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John McCain: The Manchurian Candidate
By Ted Sampley
U.S. Veteran Dispatch
December 1992 Issue
Those following the proceedings during the past year of the Senate Select Committee on POW and MIA Affairs have been mystified by the rabid actions of the one man on the committee who should be grateful that for the nearly three decades there have been activists in America who have refused to let die the issue of the fate of Americans lost and missing in Southeast Asia from the Vietnam War.
I am speaking of course of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). None of the Senators on the Select Committee have been as vicious in their attacks on POW/MIA family members and activists than the man behind the mask of war hero, former POW, and patriotic United States Senator . . .
Not even Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who went into his job as chairman of the Select Committee with a predisposition that no one was left alive in Southeast Asia, that it was therefore "time to put the war behind us" and normalize relations with Hanoi, has shown such a bias against those who have fought and kept alive the POW/MIA cause.
Not even Sen. Kerry, with his own record as an anti-war protester during the early 1970s after serving in Vietnam--has turned a totally deaf ear to the numerous individuals and groups who are, correctly or not, convinced that Americans were and are alive in captivity in Southeast Asia.
What, therefore, motivates a John McCain to attack as a pit bull everyone and anyone who has the opinion that men are still alive in the very same captivity that he himself once experienced? Mr. McCain disguises his attacks on the POW/MIA by claiming he is on the committee to ask "the tough questions" to grill and berate in order to get to the truth. What motivates the man, who at the same time has shown a sensitive, almost patronizing approach to U.S. government officials who have lied to the committee? . . .
Borrowing from the title of a popular movie of some years ago, many activists who have felt the fangs of this pit bull call him the "Manchurian Candidate." Is that a fair accusation to level at Senator McCain, the war hero and the former POW?
In the movie, "The Manchurian Candidate," actor Lawrence Harvey portrayed the character of a former POW and war hero of the Korean War, whose brainwashing by his communist captors resulted in his enemies being able to manipulate his actions. To trigger him to do their bidding all they had to do was have him play solitaire with the Queen of Diamonds being the trigger that made him theirs, body and soul . . .
SOMETIMES TAKES EXTREMES
While there are some who have over the years taken extreme measures to keep alive the POW/MIA issue, to paint everyone--even some of the most extreme--with a broad brush as being frauds and predators is not just.
As Senator Kerry, once an activist himself, knows, and I am sure understands in his heart, the activist must be at times an extremist. He must do extreme things because he is the David taking on the Goliath, or, to put it another way--you can't fight a tiger with a dish rag.
In the case of Kerry, the anti-war activist, he could not fight the powerful, often vengeful government officials with the proverbial dish rag. So, he and his followers disrupted Senate committee meetings, threw red paint, representing blood, on the Capitol steps, etc.
In the case of the POW/MIA activists they have chained themselves to the White House fence, at times verbally abused government officials--whatever it took to peacefully draw attention to their cause, just as Kerry before them.
Presently, Kerry the senator does not approve of POW/MIA activists and POW/MIA activists, particularly Vietnam veterans, do not approve of the pro-Hanoi Kerry. And yet there is a common ground with Kerry.
There is none with McCain. He has, simply put, declared his own personal war on POW/MIA activists, and one must ask why?
Even during the Select Committee hearings, H. Ross Perot, perhaps at one time, one of the most devout POW/MIA activists of all, was a target of Senator McCain. And yet, it is doubtful if another POW in America would have anything but the deepest respect for Mr. Perot.
When someone suggested during the committee hearings that Mr. Perot's efforts in drawing attention to the plight of the POWs in Vietnam during the war years which ultimately caused the POWs to receive more humane treatment from their captors, McCain snidely remarked that he thought it was the bombing of Hanoi that was responsible for their better care.
But after his release by Hanoi in 1973, McCain had nothing but praise for Perot and his followers who ignited and fanned the flames of POW/MIA activism.
Nor has McCain stopped there. He has also viciously attacked fellow war hero, fellow POW and fellow retired Navy captain, Eugene "Red" McDaniel, as a fraud and a dishonorable man who preys upon the families of those still unaccounted for from the war.
Again, it is a case of McCain attacking the activist. McDaniel has been in the forefront of activism in keeping the POW/MIA issue alive during the years, before the Select Committee, when few, particularly much of the press, could have cared less.
Today, there is extreme pressure on members of Congress to lift the trade embargo with Vietnam and to establish diplomatic relations with Hanoi, both actions are opposed by the POW/MIA activists.
