Monday, September 10, 2018

NETANYAHU NEOCONS FUNDING at LEAST 12 or MORE TERRORIST GROUPS in SYRIA INCLUDING ISIS and AL-NUSRA

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On September 6, Foreign Policy (FP), an establishment media  discussed Israel’s “secret program to back Syrian rebels” – code name for terrorists, supported by the Trump and Netanyahu regimes, along with NATO, and anti-Assad regional states, including Turkey.
Throughout Washington’s war in Syria, now in its 8th year, falsely called identified as a “civil war”, the US and its allies sought regime change – wanting pro-Western puppet rule replacing Syrian sovereign independence, Iran isolated ahead of a plot to topple its legitimate government.
That’s what imperialism is all about, seeking dominance over other countries, naked aggression a favored strategy.

FP’s report was picked up by Haaretz, the Times of Israel, and other Israeli media.
According to FP,
“Israel secretly armed and funded at least 12 rebel groups in southern Syria that helped prevent Iran-backed fighters and militants of the Islamic State from taking up positions near the Israeli border in recent years, according to more than two dozen commanders and rank-and-file members of these groups.”
Fact: Iran has military advisors in Syria, not combat troops, aiding Assad fight US supported terrorists. The Islamic Republic threatens no other countries, not Israel or any others.
Fact: Israel actively supports ISIS, al-Nusra and other terrorist groups in Syria – in cahoots with Washington to topple Assad.
Fact: By its own admission, Israeli warplanes terror-bombed Syrian sites over 200 times in the last 18 months alone – allied with US aggression for regime change.
Fact: Israel gives aid and comfort to Al Qaeda terrorists, including by treating their wounded in a frontline field hospital in the Golan heights.
Fact: Israeli support for terrorists in Syria continues. The same goes for Washington and its other imperial partners.
According to FP, Israel provided terrorists in Syria with weapons, monthly salaries, and other material support.
The Netanyahu regime lied, repeatedly claiming Israel is not involved in the Syrian conflict. It very much remains involved, especially ahead of what looms to be the mother of all battles in the country to liberate Idlib province from thousands of al-Nusra and other terrorists. [60,000 according to recent estimates by Russia’s Ambassador to the UN, AFP, September 8, 2018]
Throughout much of the war, Syrian forces found foreign-supplied light and heavy weapons in liberated areas – including US and Israeli ones.
According to FP, Israel supplied terrorists in Syria with assault rifles, machine guns, mortar launchers, and vehicles – increasing its support in recent months since last year.
An unnamed terrorist cited and quoted by FP said anti-Assad fighters expected direct Israeli intervention to help and protect them, adding:
Israel’s failure to do it “is a lesson we will not forget…(The Jewish state) does not care about…the people. It does not care about humanity. All it cares about it its own interests.”
An unnamed “community leader” told FP:
“Trust me, Israel will regret its silence over what had happened in southern Syria.”
“We in our town and neighboring towns grudgingly reconciled with the regime, but this reconciliation will affect Israel in the near future.”
FP’s Elizabeth Tsurkov said she interviewed over two dozen members of “rebel” groups in Syria in preparing her report, saying:
“Israel has tried to keep its relationship with the groups a secret. Though some publications have reported on it, the interviews Foreign Policy conducted with militia members (sic) for this story provide the most detailed account yet of Israel’s support for the groups.”
“All the fighters spoke on the condition that their names and factions not be revealed,” adding:
“A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington declined to comment for this story.”
It’s an open secret that Washington and Israel partner in each other’s wars of aggression.
Both nations want the Middle East map redrawn, naked aggression and color revolutions their favored strategies for achieving their aims.
Tactics include wanting targeted countries partitioned for easier control, notably Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
Middle East countries have over half the world’s proved oil reserves. In the 1940s, the State Department called access to them a “stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”
New millennium wars reflect Washington’s strategy for control over this vital resource. They have nothing to do with protecting US security.
Scrambling for scarce resources increases the chance for endless wars to secure them – in the Middle East and elsewhere, Venezuela a prime target for regime change by whatever it takes to replace its government with pro-Western puppet rule.
*
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Sunday, September 9, 2018

ISRAEL CENSORS ITS NEWS ON SUPPORT of SYRIAN REBELS - ANOTHER FALSE FLAG CHEMICAL ATTACK in the MAKING


SOUTHFRONT -

The Israeli military is censoring news reports on Israel providing weapons and supplies to militant groups in Syria. The Jerusalem Post was told by the military censor to remove its story “IDF Confirms: Israel Provided Light-Weapons To Syrian Rebels”. However, the report providing details on the transfer of significant amounts of cash, weapons, and ammunition to militants in southern Syria is still available via Google cache.

The support received by militants were provided by Tel Aviv in the framework of its Operation Good Neighbor, which Israel portrayed as a humanitarian mission focused on providing Syrians with “food, clothes, and fuel.”

This incident once again demonstrates that all claims of Tel Aviv that it is not involved in the ongoing conflict in Syria are false.

France’s Chief of the Defense Staff Francois Lecointre stated on September 6 that French forces are ready to strike Syria once again if chemical weapons are used during the upcoming battle of Idlib.
“We are ready to strike if chemical weapons were used again,” the top military official told media. “They can be carried out at the national level but it’s in our interest to do it with as many partners as possible.”

On September 6, US Defense Secretary James Mattis stated that the Pentagon has no intelligence suggesting that Syrian militants are capable of staging a chemical attack. Thus, if such an attack is staged, the US and its allies are not going to investigate the incident. They already know that the Damascus government will be guilty.



ISIS members carried out several attacks on positions of the Syrian Army on the western bank of the Euphrates. According to pro-government and pro-ISIS sources, several army troops and terrorists were killed in the clashes. However, ISIS has captured no positions.

Local sources say that the attack was carried out to draw the army’s attention from the area of al-Safa and the area southeast of Deir Ezzor city. A source in the SAA’s 11th Division told SouthFront that government troops are currently reinforcing their positions around the Homs desert. The goal is to limit the ISIS capabilities of carrying out attacks from this contested area.

According to pro-Turkish sources, a total of 170 members of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) were “neutralized” by the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) in Turkey, northern Syria and northern Iraq in August. Turkey-led forces also detained some 253 suspects in the framework of their anti-PKK operations in Turkey. 70 of them remanded in custody.
Despite these claims, the TAF and its proxies are still unable to eliminate the YPG insurgency in the northern Syrian area of Afrin captured by Ankara-led forces earlier this year. YPG cells carry out attacks on Turkey-led forces there on a constant basis.

 https://southfront.org/syrian-war-report-september-7-2018-israel-censors-news-on-its-support-to-militants-in-syria/

Saturday, September 8, 2018

FORMER GOOGLE EXEC FOUNDS CHURCH of ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - SEEKS TO REPLACE THE RULE OF HUMANS or of GOD


In this video, Jason Bermas of #WeAreChange gives you the latest breaking news on the very first church to worship artificial intelligence. The organization is called Way Of The Future and they intend to create their own God by bringing in the Singularity. No, this is far from a joke. They are serious, and they come from high places in the tech industry.
   

