91,000 AMERICAN SOLDIERS.LEFT BEHIND

More than 83,000 Americans are STILL missing from World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War and the 1991 Gulf War. Add AT LEAST 8,000 MIA/POWs from World War 1.

THAT GIVES A TOTAL OF OVER 91,000 MISSING AMERICAN SERVICEMEN!
AND WE STILL HAVE NO "OFFICIAL" MIA STATS FOR THE "COLD WAR ERA". 

SOURCE FOR THE ABOVE STATEMENT?
U.S. Department of Defense , Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office

HERE ARE THEIR STATISTICS:  

~ Today, more than 73,000 Americans remain unaccounted for from WWII.

~ More than 7,500 Americans remain unaccounted for from the Korean War.

~ Today, more than 1,600 Americans remain unaccounted for from the Vietnam conflict.

~ Today, 126 service members remain unaccounted for from the Cold War.

 ~ The current number of personnel missing from operations in Iraq and the Persian Gulf being actively pursued by DPMO is five - two service members from Desert Storm, and three DoD contractors from Iraqi Freedom. 

~ LIBYA
DPMO continues to pursue the fullest possible accounting of one serviceman lost in 1986 during Operation El Dorado Canyon in Libya.

THAT TOTAL GIVEN BY THE D.O.D. DOES NOT INCLUDE WORLD WAR 1.
ADD AT LEAST 8,000 MIA/POWs FROM THAT WAR, STILL ON FOREIGN SOIL.

THE DATA CITED ABOVE IS THE "OFFICIAL" COUNT BY OUR GOVERNMENT, BUT "OFFICIAL" COUNTS ARE OFTEN MISLEDAING, AS YOU WILL SEE BELOW.

An Examination of U.S. Policy Toward POW/MIAs
By the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Republican Staff Thursday, May 23, 1991 
"The interim conclusions are very disturbing. After examining hundreds of documents relating to the raw intelligence, and interviewing many families and friends of POW/MIAs, the Minority Staff concluded that, despite public pronouncements to the contrary, the real, internal policy of the U.S. government was to act upon the presumption that all MIAs were dead.

As a result, the minority Staff found, any evidence that suggested an MIA might be alive was uniformly and arbitrarily rejected, and all efforts were directed towards finding and identifying remains of dead personnel, even though the U.S. government's techniques of identification were inadequate and deeply flawed.In each case, the same dismaying scenario appears: On the Communist side, the regimes denied holding U.S. prisoners, contrary to may credible reports, while in fact they were holding the U.S. POW/MIAs as slave laborers and as reserve bargaining chips to get diplomatic recognition and financial assistance. On the U.S. side, our government downplayed or denied the report of POW/MIAs, and failed to take adequate steps to prove or disprove the reports, while elements in our government pursue policies intended to make diplomatic recognition and financial support of the revolutionary regimes possible."
CONCLUSION?
INTENTIONALLY AND KNOWINGLY LEFT BEHIND!

No man left behind?
The United States Senate Subcommittee Report on Prisoners of War documents with irrefutable evidence that American POWs were knowingly left behind by the federal government in communist prison camps at the end of World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Indochina and the Gulf War, all with the full knowledge and approval of every sitting president at that time and every president thereafter.


Ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Senator Jesse Helms discovered during the examination of U.S. policy toward POW/MIAs that our government had been knowingly leaving our sons behind in the hands of those communists that he had so ardently fought against. He wrote about the on-going investigation of the issue, saying that "It was not, and was never intended to be, a search for specific POW/MIAs." 
But rather, Helms continued in his report, "it was an attempt to ascertain whether the agencies of the U.S. government responsible for POW/MIAs were doing the job they were supposed to do—that is, to find any POW/MIAs who might still be alive." 

AT THE END OF WORLD WAR 2, DWIGHT EISENHOWER ORDERED THAT SOMETHING CALLED "OPERATION KEELHAUL" BE PUT INTO EFFECT.
[See: http://havacuppahemlock1.blogspot.com/2013/03/operation-keelhaul-hidden-allied.html]

 ALLIED FORCES TURNED MILLIONS, AN ESTIMATED 2 TO 5 MILLION, OF REFUGEES OVER TO SOVIET TROOPS, KNOWING THEY WOULD EITHER BE KILLED, OR SERVE OUT THEIR LIVES IN RUSSIAN GULAGS, AND THIS NUMBER INCLUDED OVER 20,000 AMERICAN TROOPS, AND 30,000 BRITISH TROOPS THAT EISENHOWER AND HIS BRITISH COUNTERPARTS ABANDONED TO THEIR FATE IN RUSSIA

 NEITHER ALLIED NATION INVOLVED IN THIS WILL OPEN THE FILES OF THIS ALLIES-CREATED HOLOCAUST AFTER 60 YEARS!
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUESTS MADE TO THE U.S. GOVERNMENT ARE DENIED, CITING "NATIONAL SECURITY RISKS".
AMERICAN TROOPS PERISHED INSIDE RUSSIA WONDERING WHY RESCUE NEVER CAME.
WE WOULD KNOW NOTHING OF THIS HAD NOT A FEW SURVIVED.

