POW MIA

I hear them calling in the night
When my world is calm and quiet.

They speak to me in words I would not hear,
Yet their voices won't be silenced.

They beseech me with whispers.
Asking, 'why were we left?

They cannot understand.
The wind carries their questions.
The stars shine down as tears.
The moon becomes their faces.

And I have no answer worth speaking.

I have many friends who served in Vietnam.
Many that died there,
many that died after they came home from Agent Orange.
I pray each day for our POW’s and MIA’s
that they will be brought home!
You are NOT forgotten!
As long as I breathe I will be thinking
and praying for you.

Larry Borrows photographer
title of photo

“Operation Prairie-Hill 484 Marines, 1966”

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream.
It must be fought for, protected,
and handed on for them to do the same,
or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children
what it was once like in the United States when men were free.”
-- Ronald Reagan

POW Prayer

Please hear me ,Lord…..
It’s the dead of night…..

It is dark and cold,
the night surrounds me Like a blanket of hope.
As long as it is night, they will stay in their corner.
I lie here wondering ~
how long is it again?
I cling to the dream of my family ~
I see them in my mind.
It is another Independence Day at home.
When will my independence come?
I will NOT believe that they have forgotten me!!
I look in the hole I have dug here,
for the things that I hide from them.
A little smile across my lips~
in all this time they have never found my little stash!

I pull out a little scrap of shredded red and white.
For me, it waves in the breeze of home!
It is my salvation ~
it tells me there is hope.
There is a tiny piece of cloth,
a remnant of the uniform worn with the pride
only a soldier knows.
Ah, here is that little corner of the photo I once had!
They think they destroyed it ~
It is my private joke on them.
For I can still see the face of my little boy. But ~~~
he must be almost a man by now...

I am not sure?

How long has it been again?
They could not have forgotten me,
as they go from one day to the next without me.
I will not believe that!
If they have, I shall surely be swallowed
up in the mists of this hell!

How long has it been again?
No ~
they have not forgotten ~
how could they have?
Have they ?
My God?
Have they?

By Joanna Mckenzie Henshaw

Until They ALL Come Home

Until they all come home
We watch and wait
Young and old, black and white
So far away, they're sent to fight

Until they all come home
We wear our ribbons to show our pride
And let them know we are on their side

Until they all come home
We pray for peace
Throughout the land
Protect them all, on sea and sand
Until they all come home

By James Withrow
Rolling Thunder

Click on each pictures below ....

to read about each of the
POW’s MIA’s I have on my website.

LT. Dan Borah

1LTJerryLRoe

Ronald Leslie Bond

Capt. John McDonnell

Maj. L Gourley

We know that our POW's and MIA's

are among the many American servicemen
held in Southeast Asia, after the end of the war.
I believe with all my heart their are many POWs
still held in Southeast Asia.
We hear of "superb" Vietnamese cooperation.

It is a lie.

The Vietnamese know exactly
where our POW's and MIA's are located.

Since the end of the Vietnam War
well over 21,000 reports of American prisoners,
missing and otherwise unaccounted for have been
received by our government.
Many of these reports document LIVE
America Prisoners of War
remaining captive throughout Southeast Asia TODAY.

By 1990 over 10,000 reports have been received
by the U.S. Government concerning men
missing in Southeast Asia.
The government of Cambodia has stated that it
would like to return a number of American remains to
the U.S.
(in fact, the number of remains mentioned
is more than are officially listed missing in that country),
but the U.S., having no diplomatic relations with
Cambodia, refuses to respond officially to that offer.

Most authorities believe there are hundreds of
Americans still alive in Southeast Asia today,
waiting for their country to come for them.
If there is even one American alive,
he deserves our ultimate efforts to bring him home now.

Congress has set aside the
THIRD FRIDAY of September in each year as
National POW/MIA Recognition Day.
It is a time to remember those who never came home.
Congress has further recognized the
POW/MIA flag of the National League of Families
as the official flag to represent our missing soldiers.