Ex-Google executive Anthony Levandowski is founding a church where people worship an artificial intelligence god. And what they are seeking can only be taken as a direct threat to humanity.


Way of the Future, the God-bot religion founded by Levandowski, has a website. And to say it is creepy is an understatement.

This is verbatim from this church's website:
Way of the Future (WOTF) is about creating a peaceful and respectful transition of who is in charge of the planet from people to people + "machines". Given that technology will "relatively soon" be able to surpass human abilities, we want to help educate people about this exciting future and prepare a smooth transition. Help us spread the word that progress shouldn't be feared (or even worse locked up/caged). That we should think about how "machines" will integrate into society (and even have a path for becoming in charge as they become smarter and smarter) so that this whole process can be amicable and not confrontational. In "recent" years, we have expanded our concept of rights to both sexes, minority groups and even animals, let's make sure we find a way for "machines" to get rights too. Let's stop pretending we can hold back the development of intelligence when there are clear massive short term economic benefits to those who develop it and instead understand the future and have it treat us like a beloved elder who created it.



Levandowski and his "robot god" will in his mind, "take charge" of its human subjects as we relinquish our power to a creation with far more intelligence than our own.As a Christian and a student of history I can easily tell you that this is not remotely the kind of thing that the "freedom of religion" meant as in those days the authors mostly meant the differences of Christian sects, not the worship of false gods or idols.


He claims the good will be a 'billion times smarter than humans'. 


The filed documents for WOTF give its purpose is to 'develop and promote the realisation of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence'.

They say it aims to 'through understanding and worship of the Godhead, contribute to the betterment of society'. 

Levandowski's allegiance to singularity - the belief that artificial intelligence will one day grow to such efficiency that it surpasses and overpowers humans - is the basis of this new religion. 

'In the future, if something is much, much smarter, there's going to be a transition as to who is actually in charge', Levandowski told Wired during a three-hour interview. 

'What we want is the peaceful, serene transition of control of the planet from humans to whatever. And to ensure that the 'whatever' knows who helped it get along'. 

The church also includes funding to help create a divine AI and will seek to build relationships with AI industry leaders.

The filings say workshops and educational programs are starting in the San Francisco area this year. 

The religion was granted tax-exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service in August.

'The idea needs to spread before the technology,' said Levandowski, who lives in Berkeley and helped create Street View, Waymo and Uber's self-driving cars.

'The church is how we spread the word, the gospel. If you believe [in it], start a conversation with someone else and help them understand the same things.'

He claims followers of his new religion 'will be able to talk to God, literally, and know that it's listening.' 
Yeah, that shouldn't concern us one bit right? What could possibly be more anti-God and anti-Christ than this concept?

Levandowski is one of the Silicon Valley titans who believes artificial intelligence will transform human existence and even dictate whether our species survives or not.

In October Elon Musk spoke out against Levandowski's proposals by tweeting that he should be 'on the list of people who should absolutely *not* be allowed to develop digital superintelligence'.

Earlier this year he warned that regulation of artificial intelligence is needed because it's a 'fundamental risk to the existence of human civilisation.'

The billionaire said regulations will stop humanity from being outsmarted by computers, or 'deep intelligence in the network', that can start wars by manipulating information.

Friday, September 7, 2018

ICE CENTERS EXPOSED by CANDACE OWENS - KIDS MISTREATED in AMERICA - LEFTIST NARRATIVE DESTROYED - CLOWARD PIVEN STRATEGY LIKELY CAUSE


------------------------------- 

Candace Owens tours an ICE facility and what she found was shocking. From libraries, to computers, vollyball on the sand court, and 24 hour medical care, dorm rooms, telephones, hair salons, all the while they sit laughing and joking at the table eating full meals. While the initial facilities they are recived into may be trying, the truth here is that now that their parents broke the law and now remain in custody what they have managed to do was engage in the trafficking of their own kids right out of their own care. 



That is the even bigger story. The left does nothing but lie, while establishment RINOS and Trotskyite NeoConservatives are not much better. I have a great idea for the open borders the leftists seek. End the welfare system, and we will not need a wall... now there is a compromise. Pick one or the other. But you know that is not part of the agenda. These kids deserve better from their own families. Thank you Candace.

#RTRTruthMedia

This is the culmination of Frankfurt School Marxist revolutionaries...from Columbia University to our borders, and Obama, Alinsky and Clinton's dream.

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

RECONSTRUCTION REPLACEMENT GOVERNMENT DEEP STATE - AMERICAN PATRIOTS GUIDE to COMBAT COMMUNISM - GUN CONTROL - ABORTION - & ENDLESS WARS



The following video is to show people was was really being stood for by many at the Bundy Ranch, in Oregon and in fact all over these states. With an ever growing number of political prisoners like Schaeffer Cox, Ed and Elaine Brown, Jeffrey Weinhaus, and so many more, we offer the education, understanding, and proof of the problem. The solution?   TRUTH

 This is a presentation for all American Patriots. I can not express the importance of the content in this as well as the research link information within. Everyone complains about the effects of the problem, never really being able to define the problem itself.

This is our testimony to the American people. In this presentation you will hear echoes of the complete truth of what we found through years of research and investigation. Our evidence you can find below. It speaks of an actual conspiracy, not a theory to bring the United States into a world Socialistic Communistic democracy to replace the Republic.

The 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution was never lawfully ratified. It was forced unlawfully into “legality” to bring upon us a national citizenship under the jurisdiction of a 10 mile square in Washington the District of Columbia. The Original 13th Amendment to the Constitution removed. We will be providing further documented truth to back all assertions made within. We are Patriotic Americans who love our nations (states) and the idea of us banding together  for the idea that the individual was the most important of minorities. The minority of one. And in individual liberty ALL Americans should be able to seek remedy from the usurpation which has occurred. A tragedy was used to usher in a democracy .   All men and woman who are responsible and know who they are and how to apply these ideals in their lives are all equal and should remain free and unmolested.


http://www.resurrecttherepublic.com/reconstruction-replacement-government-research-documentation-and-evidence-of-constitutional-usurpation-by-fraud-bruce-ray-riggs-tom-lacovara-stewart/

Appearing in this presentation:
Ryan Bundy  
Cliven Bundy
Judge Andrew Neopolitano
Sean Stone
Tom Lacovara-Stewart
Bruce Ray Riggs
Professor Thomas Woods

The 14th Amendment was ushered in to supplant the Republic with a communistic socialistic and corporate fascistic democracy. Today we refer to it as "Communitarianism", or "the 3rd Way". The evidence to support this assertion is provided within the body of this presentation.