OPERATION KEELHAUL ACCOUNTS FOR 20,000+  MISSING FROM WORLD WAR 2.
THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF OTHERS.

WE SHALL NEVER FORGET
Remembering Those We Left Behind 

Navy Captain Eugene Baker "Red" McDaniel, who survived 6 years as a POW in North Vietnam, sums up the issue: "I was prepared to fight, to be wounded, to be captured, and even prepared to die, but I was not prepared to be abandoned."

McDaniel continues:
 “After having asked for over 3,700 men, they gave us their list, the Vietnamese list of 591, which I happened to be one of. We accepted that list and came home in four groups. 591 men. And on April 13, 1973, and this is public record, the US government said, ‘they’re all dead!’. Well, my question is, what happened to those other 3,109 that we asked for between March of 73 and April 73, when we declared them all dead. What happened to those men?”

And, why would the United States government declare American prisoners of war dead less than 21 days after US sources reported to UPI that as many as 100 were still alive (in Laos), and after the United States originally asked for 3,700 men?

BUT THOUSANDS FROM THE VIETNAM WAR ERA WERE LEFT BEHIND.
EVEN RONALD REAGAN ADMITTED THAT!
[See: "Reagan Admitted Hundreds of POWs Left Behind," NewsMax.com, September 2002, p. 50. ]

[Another revealing story appeared in the article "Robert Garwood Says Vietnam Didn't Return Some American POWs" by Bill Paul in Wall Street Journal, and another documentation of those abandoned in Vietnam on "60 Minutes", "Dead or Alive" produced by Monica Jensen-Stevenson.]

ABANDONED, LEFT BEHIND!

This is what happened to over 30,000 American servicemen, beginning in WW I and continuing through the first Gulf War. 

With the exception of the Gulf War, all were left behind in the hands of Communist regimes, whose brutality exceeded by any measure that demonstrated by the Nazis in World War II. 

THEY WERE NOT ABANDONED BY THEIR IMMEDIATE COMRADES IN ARMS, BUT BY THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT!

U.S. SENATOR HERBERT H. KOHL wrote in 1992: "[Military] service is based on a belief in, and trust of, their government: that it will train them well, equip them superbly, and do everything it reasonably can to protect them and care for them. It is the credibility of those promises which the POW/MIA issue strains. For if, after all, the government does not keep its promises, then why should our soldiers honor their pledge to follow orders, even at the risk of their own lives.

 This Report [Final Report of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs] demonstrates that the government has not kept its promises to those who served in Vietnam. Even more disturbing, is the evidence which suggests - strongly suggests - that the government failed to keep its promises to those who served in World War II, the Korean War, and the Cold War as well."

As explained by Colonel Millard Peck, who ran the DIA POW/MIA office 1989-1991, 

   "The issue is being manipulated by unscrupulous people in the Government, or associated with the Government . [They] have maintained their distance and remained hidden in the shadows. This issue is being manipulated and controlled at a higher lever, not with the goal of resolving it, but more to obfuscate the question of live prisoners, and give the illusion of progress through hyperactivity. From what I have witnessed, it appears that any soldier left in Vietnam, even inadvertently, was, in fact, abandoned years ago, and that the farce that is being played is no more than political legerdemain done with "smoke and mirrors", to stall the issue until it dies a natural death." 

SO MANY HAVE COME FORWARD ON THE TRUTH OF THIS THAT THOSE IN THE PENTAGON AND ON CAPITOL HILL SHOULD HAVE DIED OF SHAME, GUILT, REMORSE , OR MAYBE SHOULD HAVE BEEN HANGED AS TRAITORS TO AMERICA LONG AGO!

THE ABANDONMENTS DURING WORLD WAR 1

STATISTICS VARY REGARDING MIA/POWs FROM WORLD WAR 1;
ONE SITE LISTS POW/MIA AT 7,470.SOME SITES ESTIMATE AS MUCH AS 4 TIMES THAT NUMBER.

In 1920, shortly after WW I, Russia experienced a devastating famine.
Many were dying of starvation.

Just prior to this famine, the Russians had denied holding ANY American captives. 

When the Russians asked for food and medical assistance, a sharp U.S. official gave them an offer they could not refuse: "release the American prisoners and we will send you food. "

Russian officials agreed to return the Americans when the food shipments commenced. We started shipping food, and they released 100 men. 

Then, they stopped. 

No more were released, but the U.S. continued shipping food, ignoring the Russian failure to release ALL hostages.
 The official position pronounced by the State Department was that no American servicemen were still held captive.

THAT WAS A LIE!

In 1921, the New York Times reported that:
the American prisoners held by the Soviet Government of Russia have been told by the Bolsheviks that they are held because the United States government has not made vigorous demands for their release .
"Captives' Release Repeatedly Sought," The New York Times, Apr 18, 1921.

PLEASE, READ MORE HERE:
http://www.ojc.org/powforum/examin/ovrvw01.htm

I can understand the problems of data-gathering for this war.
65 million from 30 nations fought in it.
Over 6 million Allied troops died.
"Missing in Action" was a new phrase, but we really ought to have concrete facts on the STILL missing!