Come For Me

Twenty years in the jungle has taken it's toll on me.
I'm not the same man I used to be.
But one thing's consistent ... I long to be free.
Please, Mr. President, come for me.
The scars of my torture will never go away.
I'm fifty pounds lighter. My hair is gray.
But the shackles can't chain the freedom in me.
Please, ("mighty") lawmakers come for me.
If my family believed there's a chance I'd survived,
They'd fight to their deaths to prove I'm alive.
Please, lovin' family, come for me.
Some captors say you don't know I'm here,
That I'm doomed to this prison year after year.
God Bless America, the land of the free.
Please, friends and parishioners, come for me.
Other captors say you know that I'm here,
But refuse to accept the evidence, so clear.
Will some caring citizen hear my plea?
Please, fellow countrymen, come for me.
I'll have faith in my country 'till my dying day.
I'll never believe you could leave me this way.
My Country, 'tis of thee .....
Please, please, America, come for me!

By LeAnn Thieman, 1987

Until our government and the American people
face the truth, and acknowledge the legacy of the men
left behind and kept behind, Vietnam will never go away.

Five United States Presidents,
at one point or another in their terms, have
stood before the American people,
and exhorted them to
"put Vietnam behind us"
But a nation and its people cannot
"put behind" them,
that which they know they've been continuously deceived
about by their leaders.
And if there is one thing the American people
old enough to know, or read, or watch TV
really understand, it is that virtually everything
their leaders once told them about Vietnam,
and the war in Southeast Asia,
has later been proven to be a lie,
to manipulate them or hide illegal or unconstitutional acts by
Presidents from them and the Congress.

Until Presidents are willing to stop this abuse of the national security
imprimatur for politically expedient and self-protecting motives,
of which the POW/MIA conundrum is surely
the most embarrassing icon, we are stuck with
the lingering cultural cancer that was our Vietnam aftermath.

No true healing will occur,
no resolution and satisfaction and closure can
finally begin,
until a President with the moral courage to stop the charade
concerning the legacy of these men abandoned,
steps forward and honorably
and finally puts an end to this trail of tears,
anguish from the frustration of these Families,
so honor can be restored to their sacrifice on behalf of the nation.

Nonetheless, President Clinton,
against all major Veterans Organizations' protests,
and those of the Families of the POWs and MIAs groups,
lifted the 26-year-old Trade Embargo against
the Communist Regime in Vietnam.
News reports in national magazines claimed
"sources inside the White House say
the President's National Security Advisor,
Anthony Lake, was the last holdout" against lifting the embargo.
The Clinton Administration moved
quickly towards full normalization of relations with Vietnam.

The national polls taken
immediately after the President Clinton’s actions
showed that 83% of Americans
"don't believe the Vietnamese are cooperating enough"
to resolve the MIA issue,
despite Clinton's assurances they were.
Another poll showed 73% of Americans
"believe their government is lying about Vietnam POWs and MIAs",
and an astounding "52% of Americans believe there is a live American
POW alive today in Vietnam".

Captors bound their arms so tightly that they lost circulation.
They were denied food and water.
They were beaten.
When they still refused to cooperate,
their torturers moved on to a new,
more sinister method-the "rope torture."

Prisoners were forced face down onto a bunk with their
ankles in stocks and a rope tied at their elbows,
with the rope, then pulled up to run through a hook in the ceiling.
The guard hoisted the prisoner off the bunk so the prisoner
could not ease any of his weight-producing
extreme pain and constricting breathing.
"The pain is literally beyond description."
After about 10 or 15 minutes in this position, tied up so tightly,
your nerves in your arms are pinched off,
and then your whole upper torso becomes numb.
It's a relief. You feel no more pain. ...
However when they release the ropes,
the procedure works completely in reverse.
It's almost like double jeopardy-you go through
the same pain coming out of the ropes as you did going in."

One of the many reasons I HATE Hanoi John Kerry
and Hanoi Jane Fonda !

