was formed. The stated goal was to find out what happened to the prisoners and MIAs who were never returned or accounted for by Hanoi after the peace treaty of January 27, 1973 was signed. At the start, I thought that Kerry might do a serious investigation. What he produced, instead, was a farce. The final Kerry report said that only a handful of American POWs could have been left behind and that it was unlikely that any of them were still alive. He marked the subject closed. The truth was that hundreds had been held back by Hanoi as bargaining chips to ensure that the Vietnamese received the $3 to 4 billion dollars in war reparations that Washington had promised in the peace treaty. The Nixon White House never paid the reparations and the men never came home.
The stories linked below tell the tale of how this disgrace has been covered up for the past four decades. The mainstream press, for reasons unexplained, shied away from the story ignoring the voluminous evidence and offering hollow reasons for their rebuffs. The Pentagon’s recently updated records say 1655 men are still missing and unaccounted for. — Syd Schanberg
• Mc Cain and the POW Coverup
This piece comprises Chapter 6 (Vietnam POW Coverup) in my book “Beyond the Killing Fields.” It first appeared on The Investigative Fund website of The Nation magazine along with supporting evidence links to government documents. The Book in Pictures page for Chapter 6 on this website offers several videos that also document events cited in the piece.
• Did America Abandon Vietnam War POWS? – Part 1
•Did America Abandon Vietnam War POWS? – Part 2
Originally published by Penthouse magazine, in September 1994, this investigative piece was reprinted in two parts by The Village Voice in 2004. The three pieces below also appeared in The Voice.
• War Secrets Senator John McCain Hides
• When John Kerry’s Courage Went MIA
In the summer of 1993, I accompanied the family of a missing pilot to North Vietnam in an attempt to find out what happened to him. The story of The Search for John O’Grady became a 4-part series (August 1-4, 1993).
Back to Vietnam
The Journey Begins
The Witnesses
The Lies
Additionally, in my decade at Newsday I wrote 36 columns about this scandal. Here is the list:
• Will the Vietnam Body Count Ever Add Up? (October 27, 1987)
• From the Soviets, Information on MIAs (December 10, 1991)
• Disclosures Point to an MIA Cover-Up (July 7, 1992)
• The Democrats Are Ducking Vietnam, Too (July 14, 1992)
• On MIAs, the Press Was Lazy or Cowed (July 24, 1992)
• More Bush Deviousness on POWs/MIAs (August 21, 1992)
• The POWs: ‘Buried’ by the U.S. in ‘73 (September 18, 1992)
• The Nixon Presidency: Unraveling, Again (September 25, 1992)
• Let’s Follow the Trail Of The Missing Men (September 29, 1992)
• Bit by Bit, the POW/MIA Facts Emerge (October 9, 1992)
• No More Cover-Ups Now on POW/MIAs (October 20, 1992)
• An Honest Man Says POWs Live in Laos (October 30, 1992)
• Fearing a New Cover-Up on POW/MIAs (November 10, 1992)
• The Sad Scripted Ending to Our POWs’ Story (November 20, 1992)
• Why the Rush to Close the POW Issue? (November 24, 1992)
• The Odd, Pat Story of Col. Pham Duc Dai (December 18, 1992)
• Why No Outrage at Nixon’s Stonewalling? (December 22, 1992)
• It’s Operation Censor in Draft POW Report (January 7, 1993)
• The Footnote Kissinger Wants Expunged (January 8, 1993)
• Report Spins the Facts into Mush (January 15, 1993)
• It’s Time to End POW Cover-Up (April 13, 1993)
• What is the POW Probe Hiding From Us? (August 27, 1993)
• First Get the Truth, Then Forgive (September 3, 1993)
• Spy Papers Back MIA Cover-Up Accounts (September 10, 1993)
• Senator Shuns the Evidence on Four MIAs (October 26, 1993)
• POW Searchers Risk a Deal with Clinton (November 5, 1993)
• The MIA Story: It’s Got to Be Kept Alive (November 16, 1993)
• Washington Plays Softball With Hanoi (December 10, 1993)
• Making ‘Negatives’ in the POW/MIA Case (January 4, 1994)
• The Photo: Shadow or MIA Signal (January 7, 1994)
• A New MIA Tale of Disappearing Images (January 12, 1994)
• Laos May Hold the Key to Missing MIAs (January 14, 1994)
• A Loss for Honesty on the Senate Floor (January 28, 1994)
• POW/MIA facts: Just Too Troublesome (February 1, 1994)
• A Pentagon Stonewall on Field Reports (August 5, 1994)
• Facing Up to the Dirty Secret of Vietnam (June 16, 1995)