MORE ABANDONED AFTER WORLD WAR 2

Following the victory in Europe in 1945, both Presidents Roosevelt and Truman sent directives to U.S. command in Europe that said there would be "no criticism of treatment [of American POWs] by the Russians" and that there would be "no retaliatory action to Russian failure to cooperate," which referred to Russian failure to give the United States access to American POWs in the German POW camps the Russians had captured. 

As a result, only 4,165 American prisoners were released, those from the one camp visited BY THE AMERICAN MILITARY/GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVES (the POW camp at Reisa).

The remaining KNOWN 21,000 Americans prisoners in German camps taken over by the Russians were abandoned to the Russians. 

They were shipped to Russia to fates worse than death. 

Records were then falsified by U.S. and British intelligence in an effort to hide what had happened. 

Following the Korean "Conflict", Colonel Philip J. Corso, who was on Eisenhower's White House staff and was in charge of the POW issue, stated in Senate and House hearings in 1992 and 1996 that Eisenhower made the decision to leave the missing American POWs behind after he, Corso, had explained to Eisenhower that thousands were missing, that US intelligence knew they had been shipped to Russia and China, and that achieving their return would be difficult. 

U.S. policy was clear, he explained.
"We couldn't put pressure on the Soviet Union or the satellites, we couldn't - they had our prisoners and we couldn't put pressure on them. That was it. Our policy forbids us from doing it. If you did it, you were disobeying national policy."   

In implementing this policy, U.S. executive agencies - State, Intelligence, and Defense - subsequently denied any American POWs were left behind. This is still taking place today. 

EISENHOWER ESTIMATED THE RUSSIA-BOUND AMERICAN POWs AT 25,000!
HE KNEW! 

"General Eisenhower was aware that Americans were being held prisoner in the Soviet Union just weeks after the end of the war. In a secret message dated May 9, 1945, sent to General George Marshall in Washington, he estimated the number of prisoners being held at 25,000. "

IKE WROTE THEM ALL OFF!

THE KOREAN "CONFLICT"

American POW’s taken from the Korean War were also transported to the Soviet Union. This fact was confirmed in a secret memo to the US Embassy in Moscow from then Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, advising the Soviets that the United States was indeed aware that U.S. POW’s from Korea were being held INSIDE the Soviet Union.

Also verifying this is a "Combined Reconnaissance Activities Report," dated February 24, 1953, as well as a CIA report dated July 15, 1951, which also mentions 78 American POW’s from Korea being held in a camp in China.

Former Defense Intelligence Agency Director Daniel Graham had this to say, “The Soviets would come with a list of specialties and look and pick among the POW’s being held in North Korea and then ship them out.”

Shortly after a special Senate Select Committee for POW/MIA Affairs was established to investigate the missing American POW/MIAs issue in late 1991, information from a top-level Czech official who had defected to the United States in 1968 was brought to their attention. 

This source, Major General Jan Sejna, had been personally involved in sanitizing the Korean War hospital that Corso (see above) had targeted in North Korea. 

Corso explained that the hospital was built for the purpose of conducting medical experiments on captured Americans. The Americans were used as guinea pigs for testing the effects of high radiation exposure.and in testing the effects of chemical and biological warfare agents in the development of an important new class of chemical warfare agents.

They were also used as live cadavers upon which the Korean military doctors could practice various operations such as amputations and organ removal. Finally, they were used in graduated torture experiments to determine the limits of psychological and physiological "stress" the Americans could endure. 

Several thousand Americans were killed in the North Korean hospital.
WE KNOW THAT!

Sejna monitored the Czech participation and the operational results. He also had a 20-year record following his defection in providing valuable information to U.S. and allied intelligence. At the time he defected, 1968, and through the end of the Vietnam War, U.S. intelligence NEVER questioned him regarding American POW/MIAs, notwithstanding many obvious reasons for doing so. 

When Sejna's possible appearance before the U.S. Senate began to surface, the response of the various executive agencies was not to learn what Sejna knew, but to discredit him, silence him, bury his testimony. 

None of this was a case of examining what Sejna had to say and then rejecting it as not credible. No, in all cases none of those involved wanted to know. Their only mission was to silence Sejna, discredit him so that no one would get interested in what he knew, and seek the help of enemy foreign intelligence services who also would not want Sejna's information to draw attention. 

In 1996, Congressman Bob Dornan asked Sejna to testify before Dornan's House committee, which Sejna agreed to do. 

This is when a 1992 DIA memo surfaced. It was signed by DIA director, Lt. Gen. Clapper. The memo stated that when Sejna's knowledge about what happened to American POWs began to surface, Sejna was subjected to a 4-hour hostile polygraph, during which he "showed no signs of deception."  

HE WAS TELLING THE TRUTH!     

Another internal DIA memo surfaced in which the intelligence directorate of DIA offered to help debrief Sejna and corroborate his testimony. 

The memo was written by a senior analyst who had worked with Sejna on several projects, including international terrorism, and knew how open he was and how valuable the information he had provided over twenty years had been. 

