Prisoners and Missing in Action from the Vietnam War

By: Bruce Banning

Let’s be perfectly clear: the United States purposely abandoned a significant number of our live prisoners of war and missing in action, and this fact was purposely covered up. Even worse than this, the American people stood by and let it happen.

With pressure from Vietnam Veterans, and as some of these Veterans became involved in government, there is now a well-organized and funded effort to account for our missing in action. Nearly every year now, remains are found and another Vietnam Veteran comes home. They have even found some from the Korean War.

This has happened because Vietnam Veterans fought to make it happen. They have also fought for recognition, benefits, and most importantly, to change our society so that no future warriors will be treated the way they were. They have been successful.

With that said, these successes have taken decades. To understand how we got into this situation, you need to understand the truth about what took place. I’m going to tell you the truth, and it is not pretty.

Below, I will explain what happened and my personal involvement with the POW/MIA issue. At the end of the day, I think what happened in this situation is what destroyed my faith in my country and, largely, in people in general.

At the end of the war, there were 2,646 Americans missing in action or known to be prisoners of war. In 1973, 591 prisoners were released and returned home, less than a third of what we had enough evidence to know was really in custody. When the 591 came home and the government said, “All the POWs have been released,” there were hundreds of thousands of us who were totally shocked because we knew better.

My Personal Experience

I will start with myself. I must first state that every time I even think about this situation, I can feel my blood pressure rise. The POW/MIA issue is part of the reason that I am not a “flag waver” and have a certain amount of contempt for the United States.

I was born and raised by members of the Greatest Generation and was taught that there are things which are right and things which are wrong. I was taught that every human inherently knows which is which. We come into this existence programmed with how to live, and what is right and wrong is firmly instilled in us after birth by parents, churches, and schools. This is called natural law.

I was also taught that those who violate the fundamental truths of natural law are evil and should not be tolerated. I could give you a thousand examples of how we, as a society, have had our families, institutions, and governments destroyed by losing our connection to natural law and embracing tolerance of everything. The message in our culture now is that we must tolerate anything and everything, and this is the furthest thing from the truth.

One of the situations in my lifetime that I will never get past is the way the American people tolerated our government abandoning our POWs.

What took place with the POW/MIA situation also happened after World War II and after the Korean War, except that the number of prisoners abandoned was much higher than in Vietnam. I learned in 1970 that the America I had grown up in and believed in did not exist. My faith in my country was destroyed at the age of 19 while on my first tour in Vietnam.

I have never regained much of a sense of pride in or love of country. Since then, I have only extended my pride in and respect for my family, others who earn it, and individual Veterans, people who step up to serve. I do not extend it to the American collective.

In 1970, I started doing what I could to support the families of the POWs and MIAs in their efforts to get back their sons, fathers, brothers, and husbands from Vietnam. On my first tour, I corresponded with families. They needed funding to fight the United States government, which was more focused on devising a plan to exit Vietnam than on meeting its obligations to the warriors who fought the war.

I circulated petitions and sold POW/MIA bracelets throughout the theater of operation. For the government, the POWs and missing were an inconvenience, a situation which complicated a U.S. termination of hostilities and the abandonment of the Vietnamese people. By that time, the government was totally manipulated by the communist-backed anti-war movement.

At the age of 19, I had already put the pieces together to understand what was going on with this issue, to understand what would take decades for a significant part of the American people to become aware of.

I talked about the issue everywhere I went, and I sold POW/MIA bracelets and stickers. I was one of the few doing this and, because very few people were paying attention, I was investigated by the military because they suspected I was some kind of subversive trying to undermine the war effort.

I never gave up and became part of the efforts throughout the balance of my time in the Navy and long into civilian life.

I gave up on the efforts in the 1990s when it became clear that the cover-up was totally institutionalized and the government position, that there were no live Americans left in Vietnam, was accepted by the people. Of course, it was all lies, but I came to know there was nothing I could do to change the situation.

I, for one, will never forget the travesty of the POW/MIA situation. For example, I have worn a POW/MIA bracelet all my life and still do. I can literally count on one hand the days I have gone without a bracelet on my wrist. The bracelet is as much a part of me as my wedding ring.

The Claimed Facts

So, with the above said, here are the facts as I understand them:

• 591 men were released from North Vietnam and 1 from Laos.
• President Nixon made a commitment to North Vietnam that the United States would pay 4.3 billion dollars in war reparations.
• The North Vietnamese purposely held back many POWs as collateral because, should the United States not follow through with Nixon’s promise, they would have leverage for barter.
• Congress would not approve the 4.3 billion dollars, so eventually the POWs simply disappeared, abandoned by their own people.
• The United States, according to this account, put the protection of politicians and government elites before the men these same people had sent to war.
• The North Vietnamese, despite their own system, did not expect the United States to abandon its soldiers in this war.
• President Bill Clinton is described here as representing a policy of: “No one gets left behind, but if they are, deny it.”
• Many POWs were allegedly given to China and Russia so those nations could extract military knowledge from them, especially from F-111 pilots.
• Boris Yeltsin reportedly verified that Russia had Americans in captivity when he stated that some of the POWs could possibly be alive.
• President Reagan believed there were still live Americans in Vietnam and committed to doing everything he could to get them back.
• Reagan offered ransom payments for information or the return of a prisoner and was the only president, in this account, who did not play along with the cover-up.
• He also organized covert Delta Force incursions into Laos and Vietnam.
• Retired Lt. Col. Bo Gritz conducted two highly publicized incursions, neither of which was successful.
• The official government position was that all live Americans had been returned.
• President Nixon stated this position, and it became the official position of the intelligence agencies.
• These agencies, according to this account, were tasked with debunking all information coming out of Southeast Asia regarding live Americans.
• In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, there were said to be hundreds of very high-quality reports of American prisoners in Vietnam and Laos.
• At the time of the prisoner release in 1973, 70% of the reports about named or identified prisoners who were released were treated as credible by the government.
• By contrast, 0% of the reports about prisoners who did not come home were treated as credible.
• Lt. Gen. Eugene Tighe is described as one of the officials who refused to accept the government’s position.
• He wrote books, testified before committees, and fought for years to keep the issue alive.
• People like Tighe were allegedly surveilled with phone taps and faced a coordinated government effort to discredit them.
• John McCain is criticized here for supporting the government position that there were no live Americans in Vietnam.

A Lasting Conviction

The whole issue has long since died in the minds of many. The American people have successfully moved past it without facing the horrific truth that they allowed this abandonment to occur. The truth has largely passed from the American conscience.

Having to face the terrible situation that was facilitated would be difficult for any society to deal with. But after decades of tiptoeing around and burying the truth, the American people can continue on their way “guiltless.”

The American people have unfortunately become very good at passing off shame and guilt. After all, we continue to send young Americans off to war while tying their hands and denying them their victories. America views its military men and women as expendable, but I do not. I will go to my grave remembering.

I am not a quitter. Many years ago, I realized I could not affect or change the outcomes of situations like America’s abandonment of its POWs. I consequently chose to work on what I could affect. I realized that I could have some impact on the lives of some of our warriors.

If you choose to read my stories, you will read about some of what I have done, the latest of which is Bucket List Dreams for Veterans. BLD is my final mission. Thank you for supporting it.