When Obama is President, let's make sure this question is answered.

[gridlore]

Why Has John McCain Blocked Info on MIAs?

John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn't return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero people would logically imagine to be a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.

Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain's role in it, even as McCain has made his military service and POW history the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War have also turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn't talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.

The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a Special Forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington and even sworn testimony by two defense secretaries that "men were left behind." This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number--probably hundreds--of the US prisoners held in Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain.

If, and I repeat, IF this is even slightly accurate, then John McCain deserves to be reactivated and given a court-martial. We do not abandon our own. Under any circumstances. To do so is a gross betrayal of the men who trusted their government enough to serve it.

Of course, given McCain's disgusting record on veteran's affairs and supporting the troops I sadly can see where McCain could get off on leaving his buddies behind. He got his, after all.

Comments

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

If there's anything to this story, it may be much more grisly than it appears at first glance.

If I am reading between the lines correctly, there exists in classified archives audio of downed American air crews calling for help and then being captured. Men who were "lost" and later it was decided, did not exist.

From your linked article (http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/articleid/11219):

The devices were motion sensors, dropped by air, designed to pick up enemy troop movements. Shaped on one end like a spike with an electronic pod and antenna on top, they were designed to stick in the ground as they fell. Air Force planes would drop them along the Ho Chi Minh trail and other supply routes. The devices, though primarily sensors, also had rescue capabilities. Someone on the ground—a downed airman or a prisoner on a labor gang —could manually enter data into the sensor. All data were regularly collected electronically by US planes flying overhead. Alfond stated, without any challenge or contradiction by the committee, that in 1974, a year after the supposedly complete return of prisoners, the gathered data showed that a person or people had manually entered into the sensors—as US pilots had been trained to do—"no less than 20 authenticator numbers that corresponded exactly to the classified authenticator numbers of 20 US POWs who were lost in Laos."

From: http://home.att.net/~c.jeppeson/igloo_white.html

GSIDs, or Ground Seismic Intrusion Detectors were a hand-implanted version of the ADSID. The GSID contained the same common modules as ADSIDs, packaged in a 4½x5x9 inch metal box and weighing about seven pounds. Switches on the panel allowed the user to set the transmission ID code, the sensitivity of the sensor, the numbers of days for the EOL (End of Life) timer and to select operation in Real-Time or Inhibit modes. GSIDs could utilize either an internal or an external geophone.

ADSIDs

The ADSID, or Air Delivered Seismic Intrusion Detector, was a family of sensors that were released from aircraft as the name implies, and fielded in versions I, II and III.

As with the GSID, the same adjustments - Gain, Code, Real-Time, Inhibit, and Disable - could be programmed into the ADSID modules.

. . . In spite of rocks, trees, rice paddies and other inhospitable impact sites, 80% of the ADSIDs were found to be operational after air delivery.

. . . Initially, Navy OP-2E Neptune aircraft performed sensor air deliveries at very slow speeds from altitudes as low as 500 feet, making them easy targets for enemy gunfire. The pilots of VO-67 at Nakhon Phanom AB knowingly expected that they would incur as high as an 85% casualty rate from such operations, but volunteered to fly them anyway, and many crewmen were lost.

During later operations, sensors were hand-dropped from CH-3 Jolly Green Giant helicopters by personnel of the 21st SOS Dust Devils (Special Operations Squadron) and later, delivered by Air Force F-4D Phantom-IIs.

. . . during debrief, they [air crews] would get the chance to tell what had been heard on the acoustic sensors

Although sensor alarm data was being relayed from Batcat in real-time, CIM-Gs could not punch in and listen directly to sensor microphones, but Batcat CIMs [air crews] could. Batcat flights recorded all audio on tape at 15/16 ips then shipped some of them to TFA for analysis by the Intelligence group after landing.

It is reported that response times between sensor activity and mission strike could occur in as little as five minutes, but it would not have been considered prudent to so precisely 'telegraph' the sensor locations to enemy intelligence by such cause-and-effect activity.

Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Igloo_White for a detailed overview.

[tsjafo.livejournal.com]

McCain's attitude may come from his father. McCain's father was part of the USS Liberty cover up.

Many, many airmen were lost during the cold war on reconnaissance missions over and near the Soviet Union. There were many reports of survivors. After the collapse of the Soviet Union information on these reported survivors disappeared.

Even during the Gulf War people disappeared. Lt. Cmdr. Michael S. Speicher's fate seemes to have been covered up by our government since the war.