 EVIDENCE:

The Unconstitutional Communist Amendment
 It paved the way for the following: 

FEDERAL AGENCIES MARTIAL JURISDICTION in STATES

This is all based upon jurisdiction unlawfully created by US Citizenship created not in 1789 but 1868.


GUN CONTROL
Just like the A.T.F. has said numerous occasions the 14th Amendment GUN CONTROL as a "commercial crime" bypassing the restriction upon government as to where they may not infringe. 


CANNABIS LAWS (and all related statutes)
 They are ALL UNCONSTITUTIONAL for several reasons. Cannabis laws just like income tax and gun control derive there jurisdiction from the Unconstitutional 14th Amendment It violates the Kentucky Virginia Resolution of 1798 This is not one of the ONLY 17 powers the Federal Government was given Per US Constitution as pointed out by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. See the research The Reconstruction Replacement Government home page. Adopted by reference. 


EXECUTIVE ORDERS
The the Executive orders of today numerically go back to The Lieber Code or General Orders #100 Prepared by Francis Lieber, promulgated as General Orders No. 100 by President Lincoln, 24 April 1863. Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States. This is the marshal power established in the middle of the So called Civil War that Congress never declared so a treaty of peace was never signed to resolve or relinquish the marshal power as required per section 32 of the Lieber Code . You want to stop the Executive orders the president then the states need to sign a peace treaty or treaty of peace same thing to settle the marshal power never settled from the Civil War Era. The Reconstruction Acts and the 14th Amendment is held in place by this jurisdiction. 


NATIONAL DEBT
 It’s fake. The national debt comes from the 14th Amendment Section 4 which not only created the public debt the middle of section says we have no right to question the validity of the public dept. The 14th Amendment was NEVER Constitutionally adopted. But even if it was it would still violate the supremacy clause of the US Constitution for creating a citizen subject to a different jurisdiction and a different form of government than what was originally established in the original Constitution. It violates the Kentucky Virginia Resolution of 1798 This is not one of the ONLY 17 powers the Federal Government was given Per Article 1 section 8 clause 1-17 US Constitution as pointed out by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. See The Reconstruction Replacement Government on home page. 


INCOME TAX
The payment on the FAKE national or public debt. Income tax applies to the Unconstitutional corporate 14th Amendment Personhood. That’s why it’s the only one required to pay it. – Show us the law. It does not exist, and it is our belief that Income Tax is a redistribution of wealth scheme. Bruce believes in a total and complete free market. Regulatory restrictions on FRAUD and DECEPTION being the only valid restrictions to exist. We believe in the free and voluntary trade between people. Allow the market to naturally set the parameters, while lending very limited power to the government for the protection of employees in common sense ways such as the need to prevent corporations from exploiting people to the point of endangering them. No more, no less.

SOCIALISM
 It is wholly Unconstitutional. Bruce Ray and Tom Lacovara-Stewart are Constitutional researchers and historians. They have uncovered a great many deceptions and lies we have been told about history, government and the relation of the two which has taken us from Constitutional to Corporate. How the modern debt slave came into being is what he wishes to expose and solve is exposed within. Peaceful and clear solutions are revealed on http://DirtyUncleSam.com 


ABORTION - ROE v. WADE
ROE v. WADE was a 14th Amendment(corporate jurisdiction) decision. As such the “corporate personhood” also known in law as a “artificial person” does not begin till birth. There for the unborn does not have rights till the personhood is established by birth. The original citizen created and intended for us be be is found at Article 4 Sec 2 US Const. This citizen is NOT a corporate citizen And therefore would be entitled to rights at conception See Reconstruction Replacement Government home page.
Bruce Ray is a Christian, and as such, he goes by what the Constitution clearly states. We are ALL endowed by Our Creator, with certain unalienable rights. The right to life being the first, is sacrosanct. Bruce will not support, condone, or ever vote for any measure in which is included any funding or support for the killing of the unborn. It may shock many as to why however as his position has little to do with his faith. In his interpretation of the Constitution, he believes that nowhere in the Constitution does it place this authority into the hands of government. Therefore, as such he believes it his duty to stand against it politically. As it so is his position that it is morally wrong.


EDUCATION

Bruce feels it is the parents right to choose the curriculum of their children. It is not only NOT the position of the Federal Government, but he believes that the Constitution completely is against any measure of Federal involvement in the education of children.


ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AND ANCHOR BABY’S (as understood "progressively")

Illegal Immigration and and anchor baby court rulings are all based on the 14th Amendment, and therefore repugnant to the organic Constitution
Copyright: © All Rights Reserved

Monday, September 3, 2018

BUNDY RANCH MARTIAL LAW - BEHOLD A PALE HORSE




 This is why we came from all over the nation. In this video you will see the martial law force brought to bear upon the Bundy family, the protesters, and everyone in the general area with documented evidence from the trial and from boots on the ground. I for one do not regret being there. Because #ItMattersHowYouStand

re-upload

RTR TRUTH MEDIA
Resurrect the Republic Truth Radio Broadcast
http://RTRTruthMedia.blogspot.com
http://ResurrectTheRepublic.com

You can check us out on the following links
Donate - https://PayPal.me/RTRTruthMedia
Bitchute - https://www.bitchute.com/channel/7JV9ghYHumD3/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/RTRTruthMedia1776
twitter - https://twitter.com/tomlacovara

Music by Charlie Daniels
"Behold a Pale Horse"
From "Revelation: Dawn of Global Government"


Saturday, September 1, 2018

WOLFGANG HALBIG on RESURRECT the REPUBLIC - BLOWING the LID OFF PARKLAND



Wolfgang Halbig on Resurrect the Republic with Tom Lacovara-Stewart. Discussed is his lawsuit with co-defendant Alex Jones on behalf of Lenny Posner, Sandy Hook, Parkland shooting, the Smith-Mundt Act, Homeland Security, the Boston Bombing, and the Obama era Neo-Marxist Promise Federal Grant Program, and more.
Wolfgang is a former Florida State Trooper and worked specifically in Emergency preparedness for schools, even drafting the plan for Broward County. Who better to tell us what went wrong?
Some important questions need to be asked….. There are even more questions than the ones below at We Are Change Orlando - https://www.facebook.com/WACOrlando/videos/1335915919872108/

