Did You Know

DID YOU KNOW:

More than 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam?

As of September 18, 2002, there are 1,905 Americans still missing from the Vietnam war, some 8,000 missing from the Korean War?

In a recent poll, 62% of the American people said they believe Americans are still being held against their will in south east Asia, 84% of Vietnam veterans believe the same?

In 1973, many of the returning POWs were ordered to NOT get involved in the POW-MIA issue?

About 60% of the remains returned by the Vietnamese government show clear signs of aboveground storage, at the same time they denied any knowledge of the fate of those missing?

The Nixon administration (covertly) offered $4 billion in aid and war reparations for an unknown number of POWs, but congress would not approve the funds?

Every presidential administration since 1975 have proclaimed that the fullest possible accounting of POW-MIAs has "highest national priority"?

In 1981, 8 years after then president Nixon declared there were no more POWs in south east Asia, a prison camp was found near Nhomnarath, Laos by satellite imagery and a rescue mission was planned?

The Senate Select Committee on POW-MIA affairs spent 15 months, and $1.9 million, produced a
1.223 page report, and concluded, "We acknowledge that there is no proof that U.S. POWs survived, but neither is there proof that all those who did not return had died. There is evidence that indicates,,, the possibility of survival, at least for a small number, after Operation Homecoming".

On April 1992, the chairman of the Senate Select Committee Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, told the Select Committee that all copies of the POW briefing would be destroyed.

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What those who are close to the issue have to say:

"Look, the Nation knows they (the POWs) are there, everybody knows they are there, but there's no groundswell of support for getting them out. Certainly you are not suggesting we pay for them, surely not saying we could do anything like that with no public support?"
(William "Bill" Casey, former director of the CIA October 7, 1986)

In 1981 , just weeks after President Reagan took office, the new administration learned that Vietnam wanted to sell to the US, an unspecified number of live POWs still in Southeast Asia for the sum of $4 billion ,,,,it was decided the offer was indeed genuine.
(The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, August 19, 1986)

"People working on that issue could not find a POW if a POW dropped on their heads."
(Ken de Graffenenreid, former NSC Intelligence Chief)

"If I ever see the United States Senate again, I hope it will be in hell, because I found nothing but dishonesty up there."
(An investigator for the Senate Select Committee, 1993)

"The intelligence that American prisoners of war have been held continuosly after Operation Homecoming (in early 1973) and remain(ed) in captvity in Vietnam and Laos as late as 1989. The intelligence indicates that no American prisoners of war have survived in Cambodia."
(report of investigators for the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, 1992)

"It (the committee) had a shot at really doing something. And the chairman (Kerry) prevented it from happening. He blocked it every step of the way. It was the most frustrating and unblievable thing I ever saw in my life."
(a highly experienced investigator of the senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs)

"They (the Vietnamese guards) threatened me. "We're still holding French POWs and we're going to do the same thing to you if you don't cooperate."
(Mike Benge, U.S. POW returned in 1973)

"Americans were being held in Hanoi pending the settlement of an agreement with the U.S. on American reconstruction aid to Vietnam."
(Vietnamese communist official, quoted in post-1973 U.S. intelligence report)