(I was asked to write the following article for the current edition of THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE. It is a companion piece to a series of articles about the POW issue. It is recommended that you either buy the magazine or read it online as this series of POW articles reveals how evil all the governments involved are.)


The POW issue was born during the Watergate scandal. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger knew Hanoi was secretly keeping American prisoners, but in the spring of 1973, they were in no position to get a Democratic Congress to pay ransom to North Vietnam.

Watergate was exposed because two Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, defied the unspoken agreement between media and government that remains in effect—in exchange for protecting government secrets, the press gets privileged access to official sources. That tacit pact is the single biggest reason the POW puzzle has never been solved.

My own experience provides a vivid—and exasperating—example of this incestuous relationship between the press and the powerful.

In October 1985, Rowland Evans and Robert Novak held their semi-annual Evans & Novak Political Forum in Washington, D.C. for their newsletter subscribers. Each of us—I had been a subscriber since 1974—paid $450 for a full day of talks from “D.C. political insiders.” The line-up featured Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, White House Chief of Staff Don Regan, New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, and President Reagan’s national security adviser, Robert McFarlane.

After the morning introduction, I walked up to Novak and asked him, “Is what is said in here today on the record?”

He smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “You paid to attend this conference, and you are not a member of the media, so those press rules do not apply to you.”

I returned to my seat at a long table where I had a cassette tape recorder clearly visible on top of the white tablecloth. When McFarlane began talking, I turned on the recorder. In the Q&A period afterward, I asked McFarlane—a retired Marine who had been on Kissinger’s staff during the Nixon administration and had been secretly dispatched to negotiate with Hanoi for the remaining 600 POWs—“Do you believe there are still U.S. POWs held against their will in Vietnam and Laos?”

McFarlane took a long time before he began his answer: “I do think there has to be—have to be—live Americans there.” He paused. The room grew silent as we watched this clearly conflicted man struggle to continue. We knew we were hearing a rare unscripted answer. He began talking about the thousands of live sighting reports coming into the Pentagon and Defense Intelligence Agency from Vietnam and Laos. Of those Southeast Asians who claimed to have seen American POWs, McFarlane said, “They have no reason to lie, and they are telling things they have seen.”

A follow-up question centered on whether the U.S. government had done everything it could to pinpoint and recover these POWs. Admitting that it had not, he said, “And that’s bad, and that’s a failure.”

I gave the tape to Wall Street Journal reporter Bill Paul, who was based in New York. He listened to it and knew he had a big story in his hands. He called National Security Council spokeswoman Karna Small, who had attended McFarlane’s talk. She denied that McFarlane ever said the words we had heard from him that very day. Paul said, “But the Journal has a transcript.” Her reply: “The transcript is wrong.”

At that point Paul knew his story was even bigger—he had McFarlane’s spokeswoman lying about her boss’s answers just hours earlier. So he called her back and said, “The transcript is not wrong. In fact, we have it all on tape.”

Bingo!

She said, “I have to get back to you.”

Minutes later the Wall Street Journal’s D.C. bureau chief, Al Hunt, called Paul and took over the editing of the story. Meanwhile, Evans and Novak tracked me down and accused me of violating protocol by exposing “off-the-record remarks by McFarlane.” They had suddenly forgotten that I specifically asked Novak whether the session was on or off the record.

In other words, the media—Al Hunt and Rowland Evans and Robert Novak—banded together to protect McFarlane and their access to him at the expense of a dynamite story. A watered-down version eventually ran and garnered some national attention, but never the continual front-page coverage it deserved.

A few months later, at a private meeting of the House Special Task Force on POWs/MIAs, I delivered a talk about a recent report of POWs being held at a specific location in Laos. Rep. John McCain was sitting in the front row of the tiered hearing room. Until that day, he and I had always had a cordial relationship. But upon seeing me, he sneered and asked if I was “secretly taping this meeting, too?”

McCain should have been incensed that the national security adviser knew that U.S. POWs were still being held and that the press was suppressing the story. Instead he was furious at me for daring to reveal McFarlane’s statements.

The Vietnam War was brought to an end in large part by a healthy, skeptical, adversarial relationship between the media and government. Reporters’ suspicions that they were being deceived by military briefers every afternoon in Saigon at the Five O’Clock Follies were the precursor to serious critical coverage of the war. Yet somehow this skeptical media has always believed the very same Pentagon when it comes to POWs.

The incident from 1985 is but one example of many. In my 30 years fighting for the truth about the POWs knowingly abandoned by the Nixon administration, I have repeatedly witnessed an eager partnership between the officials who make national policy and the media that is supposed to cover them—not to cover-up for them.
__________________________________________

John LeBoutillier (R-N.Y.) was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1981-1983, where he served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Special House Task Force on U.S. POWs in SE Asia. He is the author of Vietnam Now: A Case for Normalizing Relations with Hanoi.

Arlene Bynon and John LeBoutillier discussed the Tiger Woods press conference and the passing of former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Sunday on AM640Toronto. Listen below:


Arlene Bynon 02 21 10 by bootsblasts

Do Not Harm Anyone on Capitol Hill or Anywhere Else

Sir (officer or not, angry or not, you earned the title in Southeast Asia, but for God’s sake, man, listen to us): We have been informed by U.S. Postal Inspectors that you read about America’s abandoned POWs in “Cold Case,” the cover story in the Jan/Feb 2009 edition of The VVA Veteran, and became very angry. And why not; for the article chronicles how our prisoners were knowingly abandoned by U.S. officials at war’s end; how they were almost saved but then again abandoned in the early 1980’s; how their fate was covered up throughout the 1980’s, and how the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs finally doomed them to a lifetime of captivity in 1991-1993. It shows how U.S. officials purposely and with malice of forethought ridiculed, discredited, manipulated and/or explained away all intelligence about these men, and how in the end (1) every one of the nearly 1,000 credible witnesses were declared liars or confused about what they had seen (those who were confused, officials said, actually saw Russian troops, American POWs who were released in 1973, western tourists or, in one case, not ten American POWs in forced labor as the eyewitness who had seen them testified, but instead two Amerasian buffalo boys); (2) how every postwar radio intercept about our POWs was declared false, and (3) how not one of the numerous postwar satellite images that proved the POWs’ existence was believed. Bottom line: as “Cold Case” made clear, our government says our POWs are not really POWs at all, but are – officially – figments of someone’s imagination.


Disgraceful? Sure, utterly, and a lot of readers got very angry over what they read. But according to U.S. Postal Inspectors, you not only became angry, you wrote to and threatened to seriously harm one or more Capitol Hill officials whom you believe are responsible for this tragedy. Sir, after weeks of unsuccessfully trying to find you, as this most hallowed of national holidays approaches we implore you – we direct you - DO NOT HARM ANYONE, ON CAPITOL HILL OR ANYWHERE ELSE. Rather, turn yourself in immediately to local law enforcement officials, make amends and do your time – and let us get on with our work here to get these brave men home.

Former U.S. Rep. Bill Hendon (R-NC)
Former U.S. Rep. John LeBoutillier (R-NY)

DATE: 5 May 2009
MEMORANDUM FOR: Senator John S. McCain, III (R-AZ), Holocaust denier
FROM: Former U.S. Reps. Bill Hendon (R-NC) and John LeBoutillier (R-NY)
SUBJECT: Inspection by the three of us of this underground prison in Vietnam during the upcoming Memorial Day recess.