Their offer, needless to say, was not accepted.

Nor did Sejna hesitate in fulfilling his decision to testify before Dornan's committee about what he knew after he was threatened three times that he would be killed if he testified.

 The last threat came before he left home on the very morning he was to testify. 

Slightly less than a year following his testimony, he was dead. 

WHAT CAME OF HIS TESTIMONY?

NOTHING!  

CIA intelligence reports dated March 9, 1988, indicates that at least some American POW’s from the Korean War may still be alive.

 It states, “11 Caucasians, possibly American prisoners, were seen on a farm north of P’Yongyang.”

WHY HAVEN'T WE GONE TO GET THEM?

THE UNDECLARED WAR IN VIETNAM
HOW MANY BRANDED AS DESERTERS WERE NOT DESERTERS?

MIA, POW, "KIA, NO BODY RETRIEVED"...THOUSANDS LEFT BEHIND!

What are the chances that American POW’s from Vietnam were also shipped to the Soviet Union and CHINA?

Testimony before the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs in 1991 by a former Soviet KGB official and a former Vietnamese General, suggests American POW’s were interrogated by the Soviets.

Committee member, Senator Robert Smith, explains the significance of this admission, “All the American POW’s who came home, never gave any indication that they were ever interrogated by Russians. So, if that’s the case, where are all the ones who were?”

Smith and the Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA affairs, Senator John Kerry, were appointed to a joint US/Russian Commission to comb KGB files for answers regarding the fate of American prisoners from World War II, Korea and Vietnam. 

IT MAY SHOCK YOU TO KNOW THAT HUNDREDS OF FAMILY MEMBERS OF MISSING SERVICEMEN AS WELL AS OTHERS IN THE MILITARY AND IN CONGRESS HAVE LONG SAID THAT JOHN KERRY AND JOHN McCAIN ARE THE MOST VOCAL AND THE BIGGEST OBSTACLES AGAINST RECOVERY OF AMERICA'S MISSING IN ACTION AND UNACCOUNTED-FOR POWs! 

Evidence   

Former President George Bush Sr., “There’s no hard evidence of prisoners being alive.”

Former Congressman and former consultant to the Defense Intelligence Agency, Bill Hendon, strongly disagrees with the former President as he furiously lists cases of documented sightings to the Senate Committee: “49 in North Vietnam, 200 in North Vietnam, 4 in South Vietnam, 184 in Vietnam, 70 to 80 in North Vietnam, a ‘truck load’ in North Vietnam, 2 in Laos, ‘a group’ in North Vietnam, 50 in Laos, 230 in Vietnam from the CIA, and 219 more in Vietnam from a Vietnamese doctor who testified that he took care of them.”

Testifying before then Senator Al Gore and the Senate Rules Committee in 1991, Former Congressman Hendon stated that evidence is overwhelming that American POW’s are still alive. In his testimony, he quoted as saying, “Many of the reports are, I believe, highly reliable. 50 in Laos, double-polygraph confirmed, 6 in Laos, double-polygraph confirmed. The accounts are highly specific as to location.”

In a futile attempt to buy freedom for America’s POW’s, a then-secret letter dated February 1, 1973, was sent to the North Vietnamese Prime Minister from Henry Kissinger. 

The letter stated that the United States was willing to pay $3.2 billion dollars over five years for returned POWs. 

While this offer was being made by the Executive Branch, Congress was busying itself investigating the torturous treatment received by our servicemen at the hands of their Communist captors.  

April 6, 1973: Angered by reports of torture, the US Senate voted 88-3 to bar any financial aid to North Vietnam. 

April 12, 1973: The Pentagon declared ALL American POW’s dead.

EYEWITNESSES, POWs WHO RETURNED TO THE U.S, KNOW BETTER!

Many former American POW’s testified to being tortured any number of ways throughout a given day FOR YEARS ON END. 

BUT THEY HAD MANAGED TO SOMEHOW SURVIVE, AND THEY KNEW OTHERS, UNACCOUNTED FOR, HAD ALSO SURVIVED!

Some who would much later testify before Congress had been POWs for 8 long years!

Many of them also testified that they knew of other POWs who had NOT been released, WHO WERE ALIVE WHEN THEY WERE RELEASED BY VIETNAM! 

The ruling held, ALL AMERICAN POWs ARE OFFICIALLY DEAD!
BUT NOW WE KNOW THAT WASN'T TRUE!

Former National Security Agency analyst Jerry Mooney says the United States government knew from the beginning that it would be difficult to get all American POW’s returned home because the Vietnamese considered them to be ‘war criminals’, not ‘prisoners of war’. Mr. Mooney also says the US intelligence community, behind the scenes, was keeping track of American POW’s. He is further quoted as saying, “While the overt side of government, the policy side, had declared them dead just to calm down the American people, the highest national requirement, from the highest levels of government, remained on the books in the intelligence community. And that requirement was to: ‘Identify, Search for, Locate and Bring Home’ these POW’s.” 