Former POW Jim Warner today told HUMAN EVENTS
that he first learned about Lt. John Kerry in a
North Vietnamese prison camp.
When his captors brought him out of solitary confinement
in the infamous Skid Row punishment camp for an interrogation,
they made him read the typewritten transcript of a statement by Kerry,
speaking in the United States.
His interrogator kept pointing at Kerry's words, saying,
'See? This officer from your Navy says you deserve to be punished.'"

Tom Collins, another Vietnam POW whose plane was shot down in 1965,
was made to listen to Kerry's testimony on tape during his captivity.
What they wanted to do was get us to make statements
that they could use for propaganda,
no matter what it took to get it" he said.
"They would torture us, some were even killed for it.
And then I see somebody like John Kerry and the Vietnam Veterans
[Against the War] giving them the same propaganda they
wanted me to give them, free of charge.
"He knew he was putting us at risk," Warner went on.
"And he was demanding unilateral withdrawal,
which means our value as bargaining chips would be gone.
And what do you think would have happened to us then?"

Those who refused to meet with Fonda were tortured.
Civilian Michael Benge, an official of the agency for
International development, was captured in Cambodia,
and when refused to meet with Jane Fonda,
was forced to kneel on the cold cement floor of his cell
holding a steel rod in front of him for two days.
Every time the rod dipped to the floor, he was brutally beaten.
When he finally returned home with the other POWs years later,
he was missing part of his right foot /
Back in America, Jane informed the public that
the American soldiers were being well treated and not tortured.
Her outrageous claims were later exposed when
American POWs returned home and
told of years of agonizing torture and inhumane treatment.

The United States has a legal and moral responsibility
to seek out and prosecute the individuals who
purposely caused mistreatment of U.S. prisoners of war
which resulted in the loss of life, limb and long-lasting physical
and psychological problems to survivors.
Today, in the United States,
where Nazi war criminals are still being hunted down and deported,
( and that IS A GOOD THING! ) it is possible to find
known Vietnamese war criminals visiting,
enjoying our freedoms and unconcerned
with being punished for their crimes.

POW Lt. Nick Rowe said Versace,
who the Viet Cong had labeled a "reactionary,"
was being tortured by guards in an indoctrination hut
a few feet from Rowe's cage when Versace
defiantly told a Viet Cong guard,
"I'm an officer in the United States Army.
You can force me to come here,
you can make me sit and listen,
but I don't believe a damn word of what you say!"
Rowe said those were the last words
any American ever heard from Versace.
Soon after, according to a U.S. government report,
Versace was marched to Central Committee headquarters
and forced to kneel and apologize for his "crimes"
before he was shot in the back of the head.

God help us all !!!! Because we have John Kerry and
Jane Fonda living, eating and sleeping in our
country. Enjoying the freedoms we enjoy
without one blink in their hearts of a
conscience of the deaths and
brutality they have brought upon our
troops !!!!!!

My heart aches for our POW's and MIA's !

"As a Vietnam Veteran, I feel very strongly

about the Americans still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia.

This work is about the cover-ups and lies that prevented their release."

"Deceit" ca. 1982 (Graphite & Charcoal)
In the collection of the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, Chicago, Ill.

The Lies and deceit regarding our POW's and MIA's

On February 12,1973, the first planeload of POWs touched down on US soil

at Travis Air Force Base. It was also on this very day that the US and Hanoi

set up a group to channel US reconstruction aid to Hanoi. On March 29, 1973,

former President Richard M. Nixon announced that

'For the first time in many years, ALL THE PRISONERS ARE FINALLY HOME.

April 3, 1973: Pathet Lao (Laotian Communist) forces declare

they are holding more than 100 American POWs and

are prepared to give a full accounting of them

The U.S. government responds 9 days later declaring

they are all dead -- without ever talking to

the Laotians about the POWs they admit holding!

1970-1976: After the French pay an unspecified sum

of money to the Vietnamese, the communists

release POWs captured in 1954!

The North Vietnamese had claimed all of then had died.

August 19, 1986: The Wall Street Journal reports

the White House knew in 1981 Vietnam wanted to

sell an unspecified number of live POWs for $4 billion.