Dear John,

When the 2007 NYT bestseller An Enormous Crime, The Definitive Account of American POWs Abandoned in Southeast Asia exposed the seminal role you played in the abandonment of our POWs in Southeast Asia, you refused all comment.

When we posted an internet message last year warning all U.S. combat troops worldwide that because of what you did to these men and the key role you have played in their continuing imprisonment you were unfit to serve as Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Armed Forces, you refused all comment.

(From "TWO FORMER GOP CONGRESSMEN TO U.S. COMBAT FORCES WORLDWIDE: MCCAIN IS UNFIT TO SERVE AS YOUR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. Former Congressmen Warn Troops: As Senator He Abandoned American POWs Trapped in Indochina; as President He'll Abandon You")

Now we find that Speaker Pelosi, taking a page from your playbook, has ignored the following letter from a group of concerned Vietnam vets. Given her refusal to address this letter, we send it to you in the attached file and ask that you read it carefully and, though you were recently in Hanoi and while there toured Hoa Lo Prison, ("McCain returns to infamous Vietnam POW prison"), that you make immediate arrangements to return to Vietnam with us over the Memorial Day holiday to inspect a super-secret detention facility for U.S. POWs buried deep underground several blocks northwest of Hoa Lo.

Holocaust denier no more, John? Prove it by going with us to inspect this underground prison where U.S. POWs have undeniably been held in large numbers, or resign your seat in the U.S. Senate.

We await your favorable reply. wmmhendon@aol.com JohnLeBout@aol.com

via YouTube:

Tuesday, October 21, 2008 @ 7:30 AM

Former Congressman Bill Hendon, co-author of the New York Times bestseller An Enormous Crime: The Definitive Account of American POWs Abandoned in Southeast Asia and former Congressman LeBoutillier will be talking about this book and the POW issue with Mr. Don Imus beginning at 7:30 AM.

The book can be purchased at Amazon.com. And a bonus chapter detailing how the U.S. Government has covered up specific cases of POWs still held against their will is available for free at enormouscrime.com.

If the Imus in the Morning radio show is not on in your area, you can listen to it on his web site: www.imusonair.com

And the show is also broadcast live on Direct TV channel 379 - RFD TV - which is also on many cable systems.

I have known and worked with John McCain for more than three decades.

In my efforts to get to the truth about the U.S. POWs abandoned in Laos and Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam War, I encountered a John McCain radically different from the glowing, effusive press coverage heaped on him by a fawning DC press corps.

Beginning in 1983, I found Congressman and then Senator John McCain to be the single most duplicitous, nasty, sarcastic, condescending, mean-spirited and dishonest politician I have ever met.

I had hoped that this former POW would become an ally in the quest to get the US Government to cough up the truth about the men our government knowingly left behind in 1973; instead, he became our side’s chief opponent, siding with the very same USG agencies - DIA, CIA, NSA - which stonewalled and lied about the concrete proof of the existence of US POWs still signaling their survival in 1992.

In VETTING JOHN MCCAIN, Ted Sampley, a two-tour Vietnam Green Beret and the publisher of the US Veteran Dispatch, has done something the so-called mainstream media never has: taken a long, serious look at the real John McCain. Not the flattering bio pieces the media has been recycling for the past 35 years; no, Mr. Sampley goes into every aspect of McCain’s background, with a heavy focus on the truth about his POW years and his less-than-stellar Navy record both before and after his incarceration.

VETTING JOHN MCCAIN can be purchased at www.vettingjohnmccain.com - and it is worth it for all voters to read the truth about the potential next President of the United States - before they vote for him.

Interestingly, the so-called Mainstream Media - who for years McCain only half-jokingly referred to as his “base” - is finally beginning to see the truth about McCain. They are now using the term dishonorable to describe McCain’s campaign ads and tactics.

McCain has never been vetted the way other political candidates have been precisely because the media was so enthralled by his POW status. Well now comes a book which properly examines all aspects of McCain’s military service and private life.

Perhaps these media types will finally try to learn the truth about their former darling by reading VETTING JOHN MCCAIN.

The John McCain I know should be disqualified from serving this nation as Commander-in-Chief. His behavior toward the POWs left behind was analogous to committing attempted murder. As you will read here, he was presented concrete proof that US POWs were still alive in 1992 and he deliberately destroyed, distorted, mocked, ridiculed, photo-shopped and lied about this evidence.

Any man who would behave that way has no business in public life. Period.

VETTING JOHN MCCAIN opens the window into a dark, evil soul.

I have seen that soul in action - and I do not want to see it inhabit 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

John McCain has every right to play the POW card. Five and one half years in various North Vietnamese POW camps is a major part of John’s life and if he chooses now to bring it up on the campaign trail - and to highlight it in his convention speech, who can deny him the right?

The media has lately been getting on him over this; back in the 2000 campaign he would never discuss his Vietnam years. Now, since Steve Schmidt , a former Karl Rove deputy, has taken over, suddenly both the campaign and McCain himself invoke his POW past in virtually every setting - from Jay Leno to questions about how many houses he owns.

Clearly Schmidt knows that McCain’s distinguished military record is an invaluable asset - especially in a campaign during wartime against someone who never wore the uniform.

The GOP’s use of McCain’s fellow former POWs in St. Paul was masterfully done. They were a part of each speech - and added much to flesh out the inspirational story of McCain’s imprisonment.

But John McCain has opened the door to something he may not want to brag about: his own record in the US Senate dealing with the issue of living US POWs left behind at the end of the Vietnam War.

On this issue McCain and his campaign spokesmen remain silent.

And for good reason. As detailed in AN ENORMOUS CRIME; The Definitive Account of American POWs Abandoned in SE Asia by former US Rep. Bill Hendon and Elizabeth Stewart (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martins Press), a 2007 New York Times bestseller, John McCain is one of many US Government officials - Republican and Democrat - who have behaved perfidiously and corruptly on this emotional and sensitive issue.

To keep it simple: McCain and others on the US Senate Select Committee on POWs in 1991-1992 deliberately, willfully and knowingly hid, destroyed, altered, photo-shopped, distorted, denied and lied about concrete evidence brought to them from the DIA, the CIA and other USG intelligence agencies. This evidence showed that US POWs - at that very time in 1992 - 19 years after McCain and his group of POWs came home - were still laying down their names and Escape and Evasion codes in rice paddies and trails and fields adjacent to their prisons. These authenticator codes - unique to each US airman shot down (similar to a bank PIN code) - featured a combination of letters and numbers.

McCain was shown aerial and satellite images of these signals, which basically mean, “I am alive! Please come and get me the Hell out of here!!!”

In his convention speech last night Senator McCain was repeatedly interrupted with shouts of “USA...USA...USA!!!” Well, one of the most startling Escape and Evasion codes captured by an American satellite in 1988 was a gigantic USA with a letter K (known as a ‘walking K’) underneath it placed by a downed American pilot in Laos fifteen years after the end of the Vietnam War. This photograph is on the cover of AN ENORMOUS CRIME.

McCain was also shown transcripts of intercepted Laotian military radio transmissions in which communist Pathet Lao soldiers discuss the movement of “American prisoners.”

And he was shown over 900 first-hand, live-sighting reports of US POWs held against their will in both Laos and Vietnam.

