I've always believed that in our rush to get untangled from Vietnam after the Paris "Peace" Accords, men were knowingly left behind in the hands of the Viet Cong, the Laotians and in the case of some high-powered prisoners, the North Vietnamese themselves.

Former Special Forces officer LtCol Bo Gritz made his shameful grandstanding plays in the early 80s with announcements that he had evidence and was planning rescue missions, but nothing ever came of that, of course.

I just finished "Inside Delta Force," by CSM Eric L. Haney, USA (Ret.), a founding member of 1st SFOD-D. CSM Haney says that the US knew in 1981 that approximately 125 Americans were still alive in the hands of the North Vietnamese, but were being held in Laos so that the Viets could truthfully say, "There are no Americans held in Vietnam." Twice missions were laid on in secret to rescue these men, and twice Bo Gritz came out of the woodwork and into the spotlight to say that he had intel and was putting together a "rescue mission" from his base in Florida.

CSM Haney hypothesizes in the book that Gritz was used, knowingly or unknowingly, by those in America who would have had their careers damaged by the confirmed knowledge that men had been willingly left behind in the hands of the enemy. CSM Haney believes the the POWs being held were then executed and their remains destroyed to prevent any possible rescue or confirmation of their existence.

He also describes a conversation he had with a "former highly placed member of the North Vietnamese diplomatic corps" where he was asked point blank why the Americans never attempted to recover the remaining POWs after the conclusion of the war.

Do you believe POWs were knowingly and intentionally left behind? If so, do you believe that government policy or personal ambition and treachery saw to it that they were never repatriated? What responsibility does Bo Gritz bear for playing a part in it?

I recommend the book highly. It's a great look at Delta from someone on the inside. His description of the selection and training process is terrific.

YOU DAMN SKIPPY SOME OF OUR BROTHERS WERE LEFT OVER THERE.Why was it nobody ever had the Balls to do anything about it?

Yes, I believe that there were POWs left behind in Indochina after the end of the War.

Just as there were prisoners left behind in the Soviet Union following WWII, and in North Korea, following the Korean War.

IIRC, the American POWs who were held by the North Koreans were sent to the Soviet Union.

Just more reasons to be thankful that 'evil empire' fell in 1991.

Now the real question should be why do the North Vietnamese continue to hold American POWs?

Eric The(Concerned)Hun[>]:)]

Knowing that he had to have submitted his manuscript to DOD and probably CIA before publication, I'm amazed he was allowed to talk about it.

Former CIA DO officer Robert Baer's book, "See No Evil," was censored by the CIA before publication, but he left the blacked out redactions in when it went to press.

CSM Haney says in the book that his discussion with the former North Vietnamese diplomat yielded a few bits of information:

"The Vietnamese [i]knew that we knew[/i] they were still holding prisoners, and they regarded this as the trump card to be used in later negotiations over payment of reparations. (Why not? They had used the same ploy successfully on the French two decades before.) My diplomat friend tells me the sum of the secret provision for reconstruction aid was eleven billion dollars. I have heard a similar number from other individuals.

But then came Watergate. And when the Nixon administration imploded, there were no players left the Vietnamese could use the POW card on."

But even after Nixon and his people were out of political posts, they still had political power, as did those from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. The POWs could have been kept on hand as a hedge and a club to be used to get concessions in return for keeping their existence under wraps. Imagine the damage to US prestige and the boon to the Viets if they "unilaterally found" some prisoners and put them on a plane home.

Yes.

Add a POLL to this thread.

Yes, [b]thebeekeeper1[/b], it doesn't make sense in our Western Civilization minds, but the problem is just that. We are limited to believe only what would make sense to us.

Not to the Soviets, not to the North Vietnamese.

Who knows, these POWs may have some sort of value to their captors that we cannot presently understand or imagine.

Maybe they are POWs who tried to escape, maybe they are POWs who witnessed other POWs being executed, maybe they are POWs who have special knowledge that the North Vietnamese don't want us to know that they had access to even now.

Maybe we are just dealing with a group of folks such as described in Solzhenitsyn's [u]The Gulag Archipelago (1973) that are evil simply for the sake of being evil.

See also this book dealing with one group of missing US airmen:[url]http://www.apbonline.com/media/gfiles/busch/[/url]

Eric The(Suspicious)Hun[>]:)]

I assume that all of the POWs are dead by now, if not simply by age, then at least by the inhumane treatment they received at the hands of their communist tormentors!

But an accounting of all MUST be made, and any help of any nature to any of these countries must be made contingent upon such an accounting!

To find out now that the former Soviet Union executed our POWs, or that the North Koreans or the North Vietnamese did so, as well, will not increase the views that the Western World should have of them as being barbaric.

But the record does need to be set straight!

And the families of these men given some sort of rationale for their treatment.

Maybe even at the hands of our own government!

Eric The(Rational)Hun[>]:)]

This topic gives new meaning to the expression;  

I love my country but I am ashamed of some of the things my government has done.


What bothers me most is if higher ranking military knew, why wouldn't they speak up?

Another good read recommended to me is:

"Honored and Betrayed" by Major General (ret) Richard V. Secord


Edited to add book title

Check out this site and the story of Lima site 85

Opened my eyes.

make sure you continue and read the next pages, etc.



[url]http://www.geocities.com/amlegnpost499/ls85.htm[/url]

Or the spineless, sniveling politicians that knowingly left them there.[:(!]

Exactly. And I'm not sure that it was done through any kind of official policy, but maybe just as a personal CYA for a few key people.

The fact that the intelligence got to someone who could [b]twice[/b] task SFOD-D to prepare strike teams to extract the men leads me to believe that many in government knew about it, though.