The White House decided the offer was genuine -- and ignored it!

September 30, 1986: The New York Times reports a Pentagon

panel estimates up to 100 live American POWs are held in Vietnam alone.

October 7, 1986: CIA Director William Casey says:

"Look, the nation knows they (the POWs)are there,

everybody knows they are there, but there's no grounds

well 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."

January 1988: A cable from the Joint Casualty Resolution Center

states that during General Vessey's visit to Hanoi,

"The Vietnamese people were prepared to turn over 7 or 8 live

American POWs if Vessey told then what they wanted to hear.

All the prospective returnees were allegedly held in a

location on the Lao side of the border."

September 1990: The Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Interim Report

on POW/MIA's in Southeast Asia concluded that despite public

assurances in 1973 that no POWs remained in the region, t

he Defense Department ". . . in April 1974 concluded beyond a

doubt that several hundred American POWs remained in captivity in Southeast Asia."

October 1990: Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach admits

Vietnam still holds American POWs but is willing to release

"as many as 10 live American POWs." His offer, like others before it,

is ignored by Secretary of State James Baker III.

February 1991: Colonel Millard Peck, Chief of the Pentagon's Special Office

for Prisoners of War and Missing in Action, resigns in protest of

being ordered by policy makers in the POW/MIA Inter-Agency Group

not to investigate live-sighting reports of American POWs!

April 25, 1991: Senator Bob Smith addresses the Senate and reveals

that, of more than 1,400 eyewitness sightings of live POWs,

NONE has ever received an on-site investigation!

May 23, 1991: The Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Examination

of U.S. Policy Toward POW/MIAs concludes that the U.S. has ignored

thousands of American POWs, and left them to rot in Soviet slave

labor camps and North Korean and Vietnamese prisons.

"Any evidence that suggested an MIA might be alive was uniformly and arbitrarily rejected."

Summer 1991: A flood of new evidence of live POWs pours from

Southeast Asia: pictures, handwriting samples, hair samples, blood samples,

fingerprints, foot-prints, maps and other physical proof. The Bush

administration disregards the evidence and attempts to

discredit it by rumor and innuendo. Some of the photos are

scientifically validated -- and have never been scientifically disproved!

All these facts are a matter of public record and clearly indicate

that we have some serious problems in the POW/MIA

arena that our elected officials refuse to acknowledge.

This information was compiled by Task Force Omega of Kentucky, Inc.

The intelligence indicates that the American Prisoners of War have been

held continuously after Operation Homecoming and remain in

captivity in Vietnam and Laos as late as 1989."

Oral Intelligence Briefing before the Senate Select Committee on POWs-MIAs, April 8, 1992

"Despite adherences to internal policies and public statements after

April, 1973, that "no evidence" existed of living POWs, DIA

authoritatively concluded as late as April, 1974, that several

hundred living POW/MIAs were still held captive in

Southeast Asia." Interim Report on the Southeast Asian POW/MIA Issue
By the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Republican Staff
Release Date: Monday, October 29, 1990

"In fact, classified and unclassified information all confirm one startling fact:

That DOD in April, 1974, concluded beyond a doubt that several hundred

living American POWs remained in captivity in Southeast Asia.

This was a full year after DOD spokesmen were saying publicly

that no prisoners remained alive." Interim Report on the Southeast Asian POW/MIA Issue
By the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Republican Staff
Release Date: Monday, October 29, 1990

The Quang 1205 Document
After President Clinton was sworn in for his first term,

a Harvard Researcher unrelated to the POW/MIA issue discovered

a document in the archives of the former Soviet Union. This document,

a Russian translation of a report given to the North Vietnamese Politburo

in September 1972 by then Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the

Vietnamese Peoples Army, General Lieutenant Chan Van Quang.

This document shows beyond doubt that the Vietnamese

never intended on returning all American POWs back to US control.

