Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE The Men We Abandoned I was struck by the (obviously unintentional) contrasts in your February issue. The editor-in-chief praises David Brock for his "bold and accurate journalism,"...
...He is .correct, and my story indicated that this led Vietnam to hold MIAs as hostages...
...Where was he when we left Korea...
...if you fight for us, we will fight for you...
...Abraham Ellis New York, New York I received my copy of TAS today and read the article "The MIA Cover-Up" with sincere interest...
...That would have been investigative journalism in the Brock tradition...
...Ann Donily did not see a different movie, she just didn't see the same one to the end if she thinks that Schindler can be explained by the desire to make money or to follow "hedonistic pursuits...
...perhaps he and Dr...
...in Vietnam we often bulldozed the night's bag anonymously into ditches...
...For sixteen years and one day, I listened to meaningless rhetoric from those involved in the cover-up...
...Yates criticized NASCAR for turning a rural pastime into a successful business, and criticized Golenbock for missing this "greed" aspect of the story...
...Timothy R. Wyatt Raleigh, North Carolina NORQUIST (continued from page 53) "Put down that gun, and we'll talk...
...No one believes that there is a living ex-military American left...
...Sorry, John, but if we have answers then you will have to write about Korea and it is a lot colder...
...Conservatives must create a moral vision based on personal responsibility but avoiding the nightmares of modern individualism, or else, the Clintons will push us off a cliff while we whimper, "But, Bill, we're the good guys...
...These were, Armey observes, "real people who saw their personal liberty at risk...
...Do not go in hostile (they did win the war) but as friends, and you can find out almost anything you want...
...This has the advantage that he can approach it from both the Southern and Northern side and cut down on travel expenses...
...Unless I saw a different movie, I found this explained fairly simply early on in the film...
...Ad Classification...
...The Vietnamese always returned a few "for the holidays...
...Not one cent of this promised aid has ever been paid to this day...
...What is indeed an incontrovertible fact is that in 1973, Kissinger and Nixon agreed in writing a week after the signing of the Paris Peace Accord ending the Vietnam war, that the United States would contribute to postwar reconstruction in North Vietnam in the range of $3.25 billion of aid over five years...
...Bowman had ever taken the time to study the history of the other major players in the Third Reich, he might not be so mystified by what motivates the crazy Goeth...
...Please get a grip on yourselves and get back to your essential role as literate spokesmen for common sense in the real world...
...The page of Webster's New World whence I fetch those dates also yielded "dieffenbachia," any of various plants of a genus named after Ernst Dieffenbach, German naturalist (1811-55...
...The reason, as Golenbock made clear in interviews, is that he wanted to repay the citizens of North Carolina by writing something positive about the state's sports, after his earlier book (Personal Fouls) about the NC State basketball team caused such disruption...
...The sad and bitter truth is that we, America, did not play the game with North Vietnam...
...I must also note that there have been innumerable stories about "sleaze merchants preying on next-of-kin," and I saw no reason to repeat them...
...Warriner only that the Serex family was disappointed by the meeting with officials in Washington...
...In April, three Americans—former Congressman Billy Hendon...
...Until the day I received a call from the Air Force saying that his remains were being returned, I had no reason on earth to believe he was (continued on page 82) 10 The American Spectator June 1994 CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 10) dead...
...I believe there are men still being held, but worse yet is the belief that those in control will never do anything about it...
...We left the mountains of New Guinea littered with crashed planes from both sides...
...Stay tuned: Farris is now examining the Clinton health care plan for its impact on home-schoolers, in particular Hillary Clinton, Donna Shalala, and Joycelyn Elders's insistence on school-based clinics dispensing health care independent of parental notification or approval...
...It was Christmas...
...My last point concerns the beginning comment that "some may be alive today...
...Corry with a lifetime of income...
...I wonder if our government will ever let it happen again...
...Jim Dawson Clearlake Oaks, California As much as I welcome "The MIA Cover-Up" and any other media contribution toward illuminating POW/MIA, I wonder about a few points...
...Dennis J. Doolin Kashiwa, Japan There can be no doubt that the American government abandoned her POW/MIAs in Vietnam...
...about sleaze merchants preying on next-ofkin claiming to have traveled by rail to the then Pathet Lao headquarters at Sam Neua (there are no trains in Laos to this day...
...Becker's view is his own...
