By Ted Sampley
ANOTHER In a Series
Sen. John McCain's high-profile and unrelenting support for a government that brutally tortured and murdered his fellow POWs is causing
POW/MIA family members and fellow Vietnam veterans to question the senator and his motivations.
They ask what drives McCain, who owes his public life to the tag "former POW," to work so hard for Hanoi and
so diligently to discredit any possibility, in fact the probability, that Hanoi held back live U.S. prisoners of war after the 1973 prisoner release.
The POW/MIA families point out that they worked hard
during the Vietnam War to secure McCain's freedom when he was held by the Communists. The families want to know why he is betraying them in their efforts to get answers about their missing loved ones.
None
of the senators who served on the 1991-92 Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs were as vicious in their attacks on POW/MIA family members, veterans and activists as McCain. During the POW/MIA hearings, Frances
Zwenig, the $118,000-a-year staff director of the Senate Select Committee, reported to McCain that she was told by the Vietnamese, during a July 1992 meeting with the Vietnamese, that something had to be done about the
POW/MIA activists who were opposing lifting the U.S. imposed trade embargo against Vietnam.
Not long after, McCain started demanding that the Select Committee investigate the activists, prompting one
observer to ask: "Are the Vietnamese now directing the affairs of the Senate Select Committee?"
McCain accused the POW/MIA families and activists who openly challenged the U.S. government's POW/MIA policy
of fraud. In his attacks he said: "The people who have done these things are not zealots in a good cause. They are criminals and some of the most craven, most cynical and most despicable human beings to ever run a scam."
McCain took the lead in the Senate and demanded a Justice Department investigation of the activists. The Justice Department investigated and found no reason to charge any of the POW/MIA activists.
When Col. Bui Tin, one of McCain's former interrogators, testified before the Senate Select Committee, McCain did not display that same "pit bull" inclination to attack as he did for the POW/MIA families and
activists. Tin, a former senior colonel in the North Vietnamese Army, told the committee that because of his high position in the Communist Party during the war, he had the right to "read all the documents and secret
telegrams from the Politburo" pertaining to American prisoners of war. He said not only did the Soviets interrogate some American prisoners of war, but they treated them very badly.
During a break in the
hearing, McCain warmly embraced Tin as if he were a long lost brother. McCain fought a hard and successful campaign to get the U.S.-imposed trade embargo against Vietnam lifted, despite the opposition of all major
veterans organizations, the two POW/MIA family groups and the majority of the Vietnamese Americans in this country. The veterans want to know why McCain, the "conservative" politician, takes such a strong stand for the
Vietnamese Communists and against such patriotic groups.
McCain was born in the Panama Ca nal Zone on Aug. 29, 1936. His father, Adm. John McCain II, became commander-in-chief of the Pacific forces in 1968
and later ordered the bombing of Hanoi while his son was held there as a prisoner of war.
McCain's grandfather, Adm. John S. McCain Sr., was the commander of aircraft carriers in the Pacific under Adm.
William F. Halsey in World War II.
McCain's early years were spent in var ious places on the east and west coasts. He attended Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va., and is a 1958 graduate of the U.S.
Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
At the Naval Academy, McCain's grades in electrical engineering were satisfactory, although he had numerous demerits for breaking curfews and infractions. He graduated fifth
from the bottom of his class.
Despite his low class standing, Mc Cain's request for training as a Navy pilot was granted. His father's rank of admiral and family history apparently played a part in the
decision.
After qualifying as a Navy pilot, McCain was shipped to Vietnam.
On his 23rd mission over North Vietnam on Oct. 26, 1967, McCain was shot down by a surface-to-air missile.
McCain later recalled that he was flying right over the heart of Hanoi in a dive at about 4,500 feet when a Russian missile the size of a telephone pole came up—the sky was full of them—and "blew the right wing off my
Skyhawk dive bomber. It went into an inverted, almost straight-down spin."
"I pulled the ejection handle, and was knocked unconscious by the force of the ejection—the air speed was about 300 knots," McCain
said. "I didn't realize it at the moment, but I had broken my right leg around the knee, my right arm in three places and my left arm. I regained consciousness just before I landed by parachute in a lake right in the
center of Hanoi, one they called the Western Lake. My helmet and my oxygen mask had been blown off.
