Tom Tuttle from Tacoma and Election 2008
CounterPunch Diary
“Hero" John McCain as Phony and Collaborator: What Really Happened When He Was a POW?Sen. McCain stunned onlookers at the hearing when he moved forward to the witness table and warmly embraced Bui Tin as if he was a long, lost brother.“Was that hug for Bui Tin, a Vietnamese official responsible for the torture of some American prisoners of war, a message ‘please don’t give them my records?’” one activist questioned at the time.
In any case, many of McCain’s fellow Vietnam War POWs were aghast, not to mention former POWs of World War II and Korea, who could, only in some instances after decades, forgive but never forget the inhumanity of their captors--certainly not to the point of embracing them.
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
John McCain’s been getting kid-glove treatment from the press for years, ever since he wriggled free of the Keating scandal and his profitable association – another collaboration, you might say—with the nation’s top bank swindler in the 1980s. But nothing equals the astounding tact with which his claque on the press bus avoids the topic of McCain’s collaborating with his Vietnamese captors after he’d been shot down.
How McCain behaved when he was a prisoner is key. McCain is probably the most unstable man ever to have got this close to the White House. He’s one election away from it. Republican senator Thad Cochrane has openly said he trembles at the thought of an unstable McCain in the Oval Office with his finger on the nuclear trigger.
What if a private memory of years of collaboration in his prison camp gnaws at McCain, and bursts out in his paroxysms of uncontrollable fury, his rantings about “gooks” and his terrifying commitment to a hundred years of war in Iraq. What if “the hero” knows he’s a phony?
Doug Valentine has written the definitive history of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam. He knows about the POW experience. His dad, an Army man, was captured by the Japanese and sent to a POW camp in the Philippines for forced labor. Many of his mates died. Doug wrote a marvelous book about it, The Hotel Tacloban.Now Valentine has picked up the unexploded bomb lying on McCain’s campaign trail this year. As he points out, he’s not the first. Rumors and charges have long swirled around McCain’s conduct as a prisoner. Fellow prisoners have given the lie to McCain’s claims. But Valentine has assembled the dossier. It’s devastating. We’re running it in our current CounterPunch newsletter and we strongly urge you to subscribe.
Some excerpts from Valentine’s indictment.
“War is one thing, collaborating with the enemy is another; it is a legitimate campaign issue that strikes at the heart of McCain’s character. . .or lack thereof. In occupied countries like Iraq, or France in World War II, collaboration to that extent spells an automatic death sentence.. . .The question is: What kind of collaborator was John McCain, the admitted war criminal who will hate the Vietnamese for the rest of his life?
“Put it another way: how psychologically twisted is McCain? And what actually happened to him in his POW camp that twisted him? Was it abuse, as he claims, or was it the fact that he collaborated and has to cover up? Covering-up can take a lot of energy. The truth is lurking there in his subconscious, waiting to explode. ”
“McCain had a unique POW experience. Initially, he was taken to the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison camp, where he was interrogated. By McCain’s own account, after three or four days he cracked. He promised his Vietnamese captors, “I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital ...
“His Vietnamese captors soon realized their POW, John Sidney McCain III, came from a well-bred line in the American military elite. . .The Vietnamese realized, this poor stooge has propaganda value. The admiral’s boy was used to special treatment, and his captors knew that. They were working him.”
“. . .two weeks into his stay at the Vietnamese hospital, the Hanoi press began quoting him. It was not ‘name rank and serial number, or kill me’. as specified by the military code of conduct. McCain divulged specific military information: he gave the name of the aircraft carrier on which he was based, the number of U.S. pilots that had been lost, the number of aircraft in his flight formation, as well as information about the location of rescue ships.”
“…McCain was held for five and half years. The first two weeks’ behavior might have been pragmatism, but McCain soon became North Vietnam’s go-to collaborator…..McCain cooperated with the North Vietnamese for a period of three years. His situation isn’t as innocuous as that of the French barber who cuts the hair of the German occupier. McCain was repaying his captors for their kindness and mercy.