McCain, like his fellow Senator, Mr. Kerry, favors lifting the embargo and both were on record as such long before they became associated with the Select Committee. In fact, the efforts of both have reflected at times more interest in bettering relations with Vietnam, in consort with greedy U.S. big business interests, than resolving the POW/MIA issue by accounting for the missing men; in McCain's case his FELLOW POWs.
However, before becoming a powerful figure in Congress, McCain the candidate, said: "The regime in Hanoi, politically degenerate even by totalitarian standards, refused to provide or even assist in providing a satisfactory accounting of American MIAs . . .
EXPLOITATION OF POWS
While the Senate Select Committee in its final days of existence is spending its time and resources on alleged instances of what it considers to be "fraud," and "predator fund-raising activities," it has and is ignoring an issue which is vital to resolving the POW/MIA riddle, that being the issue of intelligence exploitation of U.S. prisoners of war by Soviet, Chinese, Cuban and Vietnamese psychological warfare experts.
There has been some debate in the committee as to the extent of Soviet KGB and GRU (Soviet military intelligence) involvement in attempts to "turn" American POWs, with attempts by the Pentagon, supported always by McCain, to deny that the Soviets were involved in any such activity. Nevertheless, there was extensive testimony that POWs were interrogated and possibly recruited before the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973 ending U.S. military involvement in the war--and afterwards, possibly as late as 1978.
"While we all assume the very best about our servicemen who were held it captivity," one POW/MIA activist wrote to Sen. Kerry, "there is a historical precedence of Soviet, Chinese and North Korean exploitation of American prisoners of war. The success of the communist program in Korea may well have been duplicated to a degree in Vietnam."
The communist definitely had a sophisticated system of "turning" U.S. prisoners of war in Korea and, ironically, the movie, "The Manchurian Candidate," fiction that it may be, was not a misrepresentation of the creative experiments and attempts by the communists to "turn" American prisoners of war into agents.
According to some, the FBI has/had a program to monitor the activities of returned prisoners of war from Indochina. That FBI investigation is based on historical knowledge which concluded that some American POWs had been "turned" into agents of the communist.
"Turning" a prisoner of war is not necessarily the prisoner being convinced or "re-educated" by his captors to change his beliefs or politics. The process can involve the use of a variety of means, both subtle and brutal, elaborately contrived to manipulate an otherwise patriotic U.S. prisoner's situation or environment to a point where he is convinced that he must cooperate with his captors in order to remain alive.
One method which had been used successfully by the KGB for their clandestine purposes was the use of threats of exposing embarrassing behavior, particularly any illicit sexual behavior. As a classic example, several years ago, the KGB used sex and seduction to get the U.S. Marine guards to allow them to infiltrate the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.
Another example, if a subject, in this case a POW, became involved in a homosexual situation and his captors found out about it, his captors would most certainly make a record of the homosexual behavior. Later an interrogator would use that record as blackmail to extort intelligence information from anyone involved.
Thus, an otherwise defiant prisoner could be blackmailed into becoming an unwilling collaborator and agent of his captors. After the first collaboration it is a process of threatening to expose the prisoner to his peers or family back home unless the prisoner further "cooperates" by giving even more information.
Another example, if U.S. prisoner "X," under duress or torture, reveals sensitive information about prisoner "Y," which causes prisoner "Y" to be tortured or punished, prisoner "X" certainly doesn't want prisoner "Y" to know he was the source of that information.
Thus, even more information or collaboration can be extracted from prisoner "X." What in the beginning would seem a necessary collaboration to save one's reputation or life, could be used over the long term by experienced interrogators to create an extensive dossier of collaborations by the prisoner. Anyone trained in the interrogation of enemy prisoners knows this.
Nearly all of the POWs have reported that they were threatened with the denial of medical treatment unless they provided their captors with specific information.
BOTH KOREA AND VIETNAM
According to sources, some of the same KGB agents and their associates, often the latter posing as foreign journalists, were involved in attempting to exploit American POWs for intelligence and propaganda purposes in both Korea and Vietnam. To cite as just one example, Australian communist journalist Wilfred Burchett, well known to American POWs for this activity in Korea, later appeared in the same role in Vietnam.
Pentagon files regarding exploitation of U.S. prisoners of war in Indochina are kept secret, except from the hierarchy of the U.S. intelligence community and some high U.S. government officials. It of course also remains in the files of the communist exploiters of the POWs.