1.       Who directed the New Haven FBI field offices to classify the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting on Dec 14, 2012?
2. Why and for what reason would the FBI classify the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting when they did not classify the Columbine shooting which also was a Mass casualty shooting incident?
3. Who on Dec 14, 2012 was the Incident Commander as required by the Federal Emergency Management Administration in directing the Mass Casualty Shooting Incident at the Sandy Hook Elementary School?
·         Who on Dec 14, 2012 at the Incident Command Center made the ordering of Porta Potties a high priority since they were delivered within 3 hours of the school shooting? Never ever heard off.
·         • Who ordered those Port Potties from Southbury, Ct?
·         • When I called the Porta Pottie Company after searching for over a week as to who and when they were ordered I was told that it is classified and they are not allowed to share that information with me.
·         • The next morning I received a phone call from the Southbury Police Department at my home telling me not to call that company again since I was harassing them.
·         • High priority for toilets but not for Life Star Trauma helicopters or paramedics.
4. Who and Why did they not request the Life Star Helicopters knowing that children and school staff are seriously injured and clinging to life?
5. Who and Why did they not allow the Paramedics and the EMT’S inside the Sandy Hook School to treat the seriously injured or those children and school staff clinging to life?
6. Who declared all 18 children and six school staff members legally dead within the first 8 minutes?
7. Who was the Certified Environmental Bio-Hazard Decontamination company contracted by the Newtown Public Schools to remove 45–65 gallons of blood, skull fragments, brain tissues, bodily fluids, blood soaked carpets and any other decontaminated are a inside the Sandy Hook School?
8. Why does an off duty Lt from the Newtown Police Department refuse to leave his off duty work assignment at a construction site on Dec 14, 2012 when hearing that shots have been fired at the Sandy Hook Elementary School?
9. Who at the Newtown Public Schools notified all of the parents in writing as required by CT law that had children attending the Sandy Hook Elementary School as well as every school staff member every school year of all the potential life threatening chemical hazards. The school had high levels of lead paint throughout the entire school, Asbestos in the ceiling time and floor tile, asbestos in the insulation and most of all the school had very high levels of PCB?
10. Who provided the urgent medical care to the two children who were not transported to the Danbury Trauma Center until an hour after the school was deemed safe for that 15-mile drive?
11. Who treated those two children who had been shot multiple times like three to 11 times since they did not allow the paramedics and EMT’S inside the Sandy Hook Elementary School?
12. Why did the parents of the two children who died at the Danbury hospital not allow their children to donate their organs to other children waiting for the gift of life?
13. What happened to the 500 children and 60 school staff members from Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec 14, 2012?
14. Who was the police officer calling into the Newtown Police dispatcher stating in his words that he has multiple weapons, he has a rifle and a shotgun and who has the rifle and the shotgun as the chain of evidence should show that was found in classroom eight (8)?
15. Why would a police officer by the name of Lt Vangehle at 9:45:21 am on Dec 14, 2012 from the Newtown Police Department after finding a kindergarten female child in the hallway make her go into room eight (8) and leave her? Room eight is a gruesome crime scene with dead children and school staff. Why?
16. Why would two CT State Troopers enter room ten (10) at 9:55:31 am on Dec 14, 2012 which is a gruesome crime scene with dead bodies of children and school staff and tell a kindergarten boy who they find in the bathroom who’s name is redacted and tell them so it must be more than one to stay and they will be both back when it is safe?




Links:
Naomi Wolf Exposes Fake News, False Flags, and the Boston Bombing theories
Parkland Teacher Says Shooter was in “Full Metal Garb”
David Hogg Home during shootings “gaslighting media”
Wolfgang Halbig Blows a Gasket at June 2nd BOE Meeting
Wolfgang Halbig Calls Alex Jones a Chickensh!t, Regarding Sandy Hook
Mike Zollo video of Hogg

Sunday, August 26, 2018

SONGBIRD MCCAIN - LOST BUT NOT FORGOTTEN BETRAYAL of VIETNAM VETERANS and USS LIBERTY SURVIVORS - May God Judge Him Now

Senator McCain has passed. While I pray for his family as I would anyone who suffered a loss, I say, this is the man who stonewalled the House Committee to Investigate prisoners left behind in Vietnam. I could perhaps look past him singing to the Communists.... but I will never forgive he and his father's betrayal of their fellow servicemen; many of which lost their lives on the U.S.S. Liberty. I will never forget nor forgive his duplicity in the cover-up of the attack of the U.S.S. Liberty. I happen to be honored to be friends with a few survivors of the Liberty. And we all know what happened. As so did Songbird Johnny the Prince of Hanoi. The following videos and articles, are testimony to that effect.



The Betrayal of American Veterans
.
Americans who volunteer for military service effectively write a blank check, payable to the United States of America for an amount "up to and including their lives." The United States, in turn, promises to spend these checks responsibly. That bargain implicitly includes a promise by the United States to protect them and to seek retribution against anyone who harms them. In the case of USS Liberty, the United States and especially John McCain, has failed to keep its end of the bargain.

May God have mercy on his soul.

The next video is of the testimony of a man who I have had the honor of having on my radio show and on our network, who explained to me from his perspective of the events of that fateful day that John McCain slights and continues to cover up. Phil Tourney. An American Patriot.

RTR Truth Media - Tom Lacovara-Stewart




John McCain Confronted about the USS Liberty


The Loss of Liberty -- Why Did the U.S. Allow Israel To Attack Its Largest Spyship Killing 34 Americans and Wounding Over 170 Others?

The USS Liberty was an electronic intelligence-gathering ship that was cruising international waters off the Egyptian coast on June 8, 1967. Israeli planes and torpedo boats opened fire on the Liberty in the midst of what became known as the Israeli-Arab Six-Day War. 34 Americans were killed and more than 170 were wounded in the attack. Israel and its supporters have long maintained that the attack was a "tragic case of misidentification," an explanation that Lyndon Johnson's administration did not formally challenge. 


Israel claimed its forces thought the ship was an Egyptian vessel and apologized to the United States. After the attack, a Navy court of inquiry concluded there was insufficient information to make a judgment about why Israel attacked the ship, stopping short of assigning blame or determining whether it was an accident. On Wednesday, a former top Navy attorney publicly said for the first time that ...

"President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara ordered the U.S. military investigation to conclude that the Israeli attack was an accident". 

The attorney, retired Captain Ward Boston, said ...

..."the White House ordered investigators to conclude that the attack was a case of 'mistaken identity' despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary." 

Boston was the senior legal counsel to the Navy's 1967 review of the attack. He said he was prompted to come forward following the publication of the recent book "The Liberty Incident" which concluded the attack was an accident.



"Those sailors who were wounded, who were eyewitnesses, have not been heard from by the American public. . . [Their story] leaves no doubt but what this was a premeditated, carefully reconnoitered attack by Israeli aircraft against our ship."