Did McCain, a decorated and heroic former POW, jump up and use his clout and special status to demand that everything possible be done to rescue these men?

No.

He did not.

Instead he played politics in order to help an embattled President George H.W. Bush try to defeat Ross Perot, a strong POW advocate, and Bill Clinton.

By burying the truth about the POWs, McCain helped the Bushes - and thus earned his stripes inside the Republican Party.

So McCain - the so-called “man of integrity, honor and character” who says he always puts “country first” - abandoned these poor men to a cruel fate. Their cries for help went unanswered. And John McCain went on to run for President.

TWO FORMER GOP CONGRESSMEN TO U.S. COMBAT FORCES WORLDWIDE: MCCAIN UNFIT TO SERVE AS YOUR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF

Ex-Reps. Warn Troops: As Senator He Abandoned American POWs Trapped in Indochina; as President He'll Abandon You

By

Bill Hendon & John LeBoutillier

Ed. note: This message from former U.S. Congressmen Bill Hendon (R-NC) and John LeBoutillier (R-NY) is being posted today on numerous military blogs and websites.

~~~~~~~~~~

He [McCain] has told me several times over the years that the myth of live POWs was a cruel hoax on the families. He chaired hearings into the issue in the 1990s and found nothing. “The committee … pored over thousands of records and every claim of a sighting, no matter how outlandish,” says Salter. “It was all untrue.”

Jonathan Alter, When Ross Perot Calls..., Newsweek.com January 16, 2008


Senator John McCain's heroic and inspiring wartime service in Vietnam notwithstanding, we know from personal experience he is not fit to serve as Commander-in-Chief of America's armed forces. Here is how we know this:

In mid-summer 1991, the U.S. Senate created the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs and charged it with conducting a no-holds-barred investigation into the long-festering matter of American POWs reportedly still held captive by the Communist North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao. On the day the legislation creating the Select Committee was passed, August 2, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted nationwide showed that 69% of Americans surveyed believed that Americans were still held captive in Southeast Asia and 75% believed the U.S. government wasn’t doing enough to get them home.

Following months of negotiations between the committee and a very reluctant George H. W. Bush administration, committee intelligence investigators were finally able to obtain the postwar intelligence files relating to live POWs. Committee investigators spent some 2,700 man hours vetting, analyzing and crosschecking the postwar intelligence. They found it a textbook blend of human intelligence (HUMINT); intercepts of secret enemy radio traffic (SIGINT), and images taken by unmanned reconnaissance drones and U.S. spy satellites (IMINT). The committee's intelligence investigators told the senators that collectively the intelligence indicated the North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao had held back hundreds of POWs at Operation Homecoming in 1973 and that many were still alive in captivity during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.

By the time committee investigators finally began briefing the senators in secret sessions in early spring, 1992, the issue of live POWs had become, as McCain later described it, "white hot;" this not only because of intense public interest in the plight of the POWs, but also because Texas businessman and longtime POW advocate H. Ross Perot had entered the presidential race, and had done so amid press accounts that he thought President Bush was not doing enough to bring the POWs home. By late May Perot was in first place in the national polls, ahead of President Bush, who was in second place, and the presumptive Democratic nominee, Governor Bill Clinton, who was in third. What would the committee find? Might a ruling that 69% of the American people were right and that, in fact, there were live POWs still held half a world away throw the election to Perot? How could it not?

Enter John McCain.

Given his wartime experiences as a POW in Vietnam, Sen. John McCain was by default the most powerful and influential member of the Select Committee. Members on both sides of the aisle deferred to his judgment; reporters hung on his every pronouncement. And so when McCain, his chief of staff Mark Salter and their allies on the Select Committee joined forces with top Bush administration officials to assail, ridicule, attack, discredit, photoshop, retouch, manipulate, massage and/or “cherry-pick” the intelligence in order to destroy its intelligence value and keep the matter of live POWs from becoming an issue in the 1992 election, the live POWs never had a chance.

How McCain and Salter and the others went about doing this is a case study in how powerful government officials can manipulate intelligence to make it say what they want it to say - and the main reason we believe that John McCain must not be Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces.

During that spring and summer of 1992, McCain and the other members of the committee were briefed on some 925 HUMINT reports the investigators had deemed plausible, credible. These intelligence reports were some of the several thousand reports the U.S. government had received from human sources who testified they had personally observed or had been told or had otherwise learned about American servicemen in captivity after Operation Homecoming. Many of the reports corroborated one another as to location, time and circumstance, e.g., independent sources repeatedly reported seeing American POWs being held in the same area; in the same town or village, and/or at the exact same prison at the same time or over a period of time – and, of course, absent IMINT and/or SIGINT, corroboration by independent human sources is the best lie detector ever devised by man. But what did McCain and Salter make of this crucial intelligence? Not one of these reports of American POWs held prisoner after Operation Homecoming was credible, they loudly declared; instead, all 925 sources were either (1) lying, or (2) confused about what he or she had actually seen. Not one report, McCain and Salter declared, related to American POWs trapped in Indochina after Operation Homecoming.

The SIGINT – the half-dozen or so postwar intercepts of secret Pathet Lao radio transmissions where the PL were heard describing how, when, where and/or why they were holding and/or moving American POWs from one point to another inside their country - got the same treatment. When analyzed carefully by committee intelligence investigators and cross-checked with the HUMINT, it was clear these postwar radio intercepts alone collectively described the confinement and/or movement of well over 100 American POWs inside Laos. McCain’s and Salter’s ruling? Same as with the POWs described in the HUMINT, “nothing to any of it. All radio intercepts are false."

Finally came the IMINT – the priceless postwar satellite images showing missing pilots' names, their official secret four-digit authenticators, secret USAF/USN escape and evasion (E&E) codes given to them and/or other “I’m alive, get me the hell out of here” messages our men had laid out on the ground in hopes U.S. spy satellites would image their plea and rescue forces would be dispatched - and the similar, shocking result. A missing USAF flight officer’s name along with a valid USAF/USN escape and evasion code imaged in a field adjacent to a prison in northern Vietnam on June 5, 1992 – photoshopped right out of the image, disappeared, gone! Nineteen four-digit authenticators matching those of missing airmen imaged in rice paddies along Route 4 in northern Laos - similarly photoshopped right out of the satellite image! The name of another USAF pilot and four digit number laid out beside a jungle road in northern Laos - "naturally occurring shadows on the ground," they said. A valid E&E code followed by the four-digit authenticator of another USAF flight officer in a field adjacent to a prison in northern Vietnam – “natural shadings in the field … not man-made intentional signals.” The letters "USA," each 12 feet tall and together stretching over 37 feet across, and below them a huge 24 foot tall by 19 feet across valid secret USAF/USN E&E code imaged in a rice paddy in northern Laos - "a young Laotian boy's handiwork that he had copied off an envelope," McCain and Salter "explained" in McCain's 2002 memoir Worth the Fighting For. And on and on it went. (See two versions of map of Indochina showing the 925 postwar HUMINT reports [pins color-coded by DOI] and how they cluster and corroborate one another, and the postwar SIGINT and IMINT hits [yellow squares] at http://www.thepowerhour.com/news3/maps_bill_hendon.htm ). Also see An Enormous Crime, cover photo and Chapter 31, "1992, The Fragging."

John McCain could have saved these men but chose not to. For that reason - and because one can photoshop pleas for help out of desert sand and/or rocky, mountain terrain just as easily as one can photoshop them out of jungle terrain, fields and rice paddies - he must not be accorded the highest and most sacred of all honors - that of serving as Commander-in-Chief of America's armed forces.

