[Editor’s Note: In view of The New York Times’ accusations against presumptive Republican Party Presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, this two-part essay by our columnist, written before the senator entered the 2000 Presidential race, is particularly timely.]
29 August 1999
I wish I could support John McCain, and as a fellow returned POW.
I have found I am expected to support him, but I cannot.
If I cannot support him, then the next best thing I find is that I am expected to remain mute and say nothing.
As I have proven in a terrible jungle prison, I have the ability to remain mute in the face of those who wished to trade me my very life for just a few words.
Why Now?
My remaining mute, then, is the driving factor behind my feeling compelled to speak out now.
When John was blown from the sky over that lake in Hanoi, did the enemy already know whose son he was?
No, they did not — until John told them.
He was seriously hurt in his ejection, and he needed medical attention. In exchange for what the rest of us would call “First Class” care, he talked.
Just Kept Spilling
He not only told them who his father, the Admiral, was, but he expounded in detail on the chain of command and then built himself up by describing himself as one of the “very best pilots.”
You will not find this form of “resistance” in the Uniformed Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) or in the Code of Conduct. As a matter of fact, it is expressly forbidden.
Now, if the U.S. Navy wants to give John a pass on this, it is all right with me. But that free pass negated John’s pointing fingers at others, or at least it should have.
Just ask Robert Garwood, or anyone else who crosses him, if he is a finger pointer. He is the worst.
Did He Stop?
After McCain was recovered from his wounds, did he cease and desist from making propaganda?
The answer is an emphatic “No.”
So we go back to the same question again: Should John get a free pass on this from the Navy?
Well, the Navy and some of the Air Force got together and supported the “Return with Honor”scenario.
I darn sure did, even from my hole-in-the-ground in Cambodia.
It’s Actually ‘Amnesty’
But I do not now support, nor would I ever have, if I had known “Return with Honor” would be some kind of “amnesty” program. The main reason was simple. No one, not Stockdale or the real Senior POW, Col. John Peter Flynn, U.S.A.F., had the authority to grant “amnesty” for collaboration in the prisons of Vietnam.
The recommendations of these Senior, honored POW’s must be given weight in the consideration of charges or amnesty.
They could fail to file charges, but they could not grant amnesty or “absolution.”
The problem is that they did so. Of course, one rarely hears of John Peter Flynn these days. Somehow, he ceased to be the Senior POW. Admiral Stockdale is described by nearly everyone as having filled that role.
That it is not true seems to have no import on the media, historians nor my fellow POW’s.
It Is Not True
Most of all, McCain has never made the correction.
One must realize, it’s as if we are some self-promoting, social club rather than a band of honorable men, welded together by common suffering.
Our group says a lot of things that are not true. I have seen them stand Ev Alvarez up time and again in front of the nation and proclaim him as “America's longest-held Vietnam POW.”
It is not true.
But this line has gone on for so long, it has entered the history books.
Not one time has the man John S. McCain, not the Senator, the sailor, the pilot, the ex-POW, but the man ever stood up and said:
“Now hold it right there. Floyd James Thompson, Major, U.S. Army Special Forces, was captured before all of us.”
Joining the ‘Wrong’ Branch
Don't trash Ev Alvarez. Just say he was the longest-held pilot. After all, Jim Thompson had to walk a long way just to get to Hanoi and survive years of deprivation never known in the prisons of Hanoi.
Major Thompson does not have the deserved recognition of being the longest-held POW merely because he joined the Army and not the Navy.
John Peter Flynn retired as the Inspector General of the U.S. Air Force, but he was not Navy, so Stockdale becomes the “Pope” and Flynn becomes just another “Bishop” in the terrible prisons of Hanoi.
The worst myth of all is the one now very popular: “Only the Army and Marine enlisted men let us down.”
He Refuses to Halt
We then go on to explain that this was because they were not “highly educated pilots and not motivated like the pilot officers.”
There were Army and Marine NCO’s who did not join the “Peace Committee,” and there are a couple, like Harvey Brande and Dennis Thompson, who, I am confident, could have whipped any two pilots in North Vietnam.
The problem is that John McCain allows these myths to persist.
He makes no mention of Captain Wilbur, U.S.N., our Senior Ranking Collaborator, or Lieutenant Colonel Edison Miller, our Senior Marine Collaborator.
No, only Private Garwood and “some Marine and Army enlisted men”come in for John’s ire.
I cannot accept this childish attitude in a Commander In Chief.
He Will Have Company
It is self-serving, and has no place in the moral and ethical arsenal of a man who is a pretender to the highest leadership position in the land.
If he is elected, I am sure another famous Navy man will be there to bask in the glory also. He is the famous “Bob” from the infamous “Bob and Ed” show, with Edison Miller, over propaganda radio in Hanoi.
This was another of those “highly trained, motivated and disciplined pilots” out of the Hanoi Hilton.
He got absolution to “Return with Honor” because he crossed back to our side at the last minute. He was even given “command” of other POW’s.
(To be concluded on Tuesday)
Maj. Mark A. Smith, U.S. Army (ret.), served in Vietnam and Cambodia. He was a Prisoner of War.
