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Book Review

We should not have to become experts in the field of abandonment, but we are. We should not have to become versed in FBIS transmissions, but we do. We should not have to become versed in DoD Message Center Traffic, but we do. We should not have to become versed in NSA radio intercepts of enemy traffic, but we do. We should not have to become scholars of the testimony given to the Select Committee on PoW/MIA Affairs, but we have. We should not have to understand the intricacies of satellite imagery analysis, but we have. We should not have to understand the differences of certainty ratings of the NPIC, but we have.

Because if we do not become experts in the field of abandonment, versed in FBIS transmissions or DoD Message Traffic or NSA Radio intercepts of enemy traffic, or scholars of the testimony given to the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, or understand the intricacies of satellite imagery analysis or understand the differences of certainty ratings of the NPIC, then the Defense POW/MIA Office will be able to debunk any and all information pertaining to the survival of Americans abandoned or the cooperation of SE Asian countries on the repatriation of remains of American servicemen.

That is their job. They sound much better at it than we do. They have had an abundance of practice at it. They can devote huge resources to spin control, while we must live within our meager budgets. This is where you commit yourself to education. The following is a list of books that should be read in order for you to understand exactly what has transpired. These books show how our servicemen and some civilians were abandoned after the US pullout of Vietnam.

Tiger Cage
An Untold Story
D.E. Bordenkircher as told to
S.A. Bordenkircher
Abby Publishing
ISBN 0-9661771-4-2
Library of Congress 97-93396
Copyright © 1998 by S.A. Bordenkircher

Con Son Island, a South Vietnamese penal colony in the South China Sea is the major setting for this book which highlights the total betrayal of American efforts in Vietnam by Americans from home.

Don Bordenkircher, a Corrections Department professional was hired in 1967 from the administrative ranks of San Quentin Prison by the United States Agency for International Development - Office of Public Safety, (USAID/OPS), as Senior Advisor to the South Vietnamese Director of Corrections and his forty-one correctional centers. One of which was Con Son Island. He would spend the next five years in this capacity. His mission was simple: Teach the South Vietnamese how to operate a humane correctional program and it would send a message to the North which may have reciprocated by treating our POWs humanely.

While the mission statement may have been simple, the mission was not- -and this was not due to South Vietnamese resistance toward humane treatment of prisoners.

William Colby, Tom Harkin, Don Luce and the world press, especially the American press, all play a major part in betraying the true US effort and one must wonder if power, greed or 15 minutes of fame were the culprits. This book may not be about American Prisoners of War, but yet it is as much about them as it is about betrayal. For in the end, there is the factor that if South Vietnam treated its incercerated poorly, then North Vietnam would retaliate.

For a more detailed review, click on the jacket of the book.

Code Name Bright Light
The Untold Story
of U.S. POW Rescue Efforts
During the Vietnam War
George J. Veith
The Free Press
a div. of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
ISBN 0-684-83514-2
Copyright © 1998 by George J. Veith

When one thinks of American Rescue attempts during the Vietnam War, the immediate picture of the Son Tay raid comes to mind. Jay Veith painstakingly details the many efforts of the US Military to rescue US Prisoners of War during the Vietnam War.

From MACV-SOG to the advent of the Joint Personnel Recovery Center through the frustrations of non cooperation from the US Ambassador to Laos to the interservice rivalries to the withholding of intelligence by the Central Intelligence Agency.

This book will reveal the culprits behind the POW/MIA issue as well as some heros who truly tried to do everything within their power to captialize on intelligence and effect the rescue of Americans held captive.

Veith also touches upon something that the PoW/MIA Forum together with the Northwest Veterans Newsletter are exploring: Were the Communist Vietnamese informed of US war effort operations, including attempts to rescue American POWs, before the fact? Toward the end of this book Veith tells us that in excess of 200 POWs were moved just prior to one such rescue attempt.

For a more detailed review, click on the jacket of the book.

Why Didn't You Get Me Out?