~~~~~~~~~


Former Congressman Hendon is co-author with attorney Elizabeth Stewart of the 2007 New York Times bestseller, AN ENORMOUS CRIME; The Definitive Account of American POWs Abandoned in Southeast Asia (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press). Ms. Stewart’s father is missing in action in northern Vietnam. In reviewing their book, Publisher’s Weekly declared “Controversial former North Carolina congressman Hendon and attorney Stewart make the case that the U.S. knowingly left hundreds of POWs in Vietnam and Laos in 1973, and that every presidential administration since then has covered it up.” (Publishers Weekly, week of April 9, 2007) Kirkus Reviews wrote that An Enormous Crime is “[a] sprawling indictment of eight U.S. administrations. Hendon and Stewart…appear nonpartisan in their disdain for governmental inaction and double-dealing. A convincing, urgent argument.” (Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2007) An Enormous Crime is currently available at some 400 libraries in the continental U.S. and overseas. (See list of libraries at http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/123029704&tab=holdings?loc=20035 ). You can read almost 100 pages of the book free of charge by going to Google Book Search at:

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=izp2Dj_WOxIC&dq=hendon+stewart+an+enormous+crime&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=adjFGkPwG4&sig=U3npRR99_glgvkleakpFWLmnF3M&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result



Hendon served two terms on the U.S. House Task Force on POW/MIA Affairs; as consultant on POW/MIA Affairs with an office in the Pentagon in 1983, and as an intelligence investigator assigned full-time to the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs during 1991 and 1992. He has appeared on CBS’s 60 Minutes, ABC’s 20/20, Dateline NBC, ABC’s Good Morning America, the NBC Today Show, Saturday Today, CNN’s Larry King Live and on a number of network news and talk shows.



Former Congressman LeBoutillier served on the U.S. House Task Force on POW/MIA Affairs and is the author of VIETNAM NOW; The Case for Normalization (Praeger). He is a NewsMax.com pundit and a nationally recognized political commentator. Mr. LeBoutillier rose to national prominence in 1974 when, as a college student at Harvard, he raised over a quarter million dollars for a former Republican challenger against South Dakota Senator George McGovern. Mr. LeBoutillier's efforts caught the notice of President Ford's re-election campaign and in 1976 he was appointed regional coordinator, responsible for all field activities in New Jersey.

After graduating Magna Cum Laude from Harvard College, Mr. LeBoutillier completed a master's degree at Harvard Business School.

Mr. LeBoutillier has been a prolific writer, beginning with his best-selling book Harvard Hates America (October 1978). Later he authored Vietnam Now (September 1989) and co-authored Primary, a novel (September 1979). He has contributed to many major newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, among others.

In 1980, Mr. LeBoutillier was elected to represent New York's 6th District. He defeated a 16-year Democrat incumbent and became the youngest member of the 97th Congress. In the House, Congressman LeBoutillier served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and as a member of Special House POW/MIA Task Force.

After leaving Congress, Mr. LeBoutillier continued to be active in POW/MIA affairs. He currently runs Account for POW/MIA Inc., dedicated to recovering living American POWs in Southeast Asia. He also has been a frequent commentator and host of several media programs. He is a frequent guest on radio and television shows. In 1981 he conducted an exclusive interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn for NBC's Tomorrow show. He has hosted radio talk show programs on WMCA radio and WABC radio. In 1984, Mr. LeBoutillier interviewed Richard M. Nixon for the ABC Network radio in his first live network radio appearance since leaving the White House. He has been a frequent guest on many national talk show programs, including the Today show, ABC's 20/20, Nightline and CNN's Crossfire.



Both men have traveled extensively to South and Southeast Asia on behalf of America’s POWs and MIAs. Hendon has visited the region some 33 times; LeBoutillier a dozen times.

HENRY KISSINGER SAY HE WON'T READ THE NEW BOOK - AN ENORMOUS CRIME!

This is from today's New York Daily News.

Henry Kissinger, the architect of the abandonment of our US POWs in SE Asia, says that he won't read AN ENORMOUS CRIME; The Definitive Account of US POWs Abandoned in SE Asia.

Guilty conscience, eh?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rush & Molloy


Henry K takes heat on MIAs


Friday, June 22nd 2007, 4:00 AM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Good thing for Henry Kissinger that he won't be in the States today when President Bush meets with Vietnam's President Nguyen Minh Triet.

A White House spokesman confirms to us that "a high U.S. priority" during the historic Oval Office summit would be "accounting for Americans still missing since the war."

But while Bush says he's eager to pry open the painful issue of prisoners of war, Kissinger tells us he has no interest in revisiting the subject.

The former secretary of state recently received a copy of "An Enormous Crime." The new book, by former Rep. Bill Hendon and Elizabeth Stewart, contends Kissinger and President Richard Nixon secretly promised $4.75 billion in aid to North Vietnam in exchange for the return of all POWs.

According to the book, the North Vietnamese returned half the POWs in 1973. But when Watergate came crashing down on Nixon, he sought a quick end to the POW mess and chose not to pay the money or to press for the unaccounted soldiers. Former Queens congressman John LeBoutillier, who sent Kissinger the book, included a letter telling him that it "proves beyond a shadow of doubt that Hanoi purposely kept 700 U.S. POWs behind as insurance."

LeBoutillier told Kissinger: "Hundreds of U.S. pilots and servicemen remain alive in captivity ... You need to address your mistakes - and the fact that the North Vietnamese 'took' you at Paris. ... You are directly responsible for this tragedy. It is still not too late for you to help ... bring these men home."

Kissinger calls the book's allegations "irresponsible" and "insupportable."

"There was some discussion [during the Paris peace talks] of economic aid that we might give [the North Vietnamese]," Kissinger told us this week before leaving for Asia. "But [the aid] didn't have anything to do with the prisoners. The prisoner release was supposed to be finished in April 1973. The economic aid question didn't arise till after that." He added, "We didn't pay them because they never carried out the agreement."

Kissinger argued that "if the Vietnamese held prisoners back in order to get more money, why didn't they ever say they had [the extra 700] prisoners?"

As for the book, "I'm not going to read it." Despite the authors' assertion that it draws on thousands of pages of declassified documents, "I would be amazed" if there was anything new, he said. "Congress went through all of this in the hearings [chaired by Sen. John Kerry in 1991]," said Kissinger. "I testified for two days then. ... There's no other subject on which my colleagues and I worked as hard."

Says LeBoutillier: "Of course the guy's not going to admit he got duped. He won a Nobel Prize for this. What a weasel!"





http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/r_m/index.html

DRUDGE AD CAMPAIGN AIMED AT PRESIDENT BUSH


See the unique ads for AN ENORMOUS CRIME running on the DRUDGE REPORT beginning Monday, June 18.

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Monday, June 18, 2007

MEMO

TO: PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH

FR: FORMER CONGRESSMAN JOHN LEBOUTILLIER

RE: HOW TO SAVE YOUR PRESIDENCY


Mr. President, 66% of today’s public views your performance as ‘poor.’ You are today almost as unpopular as Richard Nixon was just before he resigned in disgrace. And most voters rank your presidency as a ‘failure’ or as one of the ‘worst’ - right down there with Jimmy Carter.

