POWs // Current

Former POW shares experiences living with McCain

Clark’s relationship with McCain is distant these days. The two haven’t talked much since McCain was elected a U.S.... more

cassandrajl
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POW guard claims McCain was not tortured

The Republican US presidential candidate John McCain was not tortured during his captivity in North Vietnam, the chief prison... more

maasanova
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The Make-Believe Maverick

McCains early life of recklessness and dishonesty. Called McNasty and punk by his school friends. The good "dirt"... more

wanamoka
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New book exposes little-known facts on presidential candidate John McCain

A just released book about the 2008 Republican presidential nominee takes a critical look at Arizona Sen. John McCain's rise to power and his amazingly successful political career, which continues to draw its inspiration from a questionable military career.

Vetting John McCain is based on carefully researched and meticulously documented public and military records, eyewitness accounts, and on statements McCain made in his book, Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir.

Written by Vietnam veteran and former Green Beret Ted Sampley, the book explores McCain's years at the United States Naval Academy, his early career as a Navy aviator, and his exploits before and after his five and one-half years in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp.

Sampley, a long-time POW/MIA activist delves into McCain's puzzling relationship with his former captors and his apparent abandonment of other Americans left behind in Vietnam as missing or prisoners of war.

Leaders of the POW/MIA movement describe how they fought to have McCain and the U.S. government investigate reported sightings of missing and imprisoned military members, and describe their contemptuous treatment by McCain and his staff.

"My overall impression is that this is the book that needed to be written about McCain 20 years ago, before he became a national political figure," former Rep. John LeBoutillier (R-N.Y.) said. "The public should have known this side of John McCain."

LeBoutillier was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives committee investigating the fate of American POWs and MIAs in Vietnam. His familiarity with the issue, and his personal knowledge of McCain, provides credence to his comments. He said the book contains facts never explored by the mainstream media.

"Obviously, the media has never known or talked about what went on [when McCain was a] POW," LeBoutillier said. "They have embellished for McCain how badly he was treated as a POW. This book will hurt him against some vets. His womanizing, how he treated first wife, will hurt him among women.A just released book about the 2008 Republican presidential nominee takes a critical look at Arizona Sen. John McCain's rise... more

BuddyP
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39 responses

2 months ago

McCain and the POW cover-up

John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to... more

MAFmove
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22 responses

2 months ago

John McCain has a bizarre history of hiding evidence about his fellow POWs

McCain has worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn't return home.

Research support provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute; a longer version of this article is available at nationinstitute.org.

John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn't return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero people would logically imagine to be a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.

Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain's role in it, even as McCain has made his military service and POW history the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War have also turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn't talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.

The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a Special Forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington and even sworn testimony by two defense secretaries that "men were left behind." This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number -- probably hundreds -- of the US prisoners held in Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain.

The Pentagon had been withholding significant information from POW families for years. What's more, the Pentagon's POW/MIA operation had been publicly shamed by internal whistleblowers and POW families for holding back documents as part of a policy of "debunking" POW intelligence even when the information was obviously credible. The pressure from the families and Vietnam veterans finally produced the creation, in late 1991, of a Senate "Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs." The chair was John Kerry, but McCain, as a POW, was its most pivotal member. In the end, the committee became part of the debunking machine.

Included in the evidence that McCain and his government allies suppressed or tried to discredit is a transcript of a senior North Vietnamese general's briefing of the Hanoi Politburo, discovered in Soviet archives by an American scholar in the 1990s. The briefing took place only four months before the 1973 peace accords. The general, Tran Van Quang, told the Politburo members that Hanoi was holding 1,205 American prisoners but would keep many of them at war's end as leverage to ensure getting reparations from Washington.

Throughout the Paris negotiations, the North Vietnamese tied the prisoner issue tightly to the issue of reparations. Finally, in a February 1, 1973, formal letter to Hanoi's premier, Pham Van Dong, Nixon pledged $3.25 billion in "postwar reconstruction" aid. The North Vietnamese, though, remained skeptical about the reparations promise being honored (it never was). Hanoi thus held back prisoners -- just as it had done when the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and withdrew their forces from Vietnam. France later paid ransoms for prisoners and brought them home.