THE COLD WAR ERA

Similarly, there has been no attempt to identify or count those captured during the 40-year Cold War. These missing Americans includes not only those captured while on missions in or over enemy territory but also hundreds if not thousands of men and women who were abducted in neutral and friendly countries and then taken away behind the Iron and Bamboo curtains. These captives may number in the thousands, but no one in Washington has cared enough to even try and add up the totals. 

NO "official" count for MIAs.

Over the years, historians, researchers and independent journalists have made a compelling case that, during the Cold War, thousands of U.S. POWs were moved among Soviet, Chinese and North Korean labor camps, where they toiled and died under the worst conditions.

BECAUSE OF "NATIONAL SECURITY", OUR GOVERNMENT SAYS, THEIR NAMES MAY NEVER BE RELEASED!

Throughout the years, the message to the American public has remained the same; there is no hard evidence the American POW’s are still being held. However, the operational side of government was directed to keep looking and keep identifying POW’s.  

Some former intelligence chiefs have shared Mooney’s belief that American prisoners are still alive in SE Asia.  

October 1985: Former CIA Director, William Casey, told a group of five US Congressmen, “Everyone knows they’re there, but there’s no public support to get them out. What do you want, another hostage crisis? We messed up. It’s my job to see that we don’t mess up again.”

October 9, 1985: Former National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan, Robert McFarland, made this remark before a luncheon group in New York, “There have to be Americans there. There is more that we ought to be doing.”

June 1985: The former head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency publicly stated his belief that as many as 50 to 60 American POW’s are being held in SE Asia.

In 1986, a Pentagon Commission concluded that American prisoners are still being held as "there is a large volume of evidence." 

In a recent interview, Rep. Bob Dornan recalls his trip to Hanoi in an attempt to win the freedom of America’s POW’s. He quotes himself as saying to the Vietnamese officials, “Let’s talk turkey about getting our guys out. You know what one of the Communists said to me? And I’ve never said this on camera before – he said, ‘you raise a million and then we’ll talk’. That’s what he said to me and I’ll polygraph on it!”

Former Air Force Intelligence Officer, Lt. Col. Al Shinkle, has tracked American POW’s in Laos for two decades. 
He says he has discovered 324 of the 500 pilots shot down over Laos were still alive.

He details a conversation he had with the Laosian Ambassador to Thailand in December 1985, “I asked him if they did indeed have American prisoners of war and he said yes, we have them in large numbers. When I asked him if they were available for recovery, he said yes, they were for sale.”

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan declared the POW/MIA issue would be America’s highest priority. In a letter to a POW family member dated May 19, 1982 from the President, he states, “I know there is a perception that little action is taking place, but this is because the operations that are going on are of a covert nature.”

VICTIM OF THE COVER-UP

Seventeen years after American involvement ended, the Vietnam War claimed yet another victim. Marion Shelton was the matriarch of the POW/MIA movement. 
Her husband, Col. Charles Shelton, was known to have been captured alive when his plane went down over Laos in April 1965. To this day, he is the only official prisoner of war listed by the United States government.  
Unanswered questions and 25 years of waiting to be reunited with her husband proved too much for Marion Shelton to bare. She had lost faith in her government. Washington, she believed, had failed her.  
Feeling hopeless and alone, Marion Shelton took her own life in September 1990.

FAMILIES LIED TO!

In 1986, Dr. William Maples, a Physical Anthropologist at the University of Florida, told members of Congress that a number of Anthropologists had examined several similar sets of remains and agreed, they were unidentifiable.

Why then, did the Army tell family members that these were the remains of their loved ones when they were not identifiable?

Jerry Dennis sent his six-foot, Caucasian brother off to war, but was surprised when the Army returned the remains of a five-foot-five Oriental. 

He says, “The helicopter Mark was in uses JP4 or JP5 unleaded fuel. This body had been blown-up with American grenades and burned with regular gasoline. Dog tags pinned to the blanket wrapped around the body were burned by simply holding a book of matches underneath them.”  

Cover-Up  

Senator John Kerry (D-MA): “Has anyone ever held you back or restrained your efforts to find somebody, or diverted information that you have provided or covered-up any information that you have provided?”

Bill Bell, from the Pentagon’s POW/MIA Office in Hanoi: “Yes Sir.”

When a picture turned-up in 1991 of three men that some thought were American POW’s, the hopeful family members were grateful to hear that three sets of fingerprints were taken off the photo. However, when each of the families requested the fingerprint card from the files the Army keeps, they were told the cards had mysteriously vanished from all offices throughout the various levels of government.

There has been a cover-up by elements within the United States government.

What is the reason for it?

When did it start and why?

John Sommer, the Executive Director of the American Legion says the Communists have been more forthcoming with information than the Pentagon. In his testimony, he is quoted as saying, “We actually get more hard information from the Vietnamese than we have from the Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense or any other American entity involved with this issue.” 

Marine Private Bobby Garwood, a POW returned in 1981, wasn't given a hero’s welcome by any measure.

After he testified to being just one of 70 or 80 other American POW’s still being held, he was arrested and charged with aiding and abetting the enemy. 