As it stands, the American people will never know the truth about this exploitation in Vietnam, unless some official body, such as the Senate Select Committee, subpoenas the files from the Pentagon. As an example, the Senate Select Committee has never followed up on the explosive testimony of former KGB Maj. Gen. Oleg Kalugin, who testified, under oath, that the KGB interrogated U.S. POWs in Vietnam.
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.
Whether this is true or not it certainly begs to be investigated and, like it or not, Sen. John McCain fits the description, and his behavior, also like it or not, raises serious questions. The fact that he is a United States Senator should not be a factor, alas, "The Manchurian Candidate" possibility.
When it comes to matters of national security and the welfare of every man, woman and child in the United States, there should be no sacred cows, and it must not be forgotten that Sen. McCain was being considered for higher office, prior to his numerous appearances on national television defending his involvement in the Savings and Loan scandal.
In November of 1991, when Tracy Usry, the former chief investigator of the Minority Staff of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, testified before the Select Committee, he revealed that the Soviets interrogated U.S. prisoners of war in Vietnam. Sen. McCain became outraged interrupting Usry several times, arguing that "none of the returned U.S. prisoners of war released by Vietnam were ever interrogated by the Soviets." However, this was simply not true and Sen. McCain knows that from firsthand experience.
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.
Bui Tin, who indicated he favored a normalization of relations between the U.S. and Vietnam, also offered the committee his records concerning his personal interrogations of American POWs.
A WARM HUG FOR THE ENEMY
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.
Shortly thereafter, as a direct result of Sen. McCain's lobbying of other Republican Senators, Usry, a distinguished Vietnam veteran, and all other members of the Minority Staff, who had participated in the POW/MIA investigations, were abruptly fired.
If the Senate Select Committee finds it pertinent to investigate alleged instances of "fraud" by POW/MIA activists, then certainly, by even the most liberal standards, the charge of collaboration with the enemy by a "high-ranking naval" officer should be investigated just as seriously as were the charges against Marine Private Robert Garwood, the only American POW charged and convicted of this crime.
By Ted Sampley
U.S. Veteran Dispatch
December 1992 Issue
Those following the proceedings during the past year of the Senate Select Committee on POW and MIA Affairs have been mystified by the rabid actions of the one man on the committee who should be grateful that for the nearly three decades there have been activists in America who have refused to let die the issue of the fate of Americans lost and missing in Southeast Asia from the Vietnam War.
I am speaking of course of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). None of the Senators on the Select Committee have been as vicious in their attacks on POW/MIA family members and activists than the man behind the mask of war hero, former POW, and patriotic United States Senator . . .
Not even Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who went into his job as chairman of the Select Committee with a predisposition that no one was left alive in Southeast Asia, that it was therefore "time to put the war behind us" and normalize relations with Hanoi, has shown such a bias against those who have fought and kept alive the POW/MIA cause.
Not even Sen. Kerry, with his own record as an anti-war protester during the early 1970s after serving in Vietnam--has turned a totally deaf ear to the numerous individuals and groups who are, correctly or not, convinced that Americans were and are alive in captivity in Southeast Asia.
What, therefore, motivates a John McCain to attack as a pit bull everyone and anyone who has the opinion that men are still alive in the very same captivity that he himself once experienced? Mr. McCain disguises his attacks on the POW/MIA by claiming he is on the committee to ask "the tough questions" to grill and berate in order to get to the truth. What motivates the man, who at the same time has shown a sensitive, almost patronizing approach to U.S. government officials who have lied to the committee? . . .
Borrowing from the title of a popular movie of some years ago, many activists who have felt the fangs of this pit bull call him the "Manchurian Candidate." Is that a fair accusation to level at Senator McCain, the war hero and the former POW?
In the movie, "The Manchurian Candidate," actor Lawrence Harvey portrayed the character of a former POW and war hero of the Korean War, whose brainwashing by his communist captors resulted in his enemies being able to manipulate his actions. To trigger him to do their bidding all they had to do was have him play solitaire with the Queen of Diamonds being the trigger that made him theirs, body and soul . . .
SOMETIMES TAKES EXTREMES
While there are some who have over the years taken extreme measures to keep alive the POW/MIA issue, to paint everyone--even some of the most extreme--with a broad brush as being frauds and predators is not just.
As Senator Kerry, once an activist himself, knows, and I am sure understands in his heart, the activist must be at times an extremist. He must do extreme things because he is the David taking on the Goliath, or, to put it another way--you can't fight a tiger with a dish rag.
