I thought the language was written very well. I thought the language was written … I know Bob Dornan had a hand in it. Why would we … if someone was guilty of withholding information that would help us to solve the mystery of what happened to an MIA, and did it deliberately, why would we not want to prosecute that person? So I could never understand it. SANTOLI: Because they were protecting him. SANTOLI: And he fought tooth and nail to protect those bureaucrats. SANTOLI: If they lied, or if they withheld information… And if you remember the contentiousness we got into with him in his office was that it would hold the bureaucrats accountable by penalty of law… SANTOLI: And also what it did, and this is what he really opposed. And did we need that bill to handle a Scott Spiker case? Oh, you bet we did! BOB DORNAN (R-Calif.): But where did McCain get compliments for doing this? The bureaucrats at the Pentagon! Because it put a workload on them! It put a workload on them from missing-in-action people. I know that for a fact.ĪL SANTOLI, American Foreign Policy Council, fmr Congressional Chief of Staff: Even POWs who wanted to see their own debriefings were not permitted because of the McCain regulation.įormer Rep. government held all sort of information from the committee, withheld information from the committee. But of course, you know, they withheld information from the committee. And our goal on the committee was to just dump this stuff, to declassify it, literally, to the public. BOB SMITH (R-NH): Many, many documents were held back for no reason. That certainly hurt us because we had hoped for a massive release of documentation. of Research, National Alliance of Families: McCain stepped in and in effect made it harder to get documentation. DOUGLASS: He probably did more harm to the idea of trying to get the truth out than any other single person through the efforts he did to block the release of classified intelligence dealing with the POW/MIA problem. He was very rude to me on several occasions.ĭR. That would be the saddest of all.ĭELORES APODACA ALFOND, Chairperson, National Alliance of Families: I mean he was yelling and screaming at me and had me in tears! Maybe he promised the Vietnamese something. And my first question is, how would he know? Or not know? Just - that which is reasonable he never exhibited. Senate Minority Staff: No instance would he ever, ever give in and say there were POWs left behind. Who tried to attack people rather than learn what they had to say. He was not interested in the truth coming out. McCain seemed to be one of those who was an obstructionist. JOSEPH DOUGLASS JR, author, “Betrayed: America’s Missing POWs”: Sen. In the end, no evidence was found that Americans were being held in Vietnam, and relations between the two countries were normalized.ġ992 Senate Select Committee on POW/MIAs, Part 2: The McCain FactorĭR. of State Henry Kissinger, among many others. Witnesses who appeared at committee hearings included Nixon era defense secretaries Melvin Laird and James Schlesinger and Nixon Sec. McCain and other committee members traveled to Vietnam on fact-finding missions. The second goal was to create a plan for normalizing relations between the United States and Vietnam. One was to investigate persistent rumors that Vietnam was still holding U.S. Al Gore.) The committee had two objectives. (The only Vietnam vet who opted out was Sen. Members of the committee included Vietnam veterans among the senators - Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass), Vice Chairman Bob Smith (R-NH), Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), McCain and others. military had deliberately bombed civilian targets in North Vietnam. Bob Dornan of California, assert that McCain was stonewalling the release of POW documents because his own records included transcripts of interviews he gave to communist and other media outlets in which he said the U.S. In the video above (posted at Vietnam Veterans against McCain) which was apparently shot soon after the hearings, POW advocates and experts, as well as Republican politicians, including then-Rep. The issue boiled over in 1992 after POW families and activists felt they had been mistreated by McCain during hearings before the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. Activists accused McCain of stonewalling the release of POW records because they contained evidence he had collaborated with the North Vietnamese.
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