Frank Anton, with Tommy Denton

The Summit Publishing Group, Arlington TX

ISBN 1-56530-251-6

Copyright © 1997 The Summit Publishing Group

This is one of the most powerful books that has ever come out! The author, Frank Anton, is a former POW who was held in the jungle POW camps in South Vietnam. Yes, South Vietnam. Warrant Officer Anton was on a routine chopper mission in January of 1968 when he was shot down. What followed was a little over 5 years of hell.

Frank has drawn renderings of the five POW jungle camps that he was held in, and these renderings are in his book. This book could easily have been named, "Hidden In Plain Sight," because these jungle POW camps were within miles of US firebases and/or camps!

Anton was incarcerated with Bobby Garwood, the Marine Pfc. who returned to the United States in 1979. While Frank does not paint a flattering picture of Garwood, he has stated that he does not view Garwood as either a traitor or a hero--he views Bobby as a victim.

Anton's debrief was the longest of any returned Prisoner of War, (6 days), and the debrief revealed more about US intelligence on Prisoners of War during their captivity then you could imagine.

The book is a fast read and you cannot help but gleen new respect for what these heros went through. Frank deserves our respect and admiration and we are honored to be able to count him among our friends.

For a more in depth review, click on the jacket of the book.

Spite House
The Last Secret of the
War in Vietnam
Monika Jensen-Stevenson
W.W. Norton & Company, New York
ISBN 0-393-04041-0
Copyright © 1997, Monika Jensen-Stevenson

Jensen-Stevenson became convinced while conducting research for her book, Kiss The Boys Goodbye, that Bobby Garwood had been victimized first by the Vietnamese that held him and then again by the government of the United States.

But little did Jensen-Stevenson suspect the extent in which the US Government would go. Does the term Phoenix Program mean anything to you? It will, once you have absorbed this book!

A Marine Lt.Colonel sought out Monika and told her his sordid tale. This tale is detailed in Spite House and takes you through a maze of military intelligence, assassination, contempt, remorse and redemption. It also makes you ask yourself why.

Why would a Marine motor pool driver, with just 10 days left to his tour, go A.W.O.L., desert to the enemy, and 6 years after the US pullout indicate to a foreigner that he was a POW who wanted to come home? It also makes you wonder why the US military was so intense when it came to Garwood.

But it is more than that. The book delves into black operations, assassinations after the US pullout, abandonment and betrayal. It details the lives of two very different people on a collision course; both of whom love the corp., God and country.

It is also seriously flawed. Jensen-Stevenson takes Garwood at his word without researching what he has told her. Indeed, there is an episode in the book where Garwood is singled out for torture by a doctor, who pulls out Garwood's toe nail. The doctor in question, an American POW, was repatriated to the US in 1973 during Operation Homecoming and subsequently testified against Garwood after Garwood's release in 1979.

The doctor read the book and filed suit against Jensen-Stevenson because he claims what he did was not torture; he merely fixed a painful ingrown toenail that Garwood was suffering from at the time. Interestingly, Garwood refused to give Jensen-Stevenson an affadavit for her defense and she ended up having to recant that portion of this book.

In another segement of the book, there is reference made to USMC snipers who were relieved of their weapons and given a special rifle to use in the field and then forced to return it after the mission. In effect what is being said is that these snipers, who rely on their weapons as we rely on the air we breath, were given untested weaponry in place of their own, sent on dangerous missions and returned the special weapon after use. I've spoken to many, many Marines; some of them snipers, who claimed that there is no way that this occurred.

While the book makes many good points, I would be remiss if I did not point out that it is flawed. Read it and take from it what you will. We did not prepare a further detailed review.

Leading the Way
How Vietnam Veterans
Rebuilt the US Military:
An Oral History
Al Santoli
Ballantine Books, New York
div. of Random House
ISBN 0-345-37498-3
Copyright © 1993, Al Santoli

A Congressional aid to two US Representatives, former Vietnam Veteran Al Santoli has done an excellent job in proving that the Vietnam Veteran was instrumental in rebuilding the US Military.

