Posted on 07/25/2013 8:41:03 AM PDT by amnestynone
The voters who were drawn to John S. McCain in his run for the Republican presidential nomination this year often cited, as the core of his appeal, his openness and blunt candor and willingness to admit past lapses and release documents that other senators often hold back. These qualities also seemed to endear McCain to the campaign press corps, many of whom wrote about how refreshing it was to travel on the McCain campaign bus, “The Straight Talk Express,” and observe a maverick speaking his mind rather than a traditional candidate given to obfuscation and spin.
But there was one subject that was off-limits, a subject the Arizona senator almost never brings up and has never been open about — his long-time opposition to releasing documents and information about American prisoners of war in Vietnam and the missing in action who have still not been accounted for. Since McCain himself, a downed Navy pilot, was a prisoner in Hanoi for 5 1/2 years, his staunch resistance to laying open the POW/MIA records has baffled colleagues and others who have followed his career. Critics say his anti-disclosure campaign, in close cooperation with the Pentagon and the intelligence community, has been successful. Literally thousands of documents that would otherwise have been declassified long ago have been legislated into secrecy.
For example, all the Pentagon debriefings of the prisoners who returned from Vietnam are now classified and closed to the public under a statute enacted in the 1990s with McCain’s backing. He says this is to protect the privacy of former POWs and gives it as his reason for not making public his own debriefing.
But the law allows a returned prisoner to view his own file or to designate another person to view it. APBnews.com has repeatedly asked the senator for an interview for this article and for permission to view his debriefing documents. He has not responded. His office did recently send APBnews.com an e-mail, referring to a favorable article about the senator in the Jan. 1 issue of Newsweek. In the article, the reporter, Michael Isikoff, says that he was allowed to review McCain’s debriefing report and that it contained “nothing incriminating” — although in a phone interview Isikoff acknowledged that “there were redactions” in the document. Isikoff declined to say who showed him the document, but APBnews.com has learned it was McCain.
Many Vietnam veterans and former POWs have fumed at McCain for keeping these and other wartime files sealed up. His explanation, offered freely in Senate hearings and floor speeches, is that no one has been proven still alive and that releasing the files would revive painful memories and cause needless emotional stress to former prisoners, their families and the families of MIAs still unaccounted for. But what if some of these returned prisoners, as has always been the case at the conclusion of wars, reveal information to their debriefing officers about other prisoners believed still held in captivity? What justification is there for filtering such information through the Pentagon rather than allowing access to source materials? For instance, debriefings from returning Korean war POWs, available in full to the American public, have provided both citizens and government investigators with important information about other Americans who went missing in that conflict.
Would not most families of missing men, no matter how emotionally drained, want to know? And would they not also want to know what the government was doing to rescue their husbands and sons? Hundreds of MIA families have for years been questioning if concern for their feelings is the real reason for the secrecy.
I am suspicious of this dude.
How can a former POW backstab his country?
revenge?
or hate?
If the way he has turned on his own party is any example...........
The bottom line is that McCain is a disturbed, failed man. His endless bizarre attempts to entangle the United States in fruitless foreign adventures and his need for publicity is pathological.
I cannot imagine John NcCain ever doing anything that was not of benefit to him.
MeCain has been “crossing the isle” for a long, long time!
Simple cowardice.
is he helped Sara burst onto the national political stage....”
unintentional, he forbade his team to focus on Huusain
When will he cross the isle to conservatives, I wonder?
I’ve always been suspicious of Juan.
His ‘career’ consisted of crashing planes while hotdogging it and then crashing his plane and letting them take him prisoner.
His combat activity was practically nil. But he used his navy hitch to wedge himself into politics. He is what I call a ‘hoarse whisperer’ because he’s difficult to hear and after you do hear him you are unable to understand what he’s saying.
He is worse than a RINO as he doesn’t even make a pretense.
He is a NWO traitor.
He flies his senate responsibilities the same way he flew the airplanes he was responsible for.
Show him the "Queen of Hearts" and see what happens.
I remember when he and John Kerry were sent to VietNam to look for POW’s and MIA’s.
They were wined and dined and found nothing, but a trade agreement with the Viet Cong.
I haven’t trusted the man since then. Anyone friends with John Kerry is untrustworthy, including the 46 Republican Senators who voted to make him Secretary of State.
I never knew this...it gives more credence to something fishy that went on during his time in Vietnam.
Manchurian Candidate..blackmailed by someone ..I dont know...
but he is no friend to true republicans
He is a NWO traitor.
Exactamundo.
And don't forget -- McCain also inexplicably sandbagged his own Presidential campaign just as he'd caught up with the Marxist in the polls back in 2008.
The man is a disgrace and traitor to all truth.
Also, if memory serves, didn't he disavow introductory remarks made by Billy Cunningham at a McCain rally, in which Cunningham referred to obama as barack hussain obama?
Nothing that any one says or suggests about McShamey surprises me
Look if you DO NOT know what the HELL you are talking about concerning MacPain’s Combat Record then SHUT THE HELL UP. He DID NOT “crash” his plane while “Hotdogging”(when he was taken as a POW)it. Making up things does NO GOOD for the cause. MacPain was put in as a A/C “Spare” (probably after “begging” his squadron’s scheduling Officer to be put in on a mission. On the mission that he was shot down he had formed up(under orders) on his flight lead and was “circling” the target area looking at/for damage/Targets of Opportunity when a N. VN Sam missile malfunctioned and blew up some distance BEHIND MacPain’s A-4 Skyhawk Light Attack Jet and blew the tail off. MacPain ejected was injured in the ejection and landed in a N. VN swampy area(and further injured) and was captured(and held as a N. VN “trophy”) until 1973.
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