-- US Senator Adlai Stevenson III in interview with Wm. J. Small, UPI, for publication September 28, 1980



"The Loss of Liberty", excerpts from the independent documentary about the Liberty attack produced by Howard Films, written and directed by Tito Howard. James Bamford, investigative journalist and author of the books "The Puzzle Palace: A Report on America's Most Secret Agency" and "Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency." Admiral Thomas Moorer, retired four-star admiral who served as chief of Naval Operations and as a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is the only American admiral to command both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets and chief of naval operations for two terms and chairman of the joint chiefs for two terms. He led a year-long independent commission investigating the bombing of the USS Liberty and is now calling for a full Congressional investigation.

And then there was Cindy McCain.....



The War Secrets Sen. John McCain Hides
Former POW Fights Public Access to POW/MIA Files
By Sydney Schanberg

NEW YORK (APBnews.com) — The voters who were drawn to John S. McCain in his run for the Republican presidential nomination this year often cited, as the core of his appeal, his openness and blunt candor and willingness to admit past lapses and release documents that other senators often hold back. These qualities also seemed to endear McCain to the campaign press corps, many of whom wrote about how refreshing it was to travel on the McCain campaign bus, “The Straight Talk Express,” and observe a maverick speaking his mind rather than a traditional candidate given to obfuscation and spin.

But there was one subject that was off-limits, a subject the Arizona senator almost never brings up and has never been open about — his long-time opposition to releasing documents and information about American prisoners of war in Vietnam and the missing in action who have still not been accounted for. Since McCain himself, a downed Navy pilot, was a prisoner in Hanoi for 5 1/2 years, his staunch resistance to laying open the POW/MIA records has baffled colleagues and others who have followed his career. Critics say his anti-disclosure campaign, in close cooperation with the Pentagon and the intelligence community, has been successful. Literally thousands of documents that would otherwise have been declassified long ago have been legislated into secrecy.




For example, all the Pentagon debriefings of the prisoners who returned from Vietnam are now classified and closed to the public under a statute enacted in the 1990s with McCain’s backing. He says this is to protect the privacy of former POWs and gives it as his reason for not making public his own debriefing.

But the law allows a returned prisoner to view his own file or to designate another person to view it. APBnews.com has repeatedly asked the senator for an interview for this article and for permission to view his debriefing documents. He has not responded. His office did recently send APBnews.com an e-mail, referring to a favorable article about the senator in the Jan. 1 issue of Newsweek. In the article, the reporter, Michael Isikoff, says that he was allowed to review McCain’s debriefing report and that it contained “nothing incriminating” — although in a phone interview Isikoff acknowledged that “there were redactions” in the document. Isikoff declined to say who showed him the document, but APBnews.com has learned it was McCain.

Many Vietnam veterans and former POWs have fumed at McCain for keeping these and other wartime files sealed up. His explanation, offered freely in Senate hearings and floor speeches, is that no one has been proven still alive and that releasing the files would revive painful memories and cause needless emotional stress to former prisoners, their families and the families of MIAs still unaccounted for. But what if some of these returned prisoners, as has always been the case at the conclusion of wars, reveal information to their debriefing officers about other prisoners believed still held in captivity? What justification is there for filtering such information through the Pentagon rather than allowing access to source materials? For instance, debriefings from returning Korean war POWs, available in full to the American public, have provided both citizens and government investigators with important information about other Americans who went missing in that conflict.

Would not most families of missing men, no matter how emotionally drained, want to know? And would they not also want to know what the government was doing to rescue their husbands and sons? Hundreds of MIA families have for years been questioning if concern for their feelings is the real reason for the secrecy.

Prisoners left behind

A smaller number of former POWs, MIA families and veterans have suggested there is something especially damning about McCain that the senator wants to keep hidden. Without release of the files, such accusations must be viewed as unsubstantiated speculation. The main reason, however, for seeking these files is to find out if there is any information in the debriefings, or in other MIA documents that McCain and the Pentagon have kept sealed, about how many prisoners were held back by North Vietnam after the Paris peace treaty was signed in January 1973. The defense and intelligence establishment has long resisted the declassification of critical records on this subject. McCain has been the main congressional force behind this effort.

The prisoner return in 1973 saw 591 Americans repatriated by North Vietnam. The problem was that the U.S. intelligence list of men believed to be alive at that time in captivity — in Vietnam, Laos and possibly across the border in southern China and in the Soviet Union — was much larger.

Possibly hundreds of men larger. The State Department stated publicly in 1973 that intelligence data showed the prisoner list to be starkly incomplete. For example, only nine of the 591 returnees came out of Laos, though experts in U.S. military intelligence listed 311 men as missing in that Hanoi-run country alone, and their field reports indicated that many of those men were probably still alive. Hanoi said it was returning all the prisoners it had. President Nixon, on March 29, 1973, seconded that claim, telling the nation on television: “All of our American POWs are on their way home.” This discrepancy has never been acknowledged or explained by official Washington. Over the years in Washington, McCain, at times almost single-handedly, has pushed through Pentagon-desired legislation to make it impossible or much harder for the public to acquire POW/MIA information and much easier for the defense bureaucracy to keep it hidden.

The Truth Bill

In 1989, 11 members of the House of Representatives introduced a measure they called “The Truth Bill.” A brief and simple document, it said: “[The] head of each department or agency which holds or receives any records and information, including live-sighting reports, which have been correlated or possibly correlated to United States personnel listed as prisoner of war or missing in action from World War II, the Korean conflict and the Vietnam conflict shall make available to the public all such records and information held or received by that department or agency. In addition, the Department of Defense shall make available to the public with its records and information a complete listing of United States personnel classified as prisoner of war, missing in action, or killed in action (body not returned) from World War II, the Korean conflict, and the Vietnam conflict.”

Opposed by Pentagon

Bitterly opposed by the Pentagon, “The Truth Bill” got nowhere. It was reintroduced in the next Congress in 1991 — and again disappeared. Then, suddenly, out of the Senate, birthed by the Arizona senator, a new piece of legislation emerged. It was called “The McCain Bill.” This measure turned “The Truth Bill ” on its head. It created a bureaucratic maze from which only a fraction of the available documents could emerge. And it became law. So restrictive were its provisions that one clause actually said the Pentagon didn’t even have to inform the public when it received intelligence that Americans were alive in captivity.

First, it decreed that only three categories of information could be released, i.e., “information … that may pertain to the location, treatment, or condition of” unaccounted-for personnel from the Vietnam War. (This was later amended in 1995 and 1996 to include the Cold War and the Korean conflict.) If information is received about anything other than “location, treatment or condition,” under this statute, which was enacted in December 199l, it does not get disclosed.

Second, before such information can be released to the public, permission must be granted by the primary next of kin, or PNOK. In the case of Vietnam, letters were sent by the Department of Defense to the 2,266 PNOK. More than 600 declined consent (including 243 who failed to respond, considered under the law to be a “no”).