One of the most deplorable, yet representative examples of the ongoing cover-up is what happened to Bobby Garwood, who was captured while on a "secret" mission for a U.S. general in intelligence.

He did not return from the mission, became MIA only a week prior to his scheduled return to the States, and was soon listed as a deserter.

Evidently no one wanted to tell what really happened and explain why he was sent into a known hostile region without an armed escort.

Later, U.S. intelligence painted him as a deserter and instigated a special forces mission to assassinate him.

Fortunately, it was not successful. 

When informed in 1978 that Garwood was still a prisoner, the State Department discarded the message.

Only when Garwood managed to get a second message out in 1979 was he released. 

He managed to slip a note to a Finnish executive who was in Hanoi. 

The Finn made the note public and Garwood was released to avoid embarrassment. 

Upon his return, the Marine Corps put him on trial for behavior unbecoming a prisoner of war and seized all his back pay. Then they prevented those who could attest to his prisoner status, such as the former North Vietnamese official Colonel Tran Van Loc, from telling the truth at the trial. 

Former POW Colonel Ted Guy later explained, "Garwood had to be discredited so that he would not be believed."
Among other things, Garwood had personally witnessed roughly 100 American POWs still in captivity in Vietnam in 1979, as reported by the Wall Street Journal's Bill Paul in a feature news story in 1984. 

"The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Gen. Tighe, tried to stop the court martal after Garwood was released. He believed Garwood was telling the truth and that Garwood should be carefully debriefed because of his valuable knowledge about missing Americans.

But, no one else in the government wanted to know what Garwood knew, especially the Marine Corps brass. Later, after he retired, Tighe himself debriefed Garwood and attested to the reliability and importance of Garwood's knowledge. Then, the government did its best to discredit Gen. Tighe. "

WHY?

Four years later Tighe testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee and repeated that "living prisoners remained in captivity in Indochina.  The intelligence that led him to that conclusion, Tighe told the committee, 'was among the most detailed of human reporting I have ever seen ....  It is high quality human intelligence.' "

THE "GULF WARS", 1991-2015
THE FIRST GULF WAR

You may read that there are "only three" of our troops still MIA in Iraq from Bush Sr's first Gulf War.
That's a LIE!

There are very many DISPUTED remains that were returned to families who KNOW those remains are NOT their loved ones!

There are those listed as "KIA" whose bodies were NEVER recovered, MANY!

Have a look at this website that documents all this:
GULF WAR POW/MIA, KIA/BNR, and ReturneesU.S. Military, Civilians and Foreign Nationals

Read about one wife's struggle to have her husband's REAL remains found and turned over to her:

Her story leads us to NINE other grieving families who NEVER got their loved ones' remains.

"Out of a crew of fourteen, five were identified, and the other nine families had 
to accept 'apportioned remains'. There were no returned bodies "

HOW MANY MORE?

A March 18 (1991) Newsweek article reported that eleven Green Berets disappeared during scouting and sabotage missions in Iraq, although the Pentagon has not listed them
 on MIA reports and refuses to discuss the event.

The soldiers were part of special operations forces that infiltrated Iraq during Operation Desert Storm to locate missile launchers, pinpoint air targets, and steal enemy
equipment, Newsweek reported.

IRAQ/AFGHANISTAN

I sat once for almost 10 hours listening to 3 young men just back from Iraq.
They were high school friends and all had been in Iraq at about the same time.
TWO of them had, for months, been assigned to helping load the remains of fallen comrades for return to America from Iraq.
The other had wound up in Germany for a year before he shipped home, where he often watched the flag-draped coffins of men who had died at military hospitals in Germany get loaded.

ALL THREE SAID THE SAME THING:
"AS MANY BODIES AS WE SAW LOADED EVERY DAY, THE NUMBERS GIVEN BY THE D.O.D. HAVE TO BE FAKE!
FIGURE IT OUT!
IF WE EACH SAW 20 TO 50 EVERY DAY FOR 2 OR 3 YEARS, ALL OF US AT DIFFERENT LOCATIONS, WHAT WOULD THE REAL COUNT BE?
WHY THE HELL AREN'T THEY TELLING THE TRUTH?"

Remember when, briefly, most news agencies picked up on the online death toll from the Gulf wars being over 72,000?
It was because the Department of Veterans Affairs had posted that on one of their own websites!

HERE IS ONE OF THOSE REPORTS, BUT THERE WERE MANY:
.<BEGIN QUOTE>

(August 19, 2008) -- According to an official Department of Veterans Affairs Gulf War Information Systems Report dated August 2007, more than THREE AND A HALF MILLION US troops who took part in the Gulf War since 1990 are dead or disabled.

On page 7 of the official report under the title Compensation and Pension Statistics August 2007, on line six of the chart the total Veterans who have been granted "Claims Granted Service Connection" is 1,201,104 Gulf War Veterans.

A total of 1,603,743 claims have been filed (line 3).

The trillions of dollars cost of this illegal war in financial terms is one thing, in regard to killing and disabling millions of US citizens, it is entirely another matter.

However, how many Gulf War Veterans are dead?

