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In August of 1991, the United States
Senate approved a resolution which created a Select
Committee on POW and MIA Affairs. The scope of the
committee was to:
"investigate
the events, policies, and knowledge that guided U.S.
Government POW/MIA-related actions over the previous 20
years and to do so in order to advance the following
goals:
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to
determine whether there was evidence that American
POWs survived Operation Homecoming and, if so,
whether there was evidence that some may have been
alive in captivity;
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to ensure
the adequacy of government procedures for following
up on live-sighting reports and other POW/MIA
related information;
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to
de-mystify the POW/MIA accounting process so that
the families and the public can better understand
the meaning behind the numbers and statistics used
in discussions of the issue;
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to
establish an open, comprehensive record, and to
provide for the broad declassification of POW/MIA
materials in order to enable both the Committee and
the public to make informed judgments about
questions of policy, process, and fact;
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to lend
added weight to Executive branch efforts to obtain
cooperation from foreign governments in Southeast
Asia and elsewhere in accounting for missing
Americans;
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to review
the activities of private organizations who
participate in fundraising and educational efforts
related to the POW/MIA issue;
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and to
examine, to the extent time and resources permit,
unresolved issues pertaining to missing Americans
from World War II, Korea, and the Cold War."
The hearings, chaired by Senators John
Kerry and Robert Smith, began on November 5th, 1991 and
concluded with it's final report on January 13, 1993.
Between these dates, Senator Kerry, his aides and others
worked feverishly to derail the hearings, belittle
family members and witness, and to forever abandon those
who were being held as POWs and those who were still
listed as Missing in Action.
They debunked credible first-hand
eyewitness testimony, live-sighting reports, satellite
imagery containing the escape and evade (E and E ) codes
of downed (and still missing) pilots and aircrew and a
myriad of other evidence that proved that American
fighting men were still being held against their will in
Southeast Asia!
The committee, in it's final report
concluded that no Americans survived in captivity,
however, they also concluded that a small number of
Americans were kept behind after Operation Homecoming in
1972.
In effect, the only goals this committee
had completed were the exact opposite of the mandate
they had laid before the Senate in August, 1991:
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They almost completely dismissed,
out-of-hand, evidence that proved the survival and
existence -- and continued internment of hundreds of
missing American Service Personnel.
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Stone-walled and tied the hands of
personnel who, at the time, where responsible for
the investigation of live sighting reports.
And paved the way for future failings in
investigations.
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Further mystified the accounting
process and darkened the smoke screen burning
between family members and those charged with
investigating the fates of their loved ones.
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Further stymied the process of
declassifying documents relating to the POW and MIA
issue by making it so expensive and cumbersome to
obtain what documents survived the shredders of John
Kerry and his staff!
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Created further hurdles for those
seeking the truth by collaborating with the lying
Governments in Southeast Asia to cover up the truth
more!
There are so many more examples of how
this Senate select committee failed those who are still
POW and MIA and their families.
The following is a list, compiled by the
National Alliance of Families, of the top seven reasons
why we need this new resolution; H Res. 111.
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The Gulag Study 5th Edition issued
Feb. 11, 2005 - compiled by the Joint Commission
Support Directorate (JCSD), the investigative arm of
the U.S./Russian Joint Commission on POW/MIAs,
concluded;
"Americans, including American servicemen, were
imprisoned in the former Soviet Union...."
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Failure to Investigate the "185
Report" - In 1993, the Defense POW/MIA Office (DPMO)
received a report that 185 American POWs had been
held in Southeast Asia after 1973, possibly as late
as 1976. The report was recognized as possibly
credible. During the mid-l990's a Russian geologist
was interviewed and reported that he was told in
1976 by Vietnamese counterparts that the Vietnamese
Government at that time was holding live American
POWs. Neither report has been properly investigated.
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Failure to Authorize Live Sighting
Investigations and the attempt to limit Stony Beach
activity. Reports of live POWs in Southeast Asia are
not investigated.
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Failure to Properly Investigate
Reports of POWs in North Korea - A Background Paper
prepared, in 1996, by I.O. Lee, analyst Defense
POW/MIA Office (DPMO) stated: "There are too many
live sighting
reports, specifically observations of several
Caucasians in a collective farm by Romanians and the
North Korean defectors' eyewitness of Americans in
DPRK to dismiss that there are no American POW's in
North Korea."
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Failure to Properly Investigate the
case of Capt. Michael Scott Speicher - A well place
source provided the following information to the
National Alliance of Families in the summer of 2003;
"The one source that claimed to have been held with
Speicher and fed him on a daily basis stated they
had been held for 10 years in the underground
prison; that individual was released and left Iraq.
The individual that reported feeding the pilot was
talking to an individual outside Iraq when he made
the claim, and the U.S. side never interviewed
him.... Don't be misled by those who would pooh pooh
the Speicher reporting."
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Failure to follow-up on the
Conclusions and Recommendations of the Senate Select
Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, January 1993 - " There
is evidence, moreover, that indicates the
possibility of survival, at least for a small
number, after Operation Homecoming...."
“Today, Defense Department files contain
evidence that at least 59 Americans were -- or may have
been -- taken prisoner and their precise fate is still
unclear. This includes the 20-30 not officially
acknowledged by Vietnam in 1973.
This represents the minimum number of
possible live POWs today…. U.S. field teams in Vietnam
since 1989 have uncovered evidence that more Americans
were in fact taken captive than officially recorded.”
(Memo dated August 17, 1992, “The Universe of Possible
POWs: 1973 versus 1992” by Sedgwick D. Tourison,
investigator, for the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA
Affairs 1991 - 93.)
I implore you to visit, write, fax and
call your Congressmen to ask them to lend their support
to this resolution. Alive or dead, these men
deserve to come home and we owe it to future generations
of American service personnel to ensure this abandonment
never occurs again!
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