*********CONTINUESMcCain has worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him,... more

goldenways
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5 responses

2 months ago

Former POW says McCain is "not cut out to be President"

"To see McCain resort to playing the POW card when answering legitimate questions, in my mind, cheapens that experience. And... more

slowdive
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7 responses

3 months ago

Former POW says McCain is "not cut out to be President"

John McCain has been exploiting his prisoner of war experience every chance he gets. He has used this story to justify everything from not knowing how many homes he has to his healthcare plan to his marital infidelities to his taste in music. The McCain campaign is even using his POW story in paid ads. But now a veteran who was a prisoner with McCain in Vietnam is explaining loud and clear that being a POW does not qualify McCain to lead our country.

Dr. Phillip Butler knew McCain as a fellow POW. Watch and listen!

We are sure this video will draw an onslaught of right-wing attacks, but we bring it to you because it is our job to continue to convey the truth together and give these issues national attention. As Dr. Butler has said, McCain does not have the temperament to have his finger near the red button. Get this video to everyone you know—friends, family members, coworkers, and especially those who don't share your political views. The video is designed to reach them. Get it on your social networking sites like Digg. And get it to every blog, newspaper, and TV station that has ever overplayed McCain's POW story. It is time to fight back with truth!

The mainstream press has already begun to call out McCain for overusing his POW story. And it's cut across all political persuasions. * "Whether he's deflecting criticism over his health-care plan or mocking a tribute to the Woodstock music festival, Senator John McCain has a trump card: the Hanoi Hilton. — Edwin Chen, Bloomberg * "Noun, Verb, POW" — Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic Monthly * "The McCain campaign's constant invocation of the candidate's POW past is weird bordering on irrational..." — Ana Marie Cox, TIME * "I think they are going to it way too many times." — Howard Fineman, Newsweek

Remember how Joe Biden got the press to refer to Rudy Giuliani as "A noun, a verb, and 9/11"? Well, let's actually take Andrew Sullivan's lead here and get the media to boil McCain down to a similar phrase: "A noun, a verb, and POW." Considering how often the McCain campaign invokes his POW story, isn't that what they're already doing?

http://therealmccain.com/butlerJohn McCain has been exploiting his prisoner of war experience every chance he gets. He has used this story to justify everything... more

Vierotchka
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16 responses

3 months ago

Military past on center stage in McCain run

John McCain's captivity in a Vietnam prison is the defining narrative of his life. Now, as he prepares to accept the Republican presidential nomination here this week, it is an increasingly prominent part of his presidential campaign.

No biography of the former Navy pilot would be complete without an account of his harrowing years as a prisoner of war, the permanent physical damage he suffered from torture and inadequate medical care after his plane was shot down in 1967. The only question is whether it is possible to overplay such a dramatic episode.

In recent weeks, McCain and his aides have invoked his POW years to undercut Democratic nominee Barack Obama's national security credentials, fight back after McCain appeared uncertain about how many houses his family owns, and crush the idea that he cheated by getting questions in advance at a religious forum.

In the Twin Cities this week, the South Carolina GOP is sponsoring a cable TV ad that describes the "home" where McCain was "starved, beaten, tortured and maimed for life" from 1967 to 1973. "So the next time Barack Obama talks about one of John McCain's homes, remember this one."

Yet military service has little impact on most voters, and a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll last month suggests a POW ordeal is even less likely to affect their decisions. Three in five people said military service would make no difference in their choice of a candidate. Four in five said the same about a POW experience.

When he ran in 2000, McCain's captivity was part of his stump speech and a video shown at fundraisers and other events. It is even more central now.

"They were formative experiences," McCain said this week on Fox News Sunday. "We don't know what's around the corner of history, and we have to judge people's character. And my character, a great part of the formation of that character took place in a prison camp."

Sometimes McCain brings up his POW years to devastating effect. In April, after Elizabeth Edwards criticized McCain's health-care plan and said he'd had government health care all his life, the permanently disabled candidate, who walks stiffly and cannot raise his arms, shot back on ABC's This Week: "I did have a period of time where I didn't have very good health care. I had it from another government."

The POW experience also figures in several McCain TV ads. The script for one: "Summer of love — half a world away, another kind of love. Of country. Shot down, bayoneted, tortured. Offered early release, he said no. He had sworn an oath."