Statistics on Page 6 of the official report are shown below with the added DEAD GULF WAR VETERANS line: 
Category Conflict Theater Deployed Era Total 
Service Members: 6,838,541

Veteran Deaths; 74,871

Estimated Living Veterans: 4,525,866

DEAD GULF WAR VETERANS; 2,312,67

The official Department of Veterans Affairs report can be found at 
http://www1.va.gov/rac-gwvi/docs/GWVIS_Aug2007.pdf  

[NOTE: DON'T BOTHER GOING TO THAT SITE, IT HAS BEEN REPLACED, WITH AN ERROR MESSAGE GIVEN, BUT OTHER SITES DID COPY IT AND IT IS AVAILABLE ONLINE.]

The VA report defines the listed categories as follows:

CONFLICT -- Desert Shield / Desert Storm Other Deployments in the 1st Year Only Starting 2nd Year from 8/2/90 to 7/31/91

THEATER Gulf War Region 8/1/91-Present   
DEPLOYED -- CONFLICT + THEATER. Active Duty and Activated Reserve Forces Only from 8/2/90 - to Present   

ERA -- Service Members Not Deployed in the Gulf War region from 8/2/90 - Present
Service Members All Veterans who served on or after August 2, 1990, the start of the Gulf War.   

Veteran Deaths -- Veterans who died while listed in VBA’s Compensation and Pension Master Record (CPMR) and the Beneficiary Identification and Records Locator Subsystem (BIRLS).   

Estimated Living Veterans -- Service Members in active service on or after August 2, 1990 and who have not died.   

What is confusing is the enormous difference between the deaths listed amongst the deployed versus the non-deployed troops. 

How is it that three times more troops are dying and being disabled outside of the Gulf War region?  

We believe this is because the troops are immediately evacuated out of the Gulf when they are injured.

The VA report indicates that 2,312,675 US troops who were on active duty between August 1990 and August 2007, have died. 
Clearly millions of soldiers on active duty in and from 1990 are not dead of old age or natural causes by 2007. 

We believe the injured troops are rushed back to the US before they are dead.  
Injured troops naturally are no longer on active duty, conveniently they die when they are no longer active and not counted amongst those "dying in Iraq."

Evacuated troops are conveniently not counted as dead in the Gulf or Iraq, because they died in transit or died once they were back in the good old USA." 

<END QUOTE>

THE VETERANS AFFAIRS PEOPLE HAD ANSWERS READY.
TOTAL DEAD INCLUDED ALL WHO HAD DIED, SOME OF "NATURAL CAUSES", SOME FROM "ACCIDENTS", SOME OF WOUNDS, AND STILL OTHERS FROM SUICIDE.
THEIR STATISTICS WERE MISINTERPRETED, THEY SAID! 

THE "OFFICIAL" COUNT OF KILLED IN ACTION, "BOOTS ON THE GROUND" IS STILL LISTED AS AROUND 6,000.

THINK!
IF WE'VE BEEN LIED TO ABOUT THIS, SURELY WE HAVE BEEN LIED TO ABOUT THERE BEING "ONLY THREE KNOWN, PROVEN MILITARY MIA/POWs FROM ALL GULF WARS WHO REMAIN UNACCOUNTED FOR"?

ASK A RETURNING GULF WAR VETERAN.

POW files

There's a myth in Washington that virtually all the government's POW documents have been declassified and are available to the public. Bush, in 1992, issued the first declassification directive. Clinton, after taking office in 1993, said he had speeded up Bush's executive order, later announced that was completed.

NO, IT NEVER WAS!

NOT TRUE!
Try finding any of the C.I.A.'s key operational files on POWs in the National Archives or the Library of Congress. Try finding satellite imagery of POW distress signals.

Where are the missing memos and cables on the Vietnamese ransom offers? T
he truth is that the most significant files, from the highest levels of government and the intelligence community, were not covered by the Bush and Clinton executive orders and remain under lock and key.

(Not that declassifying files necessarily brings them to light. The Pentagon, for example, says it sent stacks of declassified National Security Agency documents to the Library of Congress. But here is how one researcher, Roger Hall, described the situation in a letter to The Washington Times:"... the material has been deliberately mislabeled and scattered into different categories. Those who wish access to these documents are thwarted by the deliberate and malicious concealment of information. There is no way for any average citizen — or expert — doing research on the POW/MIA issue to find this particular material.")

Those Nixon tapes

And then there are the Nixon tapes. Nixon refused, when the Senate POW committee asked him, to produce the tapes from 1973 (yes, that's right, the Watergate tapes from the Oval Office) that are believed to contain his conversations with Brent Scowcroft and others on the tactics of how to present the prisoner story to the public. One can understand how the late president and his advisers feared being accused of dishonor had they told us the awful reality: That in 1973 they felt compelled by the circumstances to accept the peace accords even though many of our prisoners were still captive. But that was 21 years ago — and still we are denied the truth.

Over time there have been Pentagon officers, some in key posts, who tried to tell the truth. Their reports found the Defense Intelligence Agency to be permeated by a "mind-set to debunk." And when the reports leaked out, the debunking machine would shift into high gear once again. Sometimes these officers were defamed as malcontents or worse.