However, there is a way for you to reverse your fortunes in one fell swoop.

There is a way for you to do something so spectacular as to change the whole dynamic of American politics.

There is a way for you to earn the respect of those who today shun you.

There is a way for you to reverse the declining morale of our armed forces - and to restore pride again in the American uniform.

There is a way to take the national focus off of Iraq - and instead focus it on something for which you share no blame.

There is a way to make Americans feel good again about the country - because this single act will help to ‘cleanse’ the body politic.

There is a way to expose all your predecessors - and rivals - for their role in something that the American people would never accept - if and when they know about it.

And, Mr. President, there is also a way to “one-up” your father.

What is this magic elixir for a lame-duck- bordering-on-a- dead-duck presidency.

Quite simple, Mr. President.

This coming Friday - June 22 - you are meeting with Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet in the Oval Office. It is the first time a Vietnamese head of state has come to the United States since before the war.

Here is a simple plan, President Bush: when you sit down with President Triet, tell him you recently received and read a copy of AN ENORMOUS CRIME; The Definitive Account of US POWs Abandoned in SE Asia.

Tell President Triet, “Mr. President, this never-ending POW issue has hurt - and continues to hurt - both our nations - and yet neither of us had anything to do with it. So here is what I am proposing.” As you speak, pull out a letter to President Triet and hand it to him. Then say, “President Triet, this letter from me to you serves as a public, presidential statement that the government of the United States is now prepared to pay the government of Vietnam $15 billion for all the living Americans who are “left over” from the war - including any in Laos. These include US servicemen who were not “registered with the Centre for POWs. This $10 billion is to make up for the $4.75 billion Nixon and Kissinger pledged to you 35 years ago and which was never paid.”

You can also tell President Triet that for face-saving purposes if Vietnam wants to continue to claim they have no POWs that is just fine with us. We understand. It is OK with us if they “find” the POWs in Laos and “liberate” them and return them to us.

We have no interest in embarrassing Hanoi; nor do we want to renew hostilities with them.

All we want is our men - all of them - and to put this sordid chapter in our national rear view mirror.

Yes, there will be critics who say, “we can’t pay for these POWs. That would be tribute or ransom. It will encourage others to seize Americans and hold them for negotiation. And besides we don’t have enough money any more for all of this.”

Well, that is all nonsense.

We are now offering rewards in Iraq for the two missing US Army servicemen.

And President Bush, you have just pledged $30 billion for AIDS in Africa.

If we have enough for people in other countries, then we certainly have enough to pay for hundreds of US servicemen who have spent over 35 years in captivity waiting for Uncle Sam to come and bring them home.

So, Mr. President, are you going to step up to the plate and make history?

Are you going to be different than all your predecessors - including your father - who have allowed this festering sore to continue?

This Friday, President Bush, is the day you can reverse all the negative trends and do something so spectacular that you will earn a level of respect you haven’t seen since right after 9/11.

Friday, June 22. The Oval Office. Make the deal, Mr. President.

It is time for our POWs to come home.

MCCAIN: ENEMY OF THE POWS


With the publication just two weeks ago of the New York Times bestseller - AN ENORMOUS CRIME; The Definitive Account of US POWs Abandoned in SE Asia - it is inevitable that the role in the POW issue of Senator - and former POW - John McCain now be examined.

Having known McCain since June 7, 1974, I have often written of his sarcastic, arrogant and condescending attitude toward those who disagree with him - on any issue. His temper is legendary - and we all just heard of his latest outburst directed at fellow GOP Senator John Cornyn of Texas over McCain’s immigration bill.

Everyone in the political world - both in DC and in Arizona - knows of this mean-spirited, cruel side of John McCain.

But on no issue has John McCain been meaner and more vicious than the question of the hundreds of US POWs who did not come home in 1973 when McCain came home.

He has used his unique and hard-earned status as a former POW not to help the cause of the un-returned POWs but rather to attack POW activists, demean POW family members and to bolster the Pentagon’s long-term strategy of ‘debunking’ credible sightings of POWs.

For example, the soon-to-be-famous satellite photograph on the cover of AN ENORMOUS CRIME is a 1988 image of a USA K - known as a ‘walking K’ because it has ‘feet’ on the bottom of the letters. This is an Escape & Evade (E&E) code given to US airmen before their missions.

The one on the cover of the book was placed by a still-held-against-his-will US airmen 15 years after the end of the Vietnam War and the return of McCain and the other now-famous US POWs.

It measures 37 feet across and each of the letters is 12 feet high.

The Walking K part is a secret; no one could or would know its significance other than the US airman who was given his unique E&E code before his mission.

This code translates to: “I am alive! Come and get me the Hell out of here ASAP!!!”

When this evidence was made public that a US airman was still being held as a POW - 15 years after he should have been released - John McCain did not ride to his former comrade’s rescue. No he did not!

Instead, he sided with the Defense Intelligence Agency’s ‘debunking team,’ whose role is to discredit every report, sighting, satellite image and radio intercept. Clearly they have an agenda: prove that no POWs are still held alive over there. (To admit otherwise places the US Government in a massive hostage crisis - and exposes countless now-famous US officials from Henry Kissinger to George H.W. Bush to Colin Powell to Paul Wolfowitz to Dick Cheney and dozens of others as having knowingly abandoned these POWs.)

And do you know how McCain explained this USA K symbol visible from outer space in a rice paddy in Laos?

He claimed it was created by a 6-year old Laotian boy who was copying an American postage stamp!

I kid you not!

It is in his memoir, Worth The Fighting For.

Unanswered by John McCain are these questions:

• How did a 6-year old Lao boy know of the secret Walking K E&E code?
• How could a 6-year old boy possibly write a well-written English USA 37 feet wide and 12 feet high?
• Why would he do it?
• How could he possibly know that an American satellite would fly overhead and photograph it?


All of these questions point to the most sinister part of the POW issue: the US Government has known all along that our POWs are still there - and still sending E&E signals. (There are sightings of other E&E codes through the years - all the way up to 1992. You can see some of them on www.enormouscrime.com ).

And the Pentagon is still receiving - and hiding from the public - credible live-sighting reports of our POWs still held against their will in both Vietnam and Laos.

John McCain - as the most famous former POW - has provided ‘cover’ for this nefarious behavior by the Pentagon and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

He has used his former POW status to defend the Pentagon - and to attack those of us who claim something rotten is going on inside DC.

And he fits this role to a T: his attack-dog style mows down anyone in his path including mothers, wives and the children of our still-missing, un-returned POWs.

Plus, the so-called Mainstream Media - which has always loathed the POW issue and seen it as a right-wing nut story (they have never explained why right wingers would want to trash mostly Republicans like the Reagan and Nixon teams, but that is another story) - adores McCain. So when he attacks the POW activists, the media applauds him for it. Thus, they have never given a fair examination of the massive evidence - the US Government’s own evidence - that indeed hundreds of US POWs are still alive in SE Asia. Remember: AN ENORMOUS CRIME is based on 66,000 pages of never-before-published US Government intelligence reports, memoranda, aerial photographs and radio intercepts.