...Send ad copy with payment and this form to: The American Spectator Classified Department, P.O...
...Open up the country and let in tourists, businessmen, MIA families, and veterans...
...John Corry's recent article three times and am hard pressed to come up with any significant new or noncontroversial points...
...Semantics aside, once KIA/BNR, technically a person may be considered no longer MIA...
...And any motive that Spielberg would have suggested would have been glib psychobabble or kindergarten psychology or a plausible lie, titillating many and offering a fresh stick for others to beat the Hollywood dog with...
...Dick Armey notes that it is always easier to get people to fight to protect a liberty than to acquire new freedoms...
...We lacked the political will to force the issue...
...Harley Hall, former Wing Commander of the Blue Angels 1970-71...
...I suspect the other side did the same or worse...
...Dr...
...They had tried to inspect the site where, according to recently declassified intelligence reports, MIAs once were held in an underground prison...
...And finally, while it would be nice to conclude cheerfully, I cannot...
...Jim Becker Honolulu, Hawaii "The MIA Cover-Up" by John Cony was one of the best articles on the issue to date...
...This is the type of random shot that reopens the wounds of MIA families...
...Golenbock needn't have bothered...
...Thank you for saying it like it is...
...Although the Navy first notified Mrs...
...Jane Trammell Peachtree City, Georgia Page 34 of the February issue was of particular interest for its reference to Air Force Captain Blair C. Wrye, an MIA...
...Even then, it wasn't the efforts of my government that brought him home...
...Your ad(s) will begin with the first available issue...
...This self-imposed penalty was in apparent atonement for the heinous crimes we committed to this poor devastated country halfway around the world, and for killing over two million of its men, women, and children...
...Warinner F-4 Pilot, Ubon, 1967-68 Henderson, Nevada Re: "The MIA Cover-Up": I have never read a more feckless, untruthful article in a serious magazine and I am shocked that you gave it credibility by publishing it...
...One of the reasons that I joined the Marine Corps, and served three tours of duty in Vietnam, was that the Marine Corps had a tradition of not leaving their wounded or dead on the battlefield...
...Welsh should talk...
...Personal Fouls was filled with criticism of Wolfpack coach Jim Valvano for his supposed "greed" in capitalizing on his success...
...His criticism was out of line each time...
...in Korea we ground the frozen bodies of enemy soldiers into the roadbeds rather than try to blast graves out of the frozen ground...
...This type of article should provide Mr...
...In such a case, it seems to me, the movie viewer uses his own moral imagination to speculate on motives, if he wishes, although, for me, it is impossible to know what moves a man brought up to believe that Jews were deicidal, back-stabbing, anti-man agents of the devil, to risk his life to save as many of those Jews as he could...
...I can tell Mr...
...Their pressure was unrelenting...
...Commercialism of the sport is a natural reaction to market forces...
...Meanwhile, I thank those who wrote in support of my findings...
...Cony could have asked Roger Shields about "Red Beard," sighted in the Plaine des Jarres in Laos...
...They were defending a freedom they already enjoy...
...By no stretch of the imagination did Vietnam pose a threat to America justifying intervention...
...If true, it surely would have resulted in decreased attendance rates...
...One thing I know about Blair Wrye was that he was, and perhaps is, the quintessential survivor...
...Canada never had a PM so named...
...The rhetoric about "healing" the wounds of these families, the veterans, and the country is not empty...
...Brock, he would know it to be nonsense...
...The cover-up continues...
...And here a lucky cross-reference sends us to "dumb cane," also known as "mother-in-law plant" but more formally as the West Indian Dieffenbachia sequine, distinguished for yellow-blotched leaves that cause temporary speechlessness when chewed...
...Spielberg's Achievement I must take exception to James Bowman's negative and unnecessarily glib review of Schindler's List ("Lost and Profound," TAS, February 1994...
...Capt...
...Also, he asks about my age and wants to know where I was when we left Korea...
...I take this to mean he agrees that we left men behind in Vietnam, even though he did not find any when he went on tour there...
...This is nonsense and, if Mr...
...Perhaps if the "discerning" Mr...
...Four pages later, we find John Cony's "The MIA Cover-Up" and his charge that "we have broken faith with men who fought for their country, and we are being blighted by an ever-widening moral stain...
...It is enough for the historical Schindler but not for this fictionalized version of him, who must not only save Jews but be convincing at the same time...