"I hit the water and sank to the bottom . . . I did not feel any pain at the time, and I was able to rise
to the surface. I took a breath of air and started sinking again."
After bobbing up and down, McCain said he was eventually pulled from the water by Vietnamese who swam out to get him.
He said
a mob gathered on shore. He was bayoneted in the foot and his shoulder was smashed with a rifle butt. He was put on a truck and taken to Hanoi's main prison, McCain said.
THE 'RHINESTONE HERO'
In Congress, McCain's peers tout him as a great war hero. On occasion, the press categorizes McCain as one of the most tortured prisoners of the Vietnam War.
Neither is true. He was never
brutally tortured and, by his own admission, he collaborated with the communists.
When one totals McCain's 23 missions over North Vietnam times the number of minutes he was actually over enemy territory
(approximately 20 to 35 minutes per mission), McCain's total time over Vietnam before being shot down was about 10-and-one-half hours.
For those 10-and-one-half hours over Vietnam, McCain was awarded two
Silver Stars, two Legions of Merit, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, three Bronze Stars, the Vietnamese Legion of Honor and three Purple Hearts averaging over one hero medal per hour.
Compare McCain's
10-and-a-half hours of combat and 13 medals to that of a U.S. infantry private who spent 365 days trudging through South Vietnam's jungle and mud, facing death on a daily basis. He was lucky to leave Vietnam with a
simple good conduct ribbon.
Compare McCain's record as a prisoner of war to that of Army Special Forces Capt. "Rocky" Versace of Norfolk, Va., who was captured by Vietnamese Communists (Viet Cong) on Oct.
29, 1963 in South Vietnam. Versace resisted his captors to the end. Very few, if any, in Congress know about Versace.
Versace spent two years chained in a bamboo cage and endured almost daily torture by the
Vietnamese Communists. He continuously frustrated his Viet Cong interrogators by refusing to obey demands that he denounce America and accept the communist philosophy of revolution. He told his captors as they were
dragging him to an interrogation hut, "I am an officer of the United States Army. You can force me to come here, you can make me sit and listen, but I don't have to believe a damn word you say."
The Viet
Cong decided that day to take no more resistance from Versace. A few days later, on orders of Viet Cong leader Vo Van Kiet, Vietnam's current prime minister and McCain's friend, Versace was dragged from his
filth-ridden, mosquito-infested bamboo cage for the last time and forced to kneel with his forehead pressed into the jungle mud. Versace was then shot in the back of the head.
McCain doesn't talk about MIAs
such as Versace, Sgt. Kenneth Roraback of Fayetteville, N.C., or Army Sgt. Harold Bennett of Perryville, Ark., all of whom were ordered executed by his friend, Kiet, according to reports.
Compare McCain,
the POW hero, to another fellow prisoner of war, Marine Capt. Donald Cook, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
Cook was awarded our nation's highest award for valor because, during his years
of captivity, he jeopardized his own health by sharing his meager supply of food and scarce medicines with other U.S. prisoners who were more sick than him. He became legendary for his refusal to betray the military
Code of Conduct. On one occasion, Kiet's Viet Cong cadre put a pistol to Cook's head, demanding that he denounce the United States. Cook resisted and calmly recited the nomenclature of the parts of the pistol, giving
the communists nothing.
The Viet Cong were so infuriated at Cook's resistance that they isolated him from other American prisoners. They intentionally denied him much needed food and medicine. Like Versace,
Cook disappeared and was never heard from again. Hanoi claims Cook died as a result of malaria and that they do not know where his remains are buried.
McCain discourages any talk about Versace, Roraback, Bennett and Cook.
To talk about such patriots would require the United States to demand the return of their remains or, at the very least, records of
their deaths. If those MIAs are proven dead and their remains returned, then McCain's friend, Kiet, would be forced to explain the holes in the back of their skulls and why he ordered the POWs murdered.
McCain is no hero. He violated the military Code of Conduct and willfully collaborated with the Vietnamese, Soviets and Cubans.
It is not yet publicly known just how much McCain collaborated and what kind
of favors he received in return. Those in the U.S. government who do know are not talking.