Thus the already-startling rise of AN ENORMOUS CRIME - up the Amazon and New York Times best seller lists - without one cent spent by the publisher on advertising or promotion - proves that the American people know they have been lied to by successive administrations about this issue. There is a thirst for the truth about our men.

All you have to do is either read the book or read the 1983-1984 cover-up chapter on the unique - and free - web site: www.enormouscrime.com .

John McCain, who owed his political career to being a former POW, has abused his status and betrayed his fellow POWs.

In countless other issues, especially fighting illegal immigration, we have seen the real John McCain: a duplicitous, untrustworthy, spoiled and privileged little brat of a man who is happy to crush anyone who gets in his way.

But in no other issue have the consequences been bigger: by helping to give ‘cover’ to the abandonment of the US POWs in SE Asia, John McCain has proven himself unworthy to be their Commander-in-Chief.

AN ENORMOUS CRIME: A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER!


An Enormous Crime debuts at #34 on the hardcover, nonfiction, New York Times bestseller list dated Sunday June 17, 2007.

This is the NY Times' "extended" list (which covers bestsellers numbered 16-35). It will not appear on the printed list (which covers bestsellers numbered 1-15) when the issue of 6/17 runs in that Sunday's NY Times Book Review Section, but it will be on their web site and the NY Times encourages all in the business when they have an "extended" bestseller to consider themselves "NY Times bestsellers."

The Times only goes as high as #35 total in their bestseller count. Everything below that does not make the cut.

PENTAGON COVER-UP OF POWS IS STILL HAPPENING TODAY

The Defense Intelligence Agency is - today - receiving credible reports of US POWs - alive - and held against their will in Vietnam and Laos.

The DIA is also using their 'special' skills to discredit these reports.

The authors of AN ENORMOUS CRIME; The Definitive Account of US POWs Abandoned in SE Asia , former US Congressman Bill Hendon and MIA daughter/lawyer Elizabeth A. Stewart, have launched www.enormouscrime.com - specifically to tell the truth about this ongoing cover-up to the American people.

Over 100 pages of a new and never-before-published material is now available on this dishonest and deceitful behavior at www.enormouscrime.com under the heading:

The 1983-84 Cover-Up, How It Was Structured, How It Was Sustained.

All you have to do is to click on that listing on the main page - and start reading.

You will see 15 cases of US POWs sighted after the end of the Vietnam War - when supposedly all our men had already been returned.

Indeed, this is a DIA cover-up in action - witnessed by you, the reader, right as it happens.

For example, to discredit multiple sources who saw US POWs after the end of the war in 1973, the DIA analysts did the following things:

• Took a sighting of ten US POWs forced to carry lumber and explained it away as the work of two 4-foot tall boys who used water buffalos to carry lumber;

• Took the USA K Escape and Evasion code on the cover of the book - which was placed there by a US airman and was photographed in 1988 - and said it was the work of a 6-year old Laotian boy copying a US postage stamp;

• Took multiple sightings of US POWs in a POW camp in the northern part of North Vietnam - under a thick triple-canopy jungle - and said that because no aerial or satellite photography was possible, that such a camp could not exist;

• Took a credible sighting by a friendly foreign diplomat of 20-30 US POWs in 1983 in a new detention facility on the outskirts of Hanoi and discredited the sighting by claiming the facility was not a POW Camp but was in fact a “luxury hotel for VIPs.”

• Took another report of 20 US POWs at a prison in southern Vietnam in the early 1980s and discredited it by claiming that there was no prison there; instead there was only a PAVN (North Vietnamese Army) cemetery there.

• Took cases of satellite imagery of Escape and Evasion signals placed in rice paddies and fields by US airmen and discredited them by claiming they were “natural vegetation” or “shadows.”


This is not in the past!

This is an ongoing cover-up inside our Pentagon.

Sources report that new - and credible - live-sighting reports of US POWs held today against their will in Vietnam and Laos are still coming into the Pentagon.

You can rest assured they are getting the same treatment that all the previous cases have received.

Please read the material at www.enormouscrime.com at once.

And then go buy AN ENORMOUS CRIME - and read the entire sordid tale of how our government has abandoned these men.

This issue goes to the heart and soul of America: with 200,000 troops now serving in Iraq, all of them and their families - and all of you, need to know how our own government behaves behind closed doors.

Now - for the first time ever - you can see for yourself at www.enormouscrime.com .

SEE A PENTAGON COVER-UP IN ACTION


New Web Site Details How DIA Manipulated Intelligence on US POWs



Have you ever wanted to see exactly how our government can deceive the American people?

Last week AN ENORMOUS CRIME; The Definitive Account of US POWs Abandoned in SE Asia was published by St. Martin’s Press.

The authors, former US Congressman Bill Hendon and MIA daughter/lawyer Elizabeth A. Stewart, have now launched www.enormouscrime.com .

This massive new site provides the ‘meat on the bones’ for one of the most controversial charges in the book: that the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) deliberately ‘cherry-picked’ and played fast and loose with first-hand, live-sighting intelligence - as well as overhead aerial and satellite photography - in 1983-1984. This was an intense period in Washington DC: POW activists were pushing the Reagan Administration to bring our men home and the bureaucracy was desperate to discredit the mounting evidence that indeed hundreds of our POWs were left behind and were still there.

Over 100 pages of a new and unique chapter is now available on this shocking and perfidious behavior at www.enormouscrime.com under the heading:
The 1983-84 Cover-Up, How It Was Structured, How It Was Sustained.

All you have to do is to click on that listing on the main page - and start reading.

You will see 15 cases of US POWs sighted after the end of the Vietnam War - when supposedly all our men had already been returned.

But, alas, you will soon see a pattern: DIA analysts - when faced with credible evidence of US POWs at a specific place at a specific time - often spotted by multiple independent sources who never even knew each other - come up with the most deceitful and dishonest ways to ‘close’ the case and ignore the cries for help from our still-serving American servicemen.

Indeed, this is a DIA cover-up in action - witnessed by you, the reader, right as it happens.

All of this material is free. Please read it at once. We have a duty to our American comrades still being held against their will to do more than we are doing now to bring them home alive.

And then go buy AN ENORMOUS CRIME - and read the entire sordid tale of how our government has abandoned these men.

This issue goes to the heart and soul of America: with 200,000 troops now serving in Iraq, all of them and their families - and all of you, need to know how our own government behaves behind closed doors.

Now - for the first time ever - you can see for yourself at www.enormouscrime.com .

PRESIDENT SAYS HE WILL READ AN ENORMOUS CRIME

Over the Memorial Day weekend, the 12 leaders of Operation Rolling Thunder - the 500,000 Vietnam Veterans who ride their motorcycles through DC every year to honor our missing POWs from Vietnam - had a unique and intimate 35-minute private meeting with President Bush in the Oval Office.

Clad in their riding leathers adorned with American flags and POW decals, these leaders hugged the President as they arrived at the White House on their bikes. Once inside the Oval Office, they discussed the fact that hundreds of US POWs held against their will in Vietnam at the end of the war have yet to be released.

Then they handed the President a copy of a brand-new book to be published this week: AN ENORMOUS CRIME; The Definitive Account of US POWs Abandoned in SE Asia (St. Martin's Press).

The President took it and said, "Thank you. I'll read it."