Hurdles and limitations

Finally, in addition to these hurdles and limitations, the McCain act does not specifically order the declassification of the information. Further, it provides the Defense Department with other justifications for withholding documents. One such clause says that if the information “may compromise the safety of any United States personnel … who remain not accounted for but who may still be alive in captivity, then the Secretary [of Defense] may withhold that record or other information from the disclosure otherwise required by this section.”

Boiled down, the preceding paragraph means that the Defense Department is not obligated to tell the public about prisoners believed alive in captivity and what efforts are being made to rescue them. It only has to notify the White House and the intelligence committees in the Senate and House. The committees are forbidden under law from releasing such information.

At the same time, the McCain act is now being used to deny access to other sorts of records. For instance, part of a recent APBnews.com Freedom of Information Act request for the records of a mutiny on merchant marine vessel in the 1970s was rejected by a Defense Department official who cited the McCain act. Similarly, requests for information about Americans missing in the Korean War and declared dead for the last 45 years have been denied by officials who reference the McCain statute. (Read a denial letter.)

Another bill gutted in 1996

And then there is the Missing Service Personnel Act, which McCain succeeded in gutting in 1996. A year before, the act had been strengthened, with bipartisan support, to compel the Pentagon to deploy more resources with greater speed to locate and rescue missing men. The measure imposed strict reporting requirements.

McCain amended the heart out of the statute. For example, the 1995 version required a unit commander to report to his theater commander within two days that a person was missing and describe what rescue and recovery efforts were underway. The McCain amendments allowed 10 days to pass before a report had to be made.

In the 1995 act, the theater commander, after receiving the MIA report, would have 14 days to report to his Cabinet secretary in Washington. His report had to “ certify” that all necessary actions were being taken and all appropriate assets were being used “to resolve the status of the missing person.” This section was stricken from the act, replaced with language that made the Cabinet secretary, not the theater commander, the recipient of the report from the field. All the certification requirements also were stricken. ‘Turn commanders into clerks’ “This, ” said a McCain memo, “transfers the bureaucracy involved out of the field to Washington.” He argued that the original legislation, if left intact, “ would accomplish nothing but create new jobs for lawyers and turn military commanders into clerks.”

In response, the backers of the original statute cited the Pentagon’s stained record on MIA’s and argued that military history had shown that speed of action is critical to the chances of recovering a missing man. Moving “the bureaucracy ” to Washington, they said, was merely a way to sweep the issue under a rug.

Chilling effect cited

One final evisceration in the law was McCain’s removal of all its enforcement teeth. The original act provided for criminal penalties for anyone, such as military bureaucrats in Washington, who destroy or cover up or withhold from families any information about a missing man. McCain erased this part of the law. He said the penalties would have a chilling effect on the Pentagon’s ability to recruit personnel for its POW/MIA office.

McCain does not deal lightly with those who disagree with him on any of these issues or who suggest that the evidence indeed shows that a significant number of prisoners were alive and cached away as future bargaining chips when he came home in the group of 591 released in 1973.

Over the years, he has regularly vilified any group or person who keeps trying to pry out more evidence about MIAs. He calls them “hoaxers” and “charlatans ” and “conspiracy theorists.” He decries the “bizarre rantings of the MIA hobbyists” and describes them as “individuals primarily who make their living off of keeping the issue alive.” Before he died last year of leukemia, retired Col. Ted Guy, a highly admired POW and one of the most dogged resisters in the camps, wrote an angry open letter to the senator in an MIA newsletter. In it, he said of McCain’s stream of insults: “John, does this include Senator Bob Smith and other concerned elected officials? Does this include the families of the missing where there is overwhelming evidence that their loved ones were ‘last known alive? ’ Does this include some of your fellow POWs?”

Sightings dismissed

McCain has said again and again that he has seen no “credible” evidence that more than a tiny handful of men might have been alive in captivity after the official prison return in 1973. He dismisses all of the subsequent radio intercepts, live sightings, satellite photos, CIA reports, defector information, recovered enemy documents and reports of ransom demands — thousands and thousands of pieces of information indicating live captives — as meaningless. He has even described these intelligence reports as the rough equivalent of UFO and alien sightings.

In Congress, colleagues and staffers who have seen him erupt — in the open and, more often, in closed meetings — profess themselves confounded by his behavior. Insisting upon anonymity so as not to invite one of his verbal assaults, they say they have no easy way to explain why a former POW would work so hard and so persistently to keep POW/MIA information from coming out. Typical is the comment of one congressional veteran who has watched McCain over many years: “This is a man not at peace with himself.” McCain’s sense of disgrace

Some McCain watchers searching for answers point to his recently published best-selling autobiography, Faith of My Fathers, half of which is devoted to his years as a prisoner. In the book, he says he felt badly throughout his captivity because he knew he was being treated more leniently than his fellow POWs owing to his propaganda value as the son of Adm. John S. McCain II, who was then the CINCPAC — commander in chief of all U.S. forces in the Pacific region, including Vietnam. (His captors considered him a prize catch and nicknamed him the “Crown Prince.”)

Also in the book, the Arizona Senator repeatedly expresses guilt and disgrace at having broken under torture and given the North Vietnamese a taped confession, broadcast over the camp loudspeakers, saying he was a war criminal who had, among other acts, bombed a school. “I felt faithless and couldn’t control my despair,” he writes. He writes, revealing that he made two half-hearted attempts at suicide. Most tellingly, he said he lived in “dread” that his father would find out. “I still wince,” he says, “when I recall wondering if my father had heard of my disgrace.”




After McCain returned home, he says he told his father about the confession, but “ never discussed it at length.” The admiral, McCain says, didn’t indicate he had heard anything about it before.

McCain’s father died in 1981. McCain writes: “I only recently learned that the tape … had been broadcast outside the prison and had come to the attention of my father.”

McCain wasn’t alone — it’s well-known that a sizeable percentage of prisoners of war will break down under torture. In fact, many of his supporters view McCain’s prison travails as evidence of his overall heroism. Fears unpublished details?

But how would McCain’s forced confession alone explain his endless campaign against releasing MIA/POW information?

Some veterans and other McCain watchers have speculated that McCain’s mortification, given his family’s proud military tradition (his grandfather was also an admiral), was so severe that it continues to haunt him and make him fear any opening up of information that could revive previously unpublished details of the era, including his own nagging history.

Another question that defies easy explanation is why there has never been any significant public outcry over the POWs who didn’t come home or about the machinations of public officials like McCain who carefully wove a blanket of secrecy around this issue. It can only be understood in the context of what the Vietnam War did to the American mind.

