Is Anybody Listening?

While I was preparing myself for the task of finding a way to get to Vietnam, since United States citizens weren’t allowed to travel there from the U.S., I became aware of numerous articles in newspapers and magazines about Vietnam. Some of the headlines were: “American POWs Reportedly Sighted in Vietnam”

          “U.S. to Study Monk’s Stories of American POWs in Vietnam”

          “700 Americans Are Still Rotting in Vietnam Prisons”

          “Freed Vietnam Captive Reports Seeing U.S. POWs”

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            It’s interesting that live sightings were not only made by individuals in Southeast Asia, but by our military.

            “Indeed, a U.S. satellite image taken in June 1992 of the Dong Mang prison in northern Vietnam showed a man-made signal stamped out in the grass: GX2527. Pentagon analysts tried to argue that the image was a ‘photographic anomaly,’ but the combination of letters and digits matched the unique authenticator code of Peter Richard Matthes, the copilot of a C-130 transport shot down in Laos in November on 1969 and still listed as missing in action at the time the satellite snapped the picture.”

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            When the armed services first began to bring bodies back from Vietnam, family members questioned whether the body in the casket was truly their loved one.

            They were told it wasn’t necessary to open the casket to verify the body.

            “No, I want to look,” many families said. And when the families did open the caskets, they found things like airplane parts or bones from a pig or rocks, or other such things to add weight to the casket.

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            Terry Minarcin, also testified. He was a Vietnamese linguist and crypto-linguist, assigned to NSA along with Jerry Mooney from 1967 to 1984. In addition, he was a ground-based voice intercept operator/processing specialist, a technical reporter, an analyst, an intelligence reporter, an airborne voice intercept operator and an airborne instructor. He provided direct SIGINT support to “special operations” including rescue attempts. All of these jobs gave him various forms of information about American POWs—those held in the Hanoi area, in “special” camps, those sent to the Soviet Union, those held in ‘New Economic Areas,” and those captured after the cease fire in 1973.

            Minarcin found that all of the American POWs were divided into three categories by the Vietnamese—political/economic exploitation, military exploitation, and general knowledge exploitation.

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For years, family members have tried to prove to the government that men were left behind by using the government’s own intelligence. The response has been pretty universal. “If we had proof that any American prisoner was left behind, we’d go over there and bring them home.” Bobby Garwood is proof that the government’s statement is not true and that the government has closed its eyes and refused to act.

            The Vietnamese denied holding Americans, the U.S. denied leaving Americans behind, yet somehow an American named Robert Garwood found a way out of

Vietnam. . .in 1979, long after the war ended.

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      In the long run, my trips to Vietnam and Thailand turned out to be quite benign. I mean, I did not ruffle any U.S. government feathers regarding MIAs or Jim’s whereabouts. At least I didn’t think I had.

      However, in 1990, I began to suspect otherwise. Either that or I was beginning to go crazy.

      Becoming aware of the threats to me, and my friends, began to snowball. The more I learned, the worse it got. I don’t want to say I was paranoid, because it wasn’t that. But, I must say, my feelings appeared as paranoia to a lot of people.

      I kept saying, over and over, throughout the years, “Thank God most of these things happened to me when I had witnesses.”