When he does, he will learn some startling facts:

1)Based on 66,000 pages of never-before-seen US Government documents, AN ENORMOUS CRIME details how many of the very same Bush Administration officials who manipulated intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq honed their skills when they earlier manipulated and 'cherry-picked' intelligence to hide the fact that hundreds of US servicemen were abandoned at the end of the Vietnam War.

2)Among those specifically cited in AN ENORMOUS CRIME are now-familiar names: Cheney, Wolfowitz, Armitage, Powell - as well as the architect of our withdrawal from Vietnam - Henry Kissinger, who is a frequent Oval Office visitor these days.

3)The real reason that H. Ross Perot ran against the first President Bush in 1992 - and ultimately cost him the election to Bill Clinton - was Perot reportedly grew to distrust George H. W. Bush's handling of the POW issue, an issue close to Perot's heart.

4)Many of our POWs are still alive and sending secret Escape and Evasion (E&E) signals only known to US airmen. The signals mean: “I am alive! Come and rescue me!!!”

The Rolling Thunder vets want the President to do the same thing the authors of the book call on him to do: send a high-level delegation to Vietnam and Laos with instructions to do whatever it takes to bring our men home.

Go to Amazon.com and order AN ENORMOUS CRIME:

http://www.amazon.com/Enormous-Crime-Definitive-Abandoned-Southeast/dp/0312371268/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-5599025-9678452?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180559420&sr=8-1


Less than 2 days after publication, AN ENORMOUS CRIME has already risen to Number 34 on the Amazon Best Seller List!

SAME PEOPLE - SAME CRIME; BUSH TEAM LIED BEFORE ABOUT INTEL

New Book: Long Before Iraq Same Bush Team Manipulated Intelligence to Hide Live US POWs in Vietnam

By

Former Congressman John LeBoutillier


Years before playing fast and loose with intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq, the very same Bush team members did the exact same thing - all to hide the truth about US POWs abandoned in Vietnam and Laos, a new book says.

According to AN ENORMOUS CRIME; The Definitive Account of American POWs Abandoned in Southeast Asia - written by former US Congressman Bill Hendon and lawyer/MIA daughter Elizabeth Stewart and due out on May 29th from St. Martin’s Press - the very same Bush Administration members who authored the war in Iraq spent years manipulating and ‘cherry-picking’ intelligence to cover-up the fact that North Vietnam had kept behind some 700 US POWs at the end of the war.

And, the book shows, these POWs have survived the years - and continue to send secret Escape and Evasion codes known only to US military pilots.

All the names now so familiar to Americans from the Iraq War - Cheney, Wolfowitz, Powell, Armitage, McCain and even Henry Kissinger and George H. W. Bush - have been deeply complicit in hiding the truth about the US POWs for decades, the book shows.

AN ENORMOUS CRIME is based solely on over 66,000 pages of never-before-published US Government documents; this book is based on factual material; it is taken from our own government’s intelligence files, radio intercepts and aerial and satellite imagery. And the book definitively shows how this same team - beginning in the early 1980's just as the Iranian Hostage Crisis which crippled the Carter Presidency had ended and not wanting another one - and faced with thousands of Vietnamese Boat People as they emerged with hundreds upon hundreds of credible accounts of still-captive American servicemen - hid the truth about our POWs from the American people.

Perfecting the skills they would later use to justify the war in Iraq, Team Bush became expert at hiding damaging intelligence reports - and only using ones that justified their pre-determined agenda - and as a result, the authors say, American POWs still languish in communist prisons in Southeast Asia.

Same people - same crime.




AN ENORMOUS CRIME; The Definitive Account of American POWs Abandoned in Southeast Asia can be ordered from Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Enormous-Crime-Definitive-Abandoned-Southeast/dp/0312371268/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-5599025-9678452?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180358496&sr=1-1

MONDAY MAY 7, 2007

A NEW, IMPORTANT MESSAGE: TO ALL US VETERANS, FAMILY MEMBERS OF VETERANS AND PATRIOTS WHO CARE ABOUT OUR COUNTRY

FR: FORMER CONGRESSMAN JOHN LEBOUTILLIER

RE: AN ACTION PLAN TO SPREAD THE TRUTH ABOUT LIVING AMERICAN POWS STILL HELD ALIVE IN VIETNAM AND LAOS



In less than one month - just before Memorial Day - AN ENORMOUS CRIME;The Definitive Account of American POWs Abandoned in Vietnam and Laos will be published by St. Martins Press.

This book - as Publishers Weekly says - “makes the case that the U.S. knowingly left hundreds of POWs in Vietnam and Laos in 1973, and that every presidential administration since then has covered it up.”

Indeed, AN ENORMOUS CRIME is the definitive proof that our government left hundreds of POWs behind and then covered it up - and the men are still there and still sending signals that say, “Please come rescue me!!!!”

Already the book has rocketed up the charts - it is already Number One on the Amazon.com Vietnam War list - even though it isn’t even on the bookshelves yet! All these sales are pre-orders through Amazon.

Our duty as Americans is to force the living POW issue back onto the front pages of our nation’s newspapers and back onto the top of the television news. Our comrades in Vietnam and Laos were - and remain - abandoned by a series of corrupt administrations in Washington - and the cover-up is still ongoing!

With the 2008 election already underway - and the country in the middle of yet another war where our troops are treated badly, used as PR props for political candidates and then cast aside when they come home - it is time for the truth about our living POWs to finally be put front and center for every American to see.

Why?

Because only by exposing the truth about the abandonment and cover-up of our Vietnam War POWs can we expose the perfidy and corruption of our government - and then begin to correct these mistakes.

AN ENORMOUS CRIME is indeed the book that can break open the truth about the POW issue. It is based on 66,000 pages of never-before-published US Government documents which prove that the highest levels of our government - from the Oval Office on down - have known all along that our POWs have been held alive against their will by the Vietnamese and Pathet Lao.

What can you do to help our POWs?

Here is an Action Plan for every US Veteran, every American Legion Post, every VFW Post and for all patriotic citizens who care about our men abandoned in SE Asia:

• Pre-order AN ENORMOUS CRIME through Amazon.com so that the book rises higher and higher on their Best Sellers List - and that will make the Media pay attention to the book and the Living POW issue. Here is the link to pre-order the book: http://www.amazon.com/Enormous-Crime-Definitive-Abandoned-Southeast/dp/0312371268/ref=pd_nr_b_34/104-5355030-3564753?ie=UTF8&s=books

• Buy a copy of AN ENORMOUS CRIME for your Legion or VFW Post.

• Buy a copy of AN ENORMOUS CRIME for every building which flies the POW flag. Buy it and go into that building - a post office, government building or court house - and present them with the book that explains why the POWs exist in the first place!

• Buy a copy of AN ENORMOUS CRIME for your Congressman - and give it to him/her and ask that they read it, not pawn it off to some staffer.

• Buy a copy of AN ENORMOUS CRIME for your US Senator - and give it to him/her.

• Buy a copy of AN ENORMOUS CRIME and bring it to your local Memorial Day parade or celebration. Tell everyone there about the book - and urge them to buy it, to read it and to spread the word about our men still held against their will in Laos and Vietnam.

• Buy a copy of AN ENORMOUS CRIME for your local library.

• Buy a cope of AN ENORMOUS CRIME for your school library - and take it there and show it to the librarian.

• Forward this email to any and everyone you know - especially to veterans, American Legion members, VFW members and Vietnam vets.