Although the Clinton Administration's knee jerk reaction was to

classify the document, the researcher had given a copy of the document

to the NY Times. So now the Clinton Administration had to trash

this document because Clinton had something in mind respective to Vietnam. He was preparing to:

Lift US objections to the World Bank lending IMF funds to Vietnam;

Over the objections of virtually every Veteran Organization, Family members,

over 50 former Prisoners of War and the POW/MIA community in general,

he lifted the US imposed trade embargo against Vietnam;

Less than two years later, again over the objections of the Veteran Organizations,

Family members, 50+ former Prisoners of War and the P0W/MIA

community he re-established diplomatic relations with Vietnam.

So the 1205 document had to be trashed. Not ever debriefing General Quang,

who is still alive, the US Government said that the document was a fake.

It was a plant. But planted by whom and for what purpose?

The Soviets were the allies of Vietnam at the time and since the fall of the Soviet Union,

the Russians have needed US help.

Why wouldn't they have destroyed a document that they had purportedly planted?

Read the Quang 1205 Document here

John Kerry and John McCain McCain and Senate Select Committee on POW and MIA

Senate Select Committee Testimony & Depositions

John F. McCreary
May 3, 1992

Click above link to read document: Here is just a portion of it:

b. On 9 April 1992, at the beginning of the meeting of the Select Committee

and prior to the scheduled investigators' briefing, Senator McCain

produced a copy of the intelligence briefing text, with whose contents he

strongly disagreed. He charged that the briefing text had already been

leaked to a POW/MIA activist, but was reassured by the Chairman that

such was not the case. He replied that he was certain it would be leaked.

Whereupon, the Chairman assured Senator McCain that there would be

no leaks because all copies would be gathered and destroyed, and he

gave orders to that effect. No senior staff member or attorney present

cautioned against a possible violation of Title 18, U.S.C., Section 2071,

or of Senate or Select Committee Rules.

c. Following the briefing on 9 April, the Staff Director, Ms. Frances Zwenig,
restated to the intelligence investigators the order to destroy the intelligence
briefing text and took measures to ensure execution of the destruction order.
(See paragraph 3 of the attachment.) During one telephone conversation
with the undersigned, she stated that she was "acting under orders."

In retrospect, it is clear that John Kerry had but one goal as Chairman
of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. His goal was to remove
the issue of Prisoners of War and Missing in Action, as a roadblock
to trade and normalization of relations with Vietnam. The question is.... why?

All we need to do is look at two events which occurred shortly after t
he committee presented its finding, in January 1993.Francis Zwenig,
staff director for the Committee, who was often seen during hearings
whispering in Kerry's ear, became Vice President of the U.S. - Vietnam Trade Council.
Ms Zwenig, who helped shaped the conclusion of the committee and its final report
was now benefiting financially from the committee's efforts to close the POW/MIA issue.

d. The undersigned also was instructed to delete all computer files,
which Mr. Barry Valentine witnessed on 9 April.

i. Senator Kerry's remarks prompted follow-up investigations

(See paragraphs 4 through 9 of the attachment) and inquiries

that established that a copy of the text was not deposited in the

Office of Senate Security until the afternoon of 16 April.

The Staff Director has admitted that on the afternoon of 16 April,

after receiving a copy of a memorandum from Senator Bob Smith

to Senator Kerry in which Senator Smith outlined his concerns about

the destruction of documents, she obtained a copy of the intelligence

briefing text from the office of Senator McCain and took it to the

Office of Senate Security. Office of Senate Security personnel confirmed

that the Staff Director gave them an envelope, marked "Eyes Only,"

to be placed in her personal file. The Staff Director has admitted that

the envelope contained the copy of the intelligence

briefing text that she obtained from the office of Senator McCain.

Dolores Apodaca Alfond
chairwoman of the National Alliance of Families
an all-volunteer MIA organization

Source:

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.

John Kerry and Senator John McCain chaired the country's most

thorough investigation into the fate of POW/MIAs in Southeast Asia.

Unfortunately they did more to obstruct that investigation than to pursue evidence

indicating that Vietnam deliberately withheld captured American servicemen.

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