In the case of Kerry, the anti-war activist, he could not fight the powerful, often vengeful government officials with the proverbial dish rag. So, he and his followers disrupted Senate committee meetings, threw red paint, representing blood, on the Capitol steps, etc.
In the case of the POW/MIA activists they have chained themselves to the White House fence, at times verbally abused government officials--whatever it took to peacefully draw attention to their cause, just as Kerry before them.
Presently, Kerry the senator does not approve of POW/MIA activists and POW/MIA activists, particularly Vietnam veterans, do not approve of the pro-Hanoi Kerry. And yet there is a common ground with Kerry.
There is none with McCain. He has, simply put, declared his own personal war on POW/MIA activists, and one must ask why?
Even during the Select Committee hearings, H. Ross Perot, perhaps at one time, one of the most devout POW/MIA activists of all, was a target of Senator McCain. And yet, it is doubtful if another POW in America would have anything but the deepest respect for Mr. Perot.
When someone suggested during the committee hearings that Mr. Perot's efforts in drawing attention to the plight of the POWs in Vietnam during the war years which ultimately caused the POWs to receive more humane treatment from their captors, McCain snidely remarked that he thought it was the bombing of Hanoi that was responsible for their better care.
But after his release by Hanoi in 1973, McCain had nothing but praise for Perot and his followers who ignited and fanned the flames of POW/MIA activism.
Nor has McCain stopped there. He has also viciously attacked fellow war hero, fellow POW and fellow retired Navy captain, Eugene "Red" McDaniel, as a fraud and a dishonorable man who preys upon the families of those still unaccounted for from the war.
Again, it is a case of McCain attacking the activist. McDaniel has been in the forefront of activism in keeping the POW/MIA issue alive during the years, before the Select Committee, when few, particularly much of the press, could have cared less.
Today, there is extreme pressure on members of Congress to lift the trade embargo with Vietnam and to establish diplomatic relations with Hanoi, both actions are opposed by the POW/MIA activists.
McCain, like his fellow Senator, Mr. Kerry, favors lifting the embargo and both were on record as such long before they became associated with the Select Committee. In fact, the efforts of both have reflected at times more interest in bettering relations with Vietnam, in consort with greedy U.S. big business interests, than resolving the POW/MIA issue by accounting for the missing men; in McCain's case his FELLOW POWs.
However, before becoming a powerful figure in Congress, McCain the candidate, said: "The regime in Hanoi, politically degenerate even by totalitarian standards, refused to provide or even assist in providing a satisfactory accounting of American MIAs . . .
EXPLOITATION OF POWS
While the Senate Select Committee in its final days of existence is spending its time and resources on alleged instances of what it considers to be "fraud," and "predator fund-raising activities," it has and is ignoring an issue which is vital to resolving the POW/MIA riddle, that being the issue of intelligence exploitation of U.S. prisoners of war by Soviet, Chinese, Cuban and Vietnamese psychological warfare experts.
There has been some debate in the committee as to the extent of Soviet KGB and GRU (Soviet military intelligence) involvement in attempts to "turn" American POWs, with attempts by the Pentagon, supported always by McCain, to deny that the Soviets were involved in any such activity. Nevertheless, there was extensive testimony that POWs were interrogated and possibly recruited before the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973 ending U.S. military involvement in the war--and afterwards, possibly as late as 1978.
"While we all assume the very best about our servicemen who were held it captivity," one POW/MIA activist wrote to Sen. Kerry, "there is a historical precedence of Soviet, Chinese and North Korean exploitation of American prisoners of war. The success of the communist program in Korea may well have been duplicated to a degree in Vietnam."
The communist definitely had a sophisticated system of "turning" U.S. prisoners of war in Korea and, ironically, the movie, "The Manchurian Candidate," fiction that it may be, was not a misrepresentation of the creative experiments and attempts by the communists to "turn" American prisoners of war into agents.
According to some, the FBI has/had a program to monitor the activities of returned prisoners of war from Indochina. That FBI investigation is based on historical knowledge which concluded that some American POWs had been "turned" into agents of the communist.
"Turning" a prisoner of war is not necessarily the prisoner being convinced or "re-educated" by his captors to change his beliefs or politics. The process can involve the use of a variety of means, both subtle and brutal, elaborately contrived to manipulate an otherwise patriotic U.S. prisoner's situation or environment to a point where he is convinced that he must cooperate with his captors in order to remain alive.