Forgetting the Vietnam War

It was the longest war in our history and the only one in which we accepted defeat and brought our troops home. It had roiled the country more than any conflict but the Civil War — to the point where almost everyone, regardless of their politics, wanted to get away from anything that reminded them of this bloody failure. Only a small band of Americans, led by Vietnam veterans and MIA families, kept asking for more information about the missing men and demanding that the government keep its promise to do everything possible to bring them home. Everyone else seemed to be running away from all things Vietnam.

Knowledgeable observers note that it’s quite possible that Nixon, leading the country’s withdrawal, accepted the peace treaty of Jan. 27, 1973, while telling himself that somehow he would negotiate the release of the remaining POWs later. But when Congress refused to provide the $3 billion to $4 billion in proposed national development reparations that National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger had dangled as a carrot to Hanoi, the prospects for the abandoned men began to unravel.

Observers also point out that over the years that followed, Washington continued to reject paying what it branded as ransom money and so, across six presidencies, including the present one, the issue of POWs who may have been left behind remained unacknowledged by the White House and the Pentagon. Hanoi refused to correct the impression that all the prisoners had been returned, and Washington, for its part, refused to admit that it had known about abandoned POWs from the beginning.

PART 2 OF 2

Mainstream press indifferent

Of course, the government and many mainstream scholars reject this theory. And whether any such prisoners remain alive to this day is impossible for the outsider to know. Intelligence sources privately express the belief that most of the men had either died or been executed by the early 1990s. Presumably, these sources say, the POW’s lost their bargaining value to Hanoi as time passed and ransom dollars never materialized. Eventually Hanoi began seeking another path to the money — the renewal of relations with Washington. Diplomatic ties were restored by President Clinton in 1994, and American economic investment quickly followed.

One factor in the nation’s indifference to the POWs was the stance of the national press. From the very start to the present, the mainstream media showed little interest. With just a smattering of exceptions, the journalistic community, like the rest of the country, ran away from the story. During the war, thousands of American journalists poured into Vietnam in shifts; now only a handful cover the country, most of them filing business stories about Nike and other conglomerates opening up factories to avail themselves of the cheap labor.

Even reporters who had covered the war came to view the MIA story, in the years afterward, as a concoction of the far right. Without doing much, if any, first-hand reporting, such as digging into the available documents in the National Archives, nearly all these journalists dismissed the MIA story as unfounded.

Generated a hero aura

In McCain’s recently suspended campaign for the presidency, it was almost as if, in the press’s eyes, he was to be treated differently and quite gingerly because of the hero aura generated by his POW experience. None of his political opponents ever dared criticize him for his legislative history on withholding POW information, and the press never brought itself to be direct enough to even question him on the issue.

It’s not that he didn’t give reporters plenty of openings to ask the right Vietnam questions. For one thing, he used his history as a Vietnam prisoner as a constant campaign theme in his speeches. Rarely did he appear without a larger-than- life photo backdrop showing him in battle gear as a Navy pilot before he was shot down over Hanoi in 1967.

Here is a passage typical of the soft, even erroneous reporting on McCain — this from a March 4 story in The New York Times: “His most striking achievement came when he joined with another Vietnam veteran, Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, to puncture the myth that Vietnam continued holding American prisoners. ” The piece went on to speak with admiration about “his concern over the prisoners-of-war issue” — but, tellingly, it offered no details.

Tepid veterans’ vote 

The press corps, covering the state-by-state primary vote, made an assumption, based apparently on sentiment, that McCain, as the war hero, would capture the significant veterans’ vote by stunning margins. Actually, he didn’t capture it at all. He carried veterans only in the states that he won, like Michigan and New Hampshire, but was rejected by them in the larger number of states that he lost, like New York, Ohio and California. Added together, when the states were tallied up, the veterans’ vote went to George W. Bush.

The Washington press corps had gone openly soft once before on the prisoner issue, again benefiting McCain. That was in 1991-93, during the proceedings of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. McCain starred on that committee, working hand in hand with his new ally, Sen. John Kerry, the panel’s co-chairman, to play down voluminous evidence that sizeable numbers of men were still held alive after the prisoner return in 1973. One example: At the time of the committee’s hearings, the Pentagon had received more than 1,600 firsthand sightings of live American prisoners and nearly 14,000 secondhand reports. The intelligence officers who gathered these reports from refugees and other informants in the field described a large number of them as “credible” and so marked the reports. Some of the informants had been given lie-detector tests and passed.

But the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, after reviewing all the reports, concluded that they “do not constitute evidence” that men were still alive at the time.

McCain and Kerry endorsed the Pentagon’s findings. They also treated both the Pentagon and the CIA more as the committee’s partners than as objects of its inquiry. As one committee staff investigator said, in a memo preserved from the period: “Speaking for the other investigators, I can say we are sick and tired of this investigation being controlled by those we are supposedly investigating.”

McCain stood out because he always showed up for the committee hearings where witnesses were going to talk about specific pieces of evidence. He would belittle and berate these witnesses, questioning their patriotism and otherwise scoffing at their credibility. All of this is on record in the National Archives.

Confrontation with witness

One such witness was Dolores Apodaca Alfond, chairwoman of the National Alliance of Families, an all-volunteer MIA organization. Her pilot brother, Capt. Victor J. Apodaca, out of the Air Force Academy, was shot down over Dong Hoi, North Vietnam, in the early evening of June 8, 1967. At least one person in the two-man plane survived. Beeper signals from a pilot’s distress radio were picked up by overhead helicopters, but the cloud cover was too heavy to go in. Hanoi has recently turned over some bone fragments that are supposed to be Apodaca’s. The Pentagon first declared the fragments to be animal bones. But now it is telling the family — verbally — that they came from the pilot. But the Pentagon, for unexplained reasons, will not put this in writing, which means Apodaca is still unaccounted for. Also the Pentagon refuses to give Alfond a sample of the fragments so she can have testing done by an independent laboratory.

Alfond’s testimony, at a hearing of the POW/MIA committee Nov. 11, 1992, was revealing. She pleaded with the committee not to shut down in two months, as scheduled, because so much of its work was unfinished. Also, she was critical of the committee, and in particular Kerry and McCain, for having “discredited the overhead satellite symbol pictures, arguing there is no way to be sure that the [distress] symbols were made by U.S. POWs.” She also criticized them for similarly discounting data from special sensors, shaped like a large spike with an electronic pod and an antenna, that were airdropped to stick in the ground along the Ho Chi Minh trail.

These devices served as motion detectors, picking up passing convoys and other military movements, but they also had rescue capabilities. Specifically, someone on the ground — a downed airman or a prisoner on a labor detail — could manually enter data into the sensor pods. Alfond said the data from the sensor spikes, which was regularly gathered by Air Force jets flying overhead, had showed that a person or persons on the ground had manually entered into the sensors — as U.S. pilots had been trained to do — “no less than 20 authenticator numbers that corresponded exactly to the classified authenticator numbers of 20 U.S. POWs who were lost in Laos.”

