February 17, 2008

Among groups who oppose John McCain, the most serious charges come from a small but fervent cadre of Vietnam POW/MIA activists who accuse him of being a collaborator during his time in the Vietnamese POW camps.

They call McCain “Songbird,” and say he received special treatment. Some in the POW community even believe he was brainwashed like Raymond Shaw, the character played by Laurence Harvey in “The Manchurian candidate,” who was used as a tool by the communists to destroy America from within.

Activists accused McCain of stonewalling the release of POW records because they contained evidence he had collaborated with the North Vietnamese.

The issue boiled over in 1992 after POW families and activists felt they had been mistreated by McCain during hearings before the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. In the video above (posted at Vietnam Veterans against McCain) which was apparently shot soon after the hearings, POW advocates and experts, as well as Republican politicians, including then-Rep. Bob