Democrats are trying, with care, to hammer home two points about McCain and his POW past. One is that you can respect him without voting for him. The other is that McCain's military career doesn't necessarily qualify him for the White House.

"It's fair to claim that heroic military service shows character. It's another thing to then leap to the idea that you have better judgment about national security," says retired general Wesley Clark, a former NATO commander who made a brief run for the Democratic nomination in 2004.

Political scientist John Mueller, a military affairs expert at Ohio State University, is more blunt. "Exactly how much he learned about national policy while sitting in a prison in Hanoi is terribly limited," he says of McCain. Furthermore, he says, the "grueling experience … might lead to questions about how healthy he is. The Hanoi Hilton logically could be expected to decrease your life expectancy." John McCain's captivity in a Vietnam prison is the defining narrative of his life. Now, as he prepares to accept the... more

TravG73
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0 responses

3 months ago

Leno asks McCain how many houses he has, McCain answers with POW Status

While Ted Kennedy, Michelle Obama and the Obama's daughters were wowing Denver at the DNC, John McCain was sitting down with... more

luckysnorkel
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6 responses

3 months ago

American soldiers shot and killed handcuffed Iraqi prisoners, then dumped the bodies

U.S. soldiers have come forward to admit that they shot and killed Iraqi soldiers that were handcuffed. The soldiers say that they... more

keithponder
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49 responses

3 months ago

I spent years as a POW with John McCain, and his finger should not be near the red button

A fellow Vietnam POW of McCain's warns of the candidate's "quick and explosive temper" and suggests McCain is exaggerating his imprisonment.

John McCain is a long-time acquaintance of mine that goes way back to our time together at the U.S. Naval Academy and as Prisoners of War in Vietnam. He is a man I respect and admire in some ways. But there are a number of reasons why I will not vote for him for President of the United States.

When I was a Plebe (4th classman, or freshman) at the Naval Academy in 1957-58, I was assigned to the 17th Company for my four years there. In those days we had about 3,600 midshipmen spread among 24 companies, thus about 150 midshipmen to a company. As fortune would have it, John, a First Classman (senior) and his room mate lived directly across the hall from me and my two room mates. Believe me when I say that back then I would never in a million or more years have dreamed that the crazy guy across the hall would someday be a Senator and candidate for President!

John was a wild man. He was funny, with a quick wit and he was intelligent. But he was intent on breaking every USNA regulation in our 4 inch thick USNA Regulations book. And I believe he must have come as close to his goal as any midshipman who ever attended the Academy. John had me "coming around" to his room frequently during my plebe year. And on one occasion he took me with him to escape "over the wall" in the dead of night. He had a taxi cab waiting for us that took us to a bar some 7 miles away. John had a few beers, but forbid me to drink (watching out for me I guess) and made me drink cokes. I could tell many other midshipman stories about John that year and he unbelievably managed to graduate though he spent the majority of his first class year on restriction for the stuff he did get caught doing. In fact he barely managed to graduate, standing 5th from the bottom of his 800 man graduating class. I and many others have speculated that the main reason he did graduate was because his father was an Admiral, and also his grandfather, both U.S. Naval Academy graduates.

People often ask if I was a Prisoner of War with John McCain. My answer is always "No - John McCain was a POW with me." The reason is I was there for 8 years and John got there 2 1/2 years later, so he was a POW for 5 1/2 years. And we have our own seniority system, based on time as a POW.

John's treatment as a POW:

1) Was he tortured for 5 years? No. He was subjected to torture and maltreatment during his first 2 years, from September of 1967 to September of 1969. After September of 1969 the Vietnamese stopped the torture and gave us increased food and rudimentary health care. Several hundred of us were captured much earlier. I got there April 20, 1965 so my bad treatment period lasted 4 1/2 years. President Ho Chi Minh died on September 9, 1969, and the new regime that replaced him and his policies was more pragmatic. They realized we were worth a lot as bargaining chips if we were alive. And they were right because eventually Americans gave up on the war and agreed to trade our POW's for their country. A damn good trade in my opinion! But my point here is that John allows the media to make him out to be THE hero POW, which he knows is absolutely not true, to further his political goals.
***continues***A fellow Vietnam POW of McCain's warns of the candidate's "quick and explosive temper" and suggests McCain is... more