Other than the panel’s second co-chairman, Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., not a single committee member attended this public hearing. But McCain, having been advised of Alfond’s testimony, suddenly rushed into the room to confront her. His face angry and his voice very loud, he accused her of making “allegations … that are patently and totally false and deceptive.” Making a fist, he shook his index finger at her and said she had insulted an emissary to Vietnam sent by President Bush. He said she had insulted other MIA families with her remarks. And then he said, through clenched teeth: “And I am sick and tired of you insulting mine and other people’s [patriotism] who happen to have different views than yours.”

Brought to tears 

By this time, tears were running down Alfond’s cheeks. She reached into her handbag for a handkerchief. She tried to speak: “The family members have been waiting for years — years! And now you’re shutting down.” He kept interrupting her. She tried to say, through tears, that she had issued no insults. He kept talking over her words. He said she was accusing him and others of “some conspiracy without proof, and some cover-up.” She said she was merely seeking “some answers. That is what I am asking.” He ripped into her for using the word “fiasco.” She replied: “The fiasco was the people that stepped out and said we have written the end, the final chapter to Vietnam.” “No one said that,” he shouted. “No one said what you are saying they said, Ms. Alfond.” And then, his face flaming pink, he stalked out of the room, to shouts of disfavor from members of the audience.

As with most of McCain’s remarks to Alfond, the facts in his closing blast at her were incorrect. Less than three weeks earlier, on Oct. 23, 1992, in a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden, President Bush — with John McCain standing beside him — said: “Today, finally, I am convinced that we can begin writing the last chapter in the Vietnam War.”

The committee did indeed, as Alfond said they planned to do, shut down two months after the hearing.

Cannot discuss it

As for her description of the motion sensor evidence about prisoners in Laos, McCain’s response at the hearing was that this data was in a 1974 report that the committee had read but was still classified, so “I cannot discuss it here. … We hope to get it declassified.”

The question to the senator now is: What happened to that report and what happened to the pilots who belonged to those authenticator numbers? Intelligence sources in Washington say the report was never declassified. It became clear over the months of hearings and sparrings that the primary goal of the Kerry-McCain alliance was to clear the way for normalization of relations with Vietnam. They did it in two ways — first, by regularly praising Hanoi for its “cooperation” in the search for information about the unaccounted-for prisoners and then by minimizing and suppressing the volume of evidence to the contrary that had been unearthed by the committee’s staff investigators.

Recasting the issue

Kerry and McCain also tried, at every opportunity, to recast the issue as a debate about how many men could still be alive today, instead of the real issue at stake: How many men were alive in 1973 after the 591 were returned? Although much evidence was kept out of the committee’s final report in January 1993, enough of it, albeit watered down by the committee’s majority, was inserted by the determined staff to demonstrate conclusively that all the prisoners had not come home. Still, if the reader didn’t plow through the entire 1,223-page report but scanned just the brief conclusions in the 43-page executive summary at the beginning, he or she would have found only a weak and pallid statement saying that there was “evidence … that indicates the possibility of survival, at least for a small number” after the repatriation of 1973. On page 468 of the report, McCain provided his own personal statement, saying that “we found no compelling evidence to prove that Americans are alive in captivity today. There is some evidence — though no proof — to suggest only the possibility that a few Americans may have been kept behind after the end of American’s military involvement in Vietnam.”

Two defense secretaries

And even these meager concessions were not voluntary. They had been forced by the sworn public testimony before the Senate committee of two former defense secretaries from the Nixon Administration, Melvin Laird and James Schlesinger. Both these men testified that they believed in 1973, from strong intelligence data, that a number of prisoners in Vietnam and Laos had not been returned. Their testimony has never been challenged. Schlesinger, before becoming defense secretary, had been the CIA director. During his committee appearance, Schlesinger was asked why Nixon would have accepted the prisoners being held back in 1973. He replied: “One must assume that we had concluded that the bargaining position of the United States … was quite weak. We were anxious to get our troops out and we were not going to roil the waters …” Then he was asked “a very simple question. In your view, did we leave men behind?” ‘Some were left behind’ “I think that as of now,” replied the former Pentagon secretary, “that I can come to no other conclusion [that] … some were left behind.” The press went along once again with the debunkers. The Schlesinger-Laird testimony, which seemed a bombshell, became but a one-day story in the nation’s major media. The press never followed it up to explore its implications. On Jan. 26, 1994, when a resolution ardently backed by McCain and Kerry came up in the Senate calling for the lifting of the two-decade-old economic embargo against Vietnam, some members — in an effort to stall the measure — tried to present new evidence about men left behind. McCain rose to his feet and, offering no rebuttal evidence of his own, proceeded to chide “the professional malcontents, conspiracy mongers, con artists and dime-store Rambos who attend this issue.” The resolution passed, 62-38. ‘Isolated Personnel’ These days, the Pentagon seems to be moving toward closing its POW/MIA books completely. In recent statements and reports, it has begun describing prisoners not as POWs but as IPs — Isolated Personnel.

And in a 1999 booklet, the Pentagon said: “By the end of the year 2004, we will have moved from the way the US government conducts the business of recovery and accounting [now] to an active program of loss prevention, immediate rescues, and rapid post-hostility accounting.” More important, there seems to be no allocation of funds in 2004 for the task force that now conducts POW/MIA investigations, searches for remains and does archival research.As for McCain, he continues to stonewall on his own POW records. Through numerous phone calls, faxes and letters to his office, APBnews.com has been trying since late January to interview the Senator and get his permission to view his POW debriefing. The response has been that the senator has been occupied by his campaign schedule.

Call for openness and disclosure 

During the campaign, McCain, who is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, had to address a controversy over queries he had made to the Commerce Department on behalf of a major campaign contributor. To deal with the press interest, he announced he was releasing all of his correspondence with the Commerce Department, not just the letters involving the one case. In addition, to show his full commitment to openness and disclosure, he called on every other government agency to release his communications with them. On Jan. 9 on the CBS program Face the Nation, he announced: “Today, we are asking the federal government to release all correspondence that I’ve had with every government agency.”

McCain’s staff has acknowledged that this request includes the Pentagon. But the Pentagon says it needs an official document from McCain designating a surrogate before it can show his debriefing report to anyone else. APBnews.com has repeatedly asked the senator for this waiver. He does not respond.

Sydney H. Schanberg is the editor of APBnews.com’s investigative unit. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his 1975 coverage of political and social chaos in Cambodia. His news reports and a best-selling book about his experiences in Southeast Asia became the basis for the Academy Award-winning film The Killing Fields.
 



And a parting shot.....