...The North Vietnamese held back hundreds of French POWs to barter with long after the French Indochina war was over...
...4) Within ten days, Farris had sent out five faxes to his network, and his message went out repeatedly to all Christian radio stations, so that homeschoolers knew, hour by hour, the exact state of play...
...Yates must have appreciated that...
...Neither did we have the courage to force North Vietnam, by military and political means, to return our POWs as the peace accords demanded...
...Type-A Typo What was my surprise to read, on p. 47 of the March TAS, JFK saying "I didn't think Diefenbach was a son of a bitch...
...We lacked the simple dignity to honor our end of a contract with these men...
...Spielberg explicitly called the movie "a documentary"—i.e., a quasi-documentary—since he obviously couldn't document what had happened in the past and since he was basing his film on a "true fiction" (as it were) by a novelist...
...Would that it were so simple...
...There is nothing I can do for those left behind in Nam...
...While Stone has spent his career denigrating America at the expense of our servicemen, Spielberg has given us a huge amount of fluffy, funny fantasy—some of which I have enjoyed immensely...
...I hope The American Spectator will continue to cover this issue...
...Head shots resolved the problem of those not repatriated and paid for...
...Golenbock's unfounded and irresponsible allegations directly caused thedestruction of NCSU basketball (which, of course, is the only sport that Carolinians revere as much as they do stock car racing...
...We all share the sorrow of the families of MIAs and those killed in Vietnam and this article adds to this sorrow...
...Please...
...I thought he was a prick," glossed by Victor Gold as "To friend Ben Bradlee, on Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbach...
...That same week, the administration praised Vietnam for its "cooperation" in resolving the MIA issue...
...Walters and all those who have had similar experiences, including Mary Lou Hall, whom Jane Trammell mentions in her thoughtful letter...
...H ome schoolers had the home court advantage...
...When he has exhausted these, he can write about the MIAs during our Civil War...
...I lost a husband to Vietnam...
...Call The American Spectator's Subscription Department at 1-800-524-3469...
...Eureka...
...War is a dirty business, and when an enemy is shot up or down the tendency is not to trek laboriously to the scene and collect all salient information for the possible edification of next-of-kin at some far future date...
...Beth Stewart, daughter of an MIA pilot, and Lamont Gaston, president of a veterans' organization—were expelled from Vietnam...
...Endeavoring to understand the character of commandant Amon Goeth is an exercise in stupidity...
...I found his analysis to be shallow, totally incomprehensible, and rather pseudo-intellectual...
...I was in the army, long before, I suspect, he attended medical school...
...The last time I saw Blair Wrye was in January 1956, and at that time he was a B-25 flight instructor at Reese Air Force Base in Texas...
...Ellis, however, wants to prosecute Americans as war criminals...
...In the same paragraph he is again puzzled by Schindler's "motiveless benignity...
...Corry had emulated the professional practices of Mr...
...Doolin will consult their testimony before the Senate committee on MIAs, he will find that they also think we left men behind in Southeast Asia...
...There were a lot...
...Unfortunately, most Americans have no idea to what extent the government has gone to close the outstanding cases...
...Few Vietnamese learned Russian but they are all learning English...
...He has not been, and will not be, forgiven...
...The French paid money for these men on an individual basis, quietly and slowly...
...Bernard Adelman Winthrop, Massachusetts James Bowman replies: I agree with Bernard Adelman that it would have been wrong of Spielberg glibly and speculatively to attribute motives to Schindler, but the point of my review was to answer his subsequent question—isn't it enough that he saved Jews?—in the negative...
...Let me respond now to the letter writers, with attention to my critics first...
...But neither he nor thousands of other Nazi murderers suffered from any clinical condition known to psychiatry...
...And one other thing...
...In my experience, in as much as it was humanly possible, Marines held true to our tradition...
...A.S...
...Doolin that I did not criticize Shields, but instead cited him as something of a friendly witness...
...If Dr...
...The American Spectator June 1994 91...
...In November 1992, four of us went back to Vietnam and traveled from Hanoi to Can Tho...
...If we were not the most powerful nation in the world, Nixon, Johnson, Kissinger et al...
...I sympathize deeply with Mrs...
...You are becoming as obsessively loony as Oliver Stone on the subject of Bill Clinton, who is really not the Great Satan...