• Pray - as a community of veterans, patriots and POW activists - for the successful return of all our POWs.

• We have a duty - for our country and for these men left behind by a callous and criminal government - to expose our arrogant government officials - liars like McCain, Kerry, Kissinger, former CIA Director and former President George "Sit Down and Shut Up!" Bush.

• Let us make one last push to get our POWs home - alive - now - beginning on Memorial Day when this book comes out.

The Pentagon is still receiving new, up-to-date, credible reports of sightings of US POWs this year! (Of course, they're hiding those reports from the public.)

So we owe it to these brave American heroes to make one more concerted effort to get them home.

The POWs need our help - so it is up to us to do whatever we can do to help get this issue back on the front pages and back in the news.

Please help our brothers!


Sincerely,
Former Congressman John LeBoutillier

P.S. Please feel free to forward this email to any and everyone you know and especially to every veteran you know! Spread the word!

P.P.S. Here is the first news article about AN ENORMOUS CRIME: http://www.usvetdsp.com/apr07/hendon_bk.htm
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Publisher's Weekly:
An Enormous Crime: The Definitive Account of American POWs Abandoned in Southeast Asia
Bill Hendon and Elizabeth Stewart. St. Martin's/Dunne, $29.95 (640p) ISBN 978-0-312-37126-8
Controversial former North Carolina congressman Hendon and attorney Stewart make the case that the U.S. knowingly left hundreds of POWs in Vietnam and Laos in 1973, and that every presidential administration since then has covered it up. The main reason for the secrecy, say the authors, is the billions in war reparations demanded by the Vietnamese and promised by Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon at the Paris Peace talks. Hendon and Stewart provide a mountain of evidence, mainly intelligence reports of live sightings of American prisoners in Vietnam and Laos that make for less-than-scintillating reading. But riveting sections describe Hendon's crusade on this issue in the early 1980s, including two meetings with President Reagan, pleading his case that the government free the live POWs. Hendon and Stewart directly accuse a long list of government officials of the coverup. Among the most culpable: Kissinger, President George H.W. Bush, Senators John McCain and John Kerry, Gen. Colin Powell, former secretary of state George Schultz and former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It's a chore wading through the live-sighting reports and the massive, detailed endnotes, but the descriptions of Hendon's unsuccessful personal mission provide an intriguing story—and carry the ring of truth. 36 b&w photos not seen by PW. (June 1)
Kirkus Reviews:
A sprawling indictment of eight U.S. administrations. The charge: sacrificing American war prisoners in the interest of focusing, as Bush aides have said, “not on Vietnam’s past but on its future.” Beginning in 1966, write former Rep. Hendon (R-NC) and attorney Stewart, GIs captured in South Vietnam were moved north along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and other routes. Cataloguing sightings with the diligence of Vincent Bugliosi—whose Reclaiming History (2007), on the JFK assassination, is something of a companion piece—Hendon and Stewart reckon that hundreds of POWs had crossed the Demilitarized Zone by the time of the Tet Offensive, their numbers swelled by pilots downed over North Vietnam. Many of these soldiers, Hendon and Stewart charge, were used as human shields against American bombing attacks on power plants, military headquarters and other strategically important venues. North Vietnam and its allies in Laos and Cambodia weren’t particularly forthcoming on all these things, but the U.S. played a dirty hand, too; by the authors’ account, the prisoners’ ultimate release was bound up in negotiations conducted by Henry Kissinger, “the surrogate president,” who reneged on promises of U.S. aid owing to supposed violations of previous accords, thus closing off a diplomatic channel for repatriation. Fast forward to 1987, when Ross Perot traveled to Vietnam and told the foreign minister, who insisted that there were no POWs there, “Don’t embarrass yourselves, I know too much.” Fruitful negotiations ensued, the authors report, only to be
brushed aside by the Reagan administration—even though, they claim, at least 100 U.S. prisoners were still alive in Vietnam. Hendon and Stewart, who appear nonpartisan in their disdain for governmental inaction and double-dealing, close by offering advice to President Bush to send an army of former presidents and their staffs to negotiate the release of the remaining captives. Much of the authors’ evidence is circumstantial, but there’s an awful lot of it. A convincing, urgent argument.
Hendon, Bill & Elizabeth A.
Stewart
AN ENORMOUS CRIME:
The Definitive Account of
American POWs Abandoned in
Southeast Asia
Dunne/St. Martin’s (640 pp.)
$29.95
Jun. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-312-37126-5

A life-long resident of Westbury, Long Island, John LeBoutillier was born in Glen Cove, New York on May 26, 1953.

A 1976 Magna Cum Laude graduate of Harvard College with a Masters Degree in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, LeBoutillier used his college experience as the basis of his book, Harvard Hates America. Lecturer and author, LeBoutillier has since written numerous articles which have appeared on the New York Times Op-Ed Page, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Sunday Magazine and in major publications throughout the nation.

He first rose to national prominence in 1974 when, at the age of 21 and a sophomore at Harvard, he raised over a quarter million dollars for Leo Thorsness, a former P.O.W., in a South Dakota Senate race against George McGovern.

In 1976 he served as regional coordinator, responsible for all field activities, in New Jersey for Gerald Ford’s presidential campaign.

Elected on November 4, 1980 to represent New York’s 6th District, LeBoutillier was the youngest member of the 97th Congress. During that time he served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and, as a member of the Special House POW/MIA Task Force pressed for continuing investigation to determine the fate of 2,500 Americans still unaccounted for in Indochina.

Since leaving Congress in 1983, LeBoutillier has run the Sky Hook II Project, a privately funded group dedicated to recovering living American Prisoners of War held against their will in Southeast Asia. Sky Hook II has over 50, 000 American supporters. Its purposes are to gather on-the-ground human intelligence throughout Laos and Vietnam and to educate the American public about the POW issue.

Since 1983, Mr. LeBoutillier has journeyed to Southeast Asia many times, including two trips to Vietnam as the guest of the Hanoi government, to discuss a solution to the POW problem.

In 1989 LeBoutillier authored Vietnam Now; A Case for Normalizing Relations with Hanoi published by Praeger Publishers.

In 1981 Mr. LeBoutillier conducted the first American television interview with Alexander Solzhinitsyn on NBC’s TOMORROW SHOW. Also in late 1981, Congressman LeBoutillier interviewed President Reagan from his ranch on WMCA radio on Thanksgiving afternoon.

In 1984 Mr. LeBoutillier conducted the first live radio interview with former President Richard M. Nixon for the ABC Talk Radio Network in a three-hour ABC Special Presentation.

From 1983-1989, Mr. LeBoutillier was the primary substitute at WMCA Radio for radio hosts Barry Gray and Bob Grant. He also had his own Sunday morning show on WPLJ. He has also hosted shows on WABC.

In 2010, Mr. LeBoutillier co-authored THE OBAMA IDENTITY; A Novel (Or Is It?) with Ed Klein.

In December 2010, LeBoutillier joined with noted Canadian broadcaster, Arlene Bynon, to launch BYNON/LEBOUTILLIER, the first international talk radio show, airing simultaneously on WABC Talk Radio in New York City and AM640 in Toronto and airing in the United Kingdom.

Mr. LeBoutillier is a political columnist for NEWSMAX.COM and his columns also appear at www.JohnLeBout.com.