“This is the lesson of McCain’s experience as a POW: a true politician, a hollow man, his only allegiance is to power. The Vietnamese, like McCain’s campaign contributors today, protected and promoted him, and, in return, he danced to their tune. . .”
More on that here.
We saw the fawning and adulation of Kerry in the last go-round and the vilification of the Swiftboat Vets. The difference this time is that anyone challenging the McCain-as-hero line has not gained any traction.
Why do I think collaboration is a possibility?
McCain made some odd statements after his release from Vietnam. More than that, he has established a track record of seething hatred to those American POWs and MIAs left behind, as well as working hard, along with Kerry and Kennedy to reward Vietnam with a removal of the US trade embargo and normalized relations, despite the fact that many US POW’s remained unaccounted for.
Cmdr. McCain Blamed U.S. Politics For N. Vietnamese Collaboration
Former KGB Maj. Gen. Oleg Kalugin testified under oath before the 1992 Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs that the KGB interrogated U.S. POWs in Vietnam.
Gen. Kalugin stated that one of the POWs worked on by the KGB was a “high-ranking naval officer,” who, according to Kalugin, agreed to work with the Soviets upon his repatriation to the United States and has frequently appeared on U.S. television.
Col. Bui Tin, a former Senior Colonel in the North Vietnamese Army, testified on the same day, but after Usry, that because of his high position in the Communist Party during the war, he had the authority to “read all documents and secret telegrams from the politburo” pertaining to American prisoners of war. He said that not only did the Soviets interrogate some American prisoners of war, but that they treated the Americans very badly.
Sen. McCain stunned onlookers at the hearing when he rushed forward to the witness table and warmly embraced Col. Bui Tin as if he was a long, lost brother.
Candidate McCain must answer whether or not he had any contact with the Soviets while he was a prisoner of the communists.
Candidate McCain must answer why he warmly embraced Col. Bui Tin, one of his former interrogators.
During the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs hearings, McCain opposed all efforts by the POW/MIA families and activists to have the Select Committee expand its investigation to study how successful the Vietnamese, Soviet, Chinese and Cuban interrogation apparatuses were at exploiting American prisoners of war. During the Korean War, one out of every three U.S. POWs collaborated.
Candidate McCain must answer why he was opposed to such an investigation.
A McCain POW timeline proving that McCain’s collaborations with the enemy continued over a three year period can be found on the internet at: http://www.usvetdsp.com/mcianhro.htm
Is John McCain a real life Manchurian Candidate? The original 1992 John McCain: The Manchurain Candidate report can be found on the internet at:
http://www.usvetdsp.com/manchuan.htm
Embracing warmly the guys who interrogated and supposedly tortured you—for years???
Now that defies logic.
Working for the enemy country to establish normalized relations?
That defies logic as well.
But what really gets my suspicions aroused is his reported behavior to MIA families:
Members of the two major POW/MIA family organizations know the “real” John McCain and they despise him. They have experienced firsthand his cruel, angry temperament.
In 1996, McCain encountered a group of POW/MIA family members outside a Senate hearing room. The family members were some of the same who worked tirelessly during the Vietnam War to make sure Hanoi released all U.S. POWs - including POW McCain.
McCain immediately began quarreling with the POW/MIA family members, who were eager to question him on the issue of what happened to their loved ones.
Instead showing courtesy and appropriate compassion by answering their questions, the Arizona senator pushed through the group, shoving them out of his way, nearly toppling the wheelchair of POW/MIA mother Jane Duke Gaylor. Her son, Charles Duke, a civilian worker in Vietnam, is among 2,300 American POWs and MIAs still unaccounted for by the communists.
The POW/MIA families, shocked at McCain’s overly aggressive behavior toward Mrs. Gaylor, registered complaints with senate officials.
McCain was advised (Nov. 11, 1992) that Dolores Apodaca Alfond, chairwoman of the National Alliance of POW/MIA Families (her pilot brother Capt. Victor J. Apodaca is missing in action in North Vietnam), was offering testimony critical of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. He rushed into the hearing room to confront her.
Award winning journalist Sydney Schanberg described the scene. “His face [McCain] 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.’
“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.”
Something doesn’t quite jive about McCain’s heroic story.