...Our POWs were murdered as a result...
...Pre-payment required for all ads...
...Corry's age...
...As to the first, NASCAR should be applauded and emulated for the tremendous success and growth it has experienced in the face of government attacks on the tobacco industry that supports it...
...Thomas Simcox Cresskill, New Jersey Crying Wolfpack I had trouble believing that it was, indeed, The American Spectator in which I read the Brock Yates review of Peter Golenbock's book on stock-car racing (American Zoom, TAS, February 1994...
...That is the true moral horror of the Holocaust...
...The man wanted to make money...
...Jack D. Welsh, M D. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma I'm getting worried about you guys...
...I was well acquainted with Blair Wrye, while stationed at both Ellington Air Force Base and later at James Connally Air Force Base in Texas in the early 1950s...
...It was Golenbock's repentant side that ignored the issues of NASCAR moneymaking, apparently much to Yates' displeasure...
...This is an insult to two of the finest men ever to have held that post, and cannot go unchallenged...
...Hall was shot down on January 27, 1973, and, according to government records seen by his wife Mary Lou Hall, placed in what we now know was a second-tier prison system for special prisoners where he was interrogated by the Russians...
...I think he has things backward...
...Could I lose my son, our son, to a future "police action...
...it seemed to me they were unable or unwilling to consider anything that might undermine their position...
...CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 83) 1994) should ring in the ears of conservatives like a fireball in the night rather than any cause for celebration...
...Some NCSU students still wear "Don't Be a Peter" T-shirts...
...I regret having done so, although I must point out to Dr...
...about pilots known to have died in crashes (eyewitness reporting) but nevertheless listed as missing because their beepers went off...
...We left quite a few...
...We did not pay up...
...Doolin points out my error in misidentifying Roger Shields...
...The "obvious conclusions and incontrovertible facts" are solely his own, completely devoid of evidence admissible in a court of law...
...for Name (Please PrInt): State: Zip...
...And now you devote a cover and five or six pages to a puerile farrago on the MIA mirage.'Are you seriously suggesting that the Vietnamese are secreting dozens of by now fifty-something Americans in some bamboo gulag, only letting them out occasionally to scrawl their names in the sand for passing helicopters to spot...
...Never heard of Frank...
...Hall of his missing status, within a month his status was changed to confirmed captured...
...Ann L Donily Greeley, Colorado James Bowman's remarks on Spielberg's Schindler's List strike me as sound, except for his faulting Spielberg for not supplying a motive for Schindler's risking his life to save Jews...
...It is based on presumptions piled on hearsay and its author draws what he says are "obvious conclusions from incontrovertible facts...
...We lacked the moral courage to defend our own men...
...It is also a cop-out to account for Amon Goeth by calling him insane...
...Rather than criticize Golenbock for writing a shallow book, Yates should have explained why the book is as it is...
...However, were the remains returned October 14, 1982, confirmed as those of USN E5 Wm Braxton Jackson...
...By the way, what is Mr...
...of misinformation, fake photographs, and on and on...
...Did he do any on-site investigation in Vietnam...
...I heard everything from "If your husband survived the crash, he was probably eaten by a tiger in the jungle" to "Even if your husband is alive, it wouldn't be politically feasible to do anything about it...
...Please cancel my subscription...
...Other restrictions may apply...
...However, during my five and a half years as deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia and Pacific Affairs (1969-74), I worked on almost a daily basis for several years with Roger Shields...
...The reference is surely to John George Diefenbaker (1855-1979), who was PM from 1957-63...
...Meanwhile, I resist the notion that I insulted Melvin Laird and 82 The American Spectator June 1994 James Schlesinger...
...As for Henry Serex, what came of the recent satellite imagery meeting involving his survivors, Senator Smith, et al...
...It is implicit in Corry's conclusion that this "moral stain" covers such former Secretaries of Defense as Melvin Laird and James Schlesinger...
...Welsh says I failed to raise any "noncontroversial" points...
...City...
...Abraham Ellis notes that the United States failed to provide North Vietnam with financial aid...
...Isn't it enough that Spielberg showed that Schindler intended to save Jews, acted on his intentions, and succeeded...
...I share...
...He can write next about MIAs in Korea and World War II...
...Corry cites a deposition by "Frank Shields, the former head of the Pentagon's POW/MIA Task Force...