One method which had been used successfully by the KGB for their clandestine purposes was the use of threats of exposing embarrassing behavior, particularly any illicit sexual behavior. As a classic example, several years ago, the KGB used sex and seduction to get the U.S. Marine guards to allow them to infiltrate the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.
Another example, if a subject, in this case a POW, became involved in a homosexual situation and his captors found out about it, his captors would most certainly make a record of the homosexual behavior. Later an interrogator would use that record as blackmail to extort intelligence information from anyone involved.
Thus, an otherwise defiant prisoner could be blackmailed into becoming an unwilling collaborator and agent of his captors. After the first collaboration it is a process of threatening to expose the prisoner to his peers or family back home unless the prisoner further "cooperates" by giving even more information.
Another example, if U.S. prisoner "X," under duress or torture, reveals sensitive information about prisoner "Y," which causes prisoner "Y" to be tortured or punished, prisoner "X" certainly doesn't want prisoner "Y" to know he was the source of that information.
Thus, even more information or collaboration can be extracted from prisoner "X." What in the beginning would seem a necessary collaboration to save one's reputation or life, could be used over the long term by experienced interrogators to create an extensive dossier of collaborations by the prisoner. Anyone trained in the interrogation of enemy prisoners knows this.
Nearly all of the POWs have reported that they were threatened with the denial of medical treatment unless they provided their captors with specific information.
BOTH KOREA AND VIETNAM
According to sources, some of the same KGB agents and their associates, often the latter posing as foreign journalists, were involved in attempting to exploit American POWs for intelligence and propaganda purposes in both Korea and Vietnam. To cite as just one example, Australian communist journalist Wilfred Burchett, well known to American POWs for this activity in Korea, later appeared in the same role in Vietnam.
Pentagon files regarding exploitation of U.S. prisoners of war in Indochina are kept secret, except from the hierarchy of the U.S. intelligence community and some high U.S. government officials. It of course also remains in the files of the communist exploiters of the POWs.
As it stands, the American people will never know the truth about this exploitation in Vietnam, unless some official body, such as the Senate Select Committee, subpoenas the files from the Pentagon. As an example, the Senate Select Committee has never followed up on the explosive testimony of former KGB Maj. Gen. Oleg Kalugin, who testified, under oath, that the KGB interrogated U.S. POWs in Vietnam.
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.
Whether this is true or not it certainly begs to be investigated and, like it or not, Sen. John McCain fits the description, and his behavior, also like it or not, raises serious questions. The fact that he is a United States Senator should not be a factor, alas, "The Manchurian Candidate" possibility.
When it comes to matters of national security and the welfare of every man, woman and child in the United States, there should be no sacred cows, and it must not be forgotten that Sen. McCain was being considered for higher office, prior to his numerous appearances on national television defending his involvement in the Savings and Loan scandal.
In November of 1991, when Tracy Usry, the former chief investigator of the Minority Staff of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, testified before the Select Committee, he revealed that the Soviets interrogated U.S. prisoners of war in Vietnam. Sen. McCain became outraged interrupting Usry several times, arguing that "none of the returned U.S. prisoners of war released by Vietnam were ever interrogated by the Soviets." However, this was simply not true and Sen. McCain knows that from firsthand experience.
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.
Bui Tin, who indicated he favored a normalization of relations between the U.S. and Vietnam, also offered the committee his records concerning his personal interrogations of American POWs.
A WARM HUG FOR THE ENEMY
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.
Shortly thereafter, as a direct result of Sen. McCain's lobbying of other Republican Senators, Usry, a distinguished Vietnam veteran, and all other members of the Minority Staff, who had participated in the POW/MIA investigations, were abruptly fired.
If the Senate Select Committee finds it pertinent to investigate alleged instances of "fraud" by POW/MIA activists, then certainly, by even the most liberal standards, the charge of collaboration with the enemy by a "high-ranking naval" officer should be investigated just as seriously as were the charges against Marine Private Robert Garwood, the only American POW charged and convicted of this crime.
, "When John McCain arrived in here [in Washington] as a freshman Republican Congressman in 1983, one of the issues very much on his mind was how the United States should deal with Vietnam . . . He was, he said, dismayed by the Reagan Administration's flat refusal to afford any kind of diplomatic recognition to Hanoi, something he thought could help clear up a number of issues, including the fate of those servicemen still missing in action . . . Mr. McCain, now the junior Senator from Arizona, is leading a legislative effort to force the Administration to open a lower-level American post in Vietnam, which could be preliminary to more formal relations."