Why has there been no wide and sustained public outcry over this national scandal?
The answer is simplicity itself.

 When the Vietnam war ended, almost everyone in America wanted to forget Vietnam, erase it, bury it. They still do. The soldiers who came home were reviled as baby killers. We shunned them because, as a culture, we have been imbued with the notion that winning is the only thing. Indeed, we have never been taught how to cope with losing anything, let alone a war. There was no constituency for the truth, no powerful lobby to stir Congress. MIA families don't command many votes.

World Wars 1 and 2 were "long ago and far away", romanticized by film and press, with almost NO ONE asking where the missing were.

Most American citizens recognize that we LOST the Korean Conflict, and most will NOT see the "Cold War" as a war at all.

It's over, let's just forget it and move on.

Except for those of us who STILL want to know where our loved ones are, what happened to them, why didn't someone bring them home?  
No, no one who is STILL searching for a beloved son, daughter, husband, brother, fiend will EVER forget!

NONE of us should ever forget the 91,000-plus missing, still missing Americans who are lost, left behind, abandoned by the government that sent them off to war.

These 91,000 deserve our respect, and we should finally ...
BRING THEM ALL HOME!

LET US NEVER FORGET THEM!

SOURCES:

For a start on how factual the above is, see corroborating evidence in the following many sources: 

~Missing In Action: Trail of Deceit by Larry J. O'Daniel, "

~Robert Garwood Says Vietnam Didn't Return Some American POWs" by Bill Paul in Wall Street Journal,

~60 Minutes, "Dead or Alive" produced by Monica Jensen-Stevenson,

"We Can Keep You Forever" produced by Ted Landreth,

~"A Chain of Prisoners: From Yalta to Vietnam by John M. G. Brown and Thomas G. Ashworth,

~"Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POWs in Vietnam" by Monica Jensen-Stevenson and William Stevenson,

~"An Examination of U.S. Policy Toward POW/MIAs "by Foreign Relations Republican Staff,

~"The Bamboo Cage: The Full Story of the American Servicemen still held hostage in South-East Asia" by Nigel Cawthorne,

~"After the Hero's Welcome: A POW Wife's Story of the Battle Against a New Enemy" by Dorothy McDaniel,

~"Missing in Action: The Soviet Connection" produced by Ted Landreth,

~"Americans Abandoned" produced by Red McDaniel,

~Numerous Newsday articles by Sydney H. Schanberg,

~"Soldiers of Misfortune: Washington's Secret Betrayal of American POWs in the Soviet Union" by James D. Sanders, Mark A. Sauter, and Cort Kirkwood,

~"Moscow Bound: Policy, Politics and the POW/MIA Dilemma" by John M. G. Brown,

~"The Men We Left Behind: Henry Kissinger, the Politics of Deceit and the Tragic Fate of POWs After the Vietnam War" by Mark Sauter and Jim Sanders,

~"Last Seen Alive: The Search for Missing POWs from the Korean War" by Laurence Jolidon,

~"Left Behind" and "One Returned" radio interview tapes produced by Dr. Stanley Monteith,

~"The Medusa File" by Craig Roberts,

~"Leading the Way" and "Everything We Had" by Al Santoli,

~"Why Didn't You Get Me Out" by Frank Anton,

~"Spite House: The Last Secret of the War in Vietnam "by Monika Jensen-Stevenson,

~"Code-Name Bright Light " by George J. Veith,:

~"One Day Too Long: Top Secret Site 85 and the Bombing of North Vietnam" by Timothy N. Castle,

~"Trails of Deceit " by Larry O'Daniel, 

~"Korean Atrocity: Forgotten War Crimes" by Philip D. Chinnery,

~" Betrayed " by Joseph D. Douglass, Jr.

SOURCES FROM WHICH I HAVE QUOTED AND/OR COLLECTED DATA:
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.  

~Americans Abandoned, POW/MIA’s in Vietnam
Researched and originally produced by the American Defense Institute, and reproduced and distributed by The Liberty House.

~The Long GoodbyeBy Joseph D. Douglass Jr. 

~http://www.propublica.org/article/missing-in-action-us-military-slow-to-identify-service-members

~http://www.warhistoryonline.com/

~http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2013/sep/29/john-scocos/tens-thousands-us-service-members-missing-wisconsi/

~http://www.pownetwork.org/gulf/index_gulf_war.htm  

~http://armedforcesmuseum.com/interesting-facts-about-world-war-i/

[A VERY INTERESTING READ ON WW1]

~http://www.mrfa.org/pow_mia.htm

~http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/resources/casdeath_pop.html

~http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/30/world/pow-and-mia-in-iraq-and-afghanistan-fast-facts/

~http://www.archives.gov/research/alic/reference/military/veterans-related.html

~http://www.archives.gov/research/alic/reference/military/veterans-related.html

~http://www.jpac.pacom.mil/

~vetstribute.com/thelonggoodbye/abandoned.htm

~http://www.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/wwi/century/

~http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/pows_still_in_laos_142.html