...Schindler was honored by Yad Vashem for his actions, not his motives...
...According to information I have, Wallace Hynds's I-Date was August 2, 1967, which is a long way from May 28, 1985...
...Dawson's admiration for the Marines...
...Finally, to compare Steven Spielberg to Oliver Stone is utterly absurd...
...Why and how it happened remains a mystery that Spielberg should have explored but didn't—perhaps because his brain has been reduced to mush by all that "fluffy, funny fantasy...
...This was especially true of those who had rejected that possibility...
...Any closed society, especially a Communist one, knows well that it can resolve POW/MIAs with a bullet in the back of the head...
...I do not mean that as an insult, only as an observation...
...How about some of those POWs who were moved up to the camp near the China border shortly prior to Homecoming and did not move back south...
...Thus, according to the government's own records, the Vietnamese have a body either living or dead that they should have to account for...
...Hugh Kenner Athens, Georgia Impaired Vision The late Maurice Cranston's review of John Rawls's new book (TAS, January (continued on page 91) The American Spectator June 1994 83 CLASSIFIEDS r CLASSIFIED ORDER FORM Rates: $3.50 per word (10 word minimum) [+$14 extra per ad for TAS box number if desired.], or $170 per column inch for classified display ads (maximum 3...
...Those leaves belong in a presidential pouch at all times...
...about reports of "Americans" farming in the Parrot's Beak and the Fish Hook...
...Conservative activist Paul Weyrich, now a media maven with his own National Empowerment Television channel, reminds us that the Christian Right was created not in 1962 in response to the elimination of prayer in public school, not in 1973 with the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, but in 1978 with President Carter's assaults on Christian radio and threats against the tax status of Christian private schools...
...Insanity has no driving motive other than the fire of its own malignancy...
...Stock car racing is a dynamic sport that evolves and adapts to meet spectator demand (as opposed to a static, never-changing sport such as baseball...
...0 1 Address...
...Corry should have talked to him—of the countless hours spent trying to verify sightings, rumors, anomalies...
...There may have been an American coyer-up about MIAs in Vietnam, but that was at a time that few worried about the cost of getting out...
...Charleen Walters Wife of Captain Donovan Walters MIA December 21, 1972 Remains returned December 1988 Weeping Water, Nebraska I have read Mr...
...Spielberg, I think, has done the same, however inartistically...
...insertions...
...Cranston has made it clear the liberals have a moral vision, in all its simplicity, where the state as the moral agent distributes fairness to its citizens...
...And historically, that is what they do...
...That, arguably, does dispose of three Jacksons...
...His motivation to begin with was certainly not altruistic in intent and I never felt the danger ever touched him unless it interfered with his hedonistic pursuits...
...The determining factor was whether or not they had already made up their minds about the possibility of prisoners having been left behind in Southeast Asia...
...Box 549, Arlington, Virginia 22216-0549 9406 Questions about your subscription...
...5) Home-schoolers were sophisticated enough to know what procedural votes were important, and didn't allow Congress to fool voters with meaningless votes that are canceled out by procedural motions...
...Enclosed is...
...The editor-in-chief praises David Brock for his "bold and accurate journalism," his "careful analysis" and "high intellectual plane" in writing "Living With the Clintons" (TAS, January 1994...
...Special Discount Offer: Pre-pay for 3 ads and get a 4th ad free...
...Instead of demanding his remains, the Department of Defense is trying to get his wife to accept three teeth as his remains...
...They understood that "if we don't act in the next few days we'll be out of the home-schooling business...
...I am glad to hear from Neil McCauley about Blair Wrye...
...would have been treated as war criminals...
...Yates's contention that commercialism came at the expense of racing's "characters" is false...
...A good example is the handling of the case of Capt...
...They were ordinary people who did monstrous things...
...It didn't make any difference whether they resided in the White House, Congress, State Department, DIA, CIA, or wore a uniform like my husband's...
...Neal McCauley Vacaville, California John Corry replies: While gathering material on MIAs, I was struck by how the people I interviewed could look at what seemed to be pertinent information—an intelligence report, a POW debriefing, even a newspaper story—and interpret it in such different ways...
...Rather, it is time to heal the wounds and go on with our lives...
...One of the group was a former South Vietnamese paratrooper who talked with many former NVA and VC and asked very hard questions...
Vol. 27 • June 1994 • No. 6