From the jungles of SE Asia to the desert of Saudi Arabia to the no-fly zone of Iraq and the peace keeping mission in Bosnia, Santoli shows that a our military had risen like the Phoenix from the ashes of a post Vietnam War demoralized military to the technological wonder that we all witnessed during the Gulf War.

Whether or not Santoli meant to, there is some interesting POW/MIA information contained in this book as well. Pay Specific attention to Andrew Gembara's narrative.

For a more detailed review, click on the jacket.

The Men We Left Behind
Henry Kissinger, the Politics
of Deceit and the Tragic
Fate of POWs After the
Vietnam War
Mark Sauter, Jim Sanders
National Press Books, Washington DC
ISBN 1-882-60503-9
Copyright © 1993 Mark Sauter and Jim Sanders

Sauter and Sanders team up again to bring us an explosion of evidence that men were left behind with the full knowledge of the United States Government. There is more evidence here that men were abandoned than the State of New Jersey had against Bruno Hauptman in the Lindbergh kidnapping...and they executed him!

America felt that a great weight was lifted from its shoulders when Henry Kissinger negotiated the end of the Vietnam War and President Nixon proclaimed that the negotiation was, "Peace with honor."

But honor had little to do with the fates of those that were summarily and wantonly abandoned. Through sheer detective work and intense research of the National Archives, as well as interviews with families of missing Americans, Sauter and Sanders exposes the treachery that was used in achieving peace with honor.

Here is an opportunity to learn how the US Government worked in collusion with its enemy to abandon the very people that had been sent by our government to SE Asia to protect democracy.

We did not prepare a more detailed review of this book.

Soldiers of Misfortune
Washington's Secret Betrayal
of American POWs In The
Soviet Union
James D. Sanders, Mark A. Sauter
and R. Cort Kirkwood
National Press Books, Washington DC
ISBN 0-915765-83-7
Copyright © 1992, Sanders, Sauter & Kirkwood

Jim Sanders, Mark Sauter and Cort Kirkwood make the case that thousands of American Prisoners of War were systematically transferred to the Soviet Union.

A compellingly outrageous story of US POWs held captive by the Soviet Union as well as the Washington bureaucrats who have for over a half-century lied to the American public, not to mention the world! Their traitorous actions have kept the lid on the most disgraceful coverup in the history of the United States that continues today!

Both Sanders and Sauter are investigative journalists and Sanders is a former law enforcement agent who is currently facing trial for his independant investigation into the TWA 800 fatal crash.

This book exposes that coverup.

We did not prepare a more detailed review of this book.

Kiss The Boys Goodbye
How The United States
Betrayed Its Own POWs In Vietnam
Monika Jensen-Stevenson & William Stevenson
Plume Publishing, New York
ISBN 0-452-26671-8
Copyright © 1991 Monika Jensen-Stevenson

This is a comprehensive study of the entire PoW/MIA from the inception of the issue. Monika Jensen-Stevenson, a former 60 Minutes producer, took five years to write this indictment of our military leaders, our politicians and the press. Monika uncovers deceit in government never before exposed.

From Operation Homecoming to the Baron 52 case to Bobby Garwood's return from Vietnam to his subsequent court martial, Jensen-Stevenson takes you on an odyssey of betrayal the magnitutde of which is mind boggeling.

For a more in depth review, click on the jacket of the book.

One Day Too Long
Top Secret Site 85
and the Bombing of North Vietnam
[Dr.] Timothy N. Castle
Columbia University Press, New York
ISBN 0-231-10316-6
Copyright © 1999 Columbia University Press

A riveting tale of heroism and patriotism, One Day Too Long tells the full story of a covert military operation in Laos that resulted in the largest ground combat loss of US Air Force personnel during the Vietnam War.

If you want to know what the term plausible deniability means, this book educates you succinctly. USAF personnel being "sheep dipped" and suddenly working for Lockheed Aircraft Corporation at a top secret location in Laos where they directed the bombing of North Vietnam. How the Vietnamese were so determined at taking this mountaintop TACAN site that they even attempted to toss bombs from a bi-plane and finally scaled almost 2,000 feet straight up to overtake the mountaintop.

A must read book! For a more detailed review, click on the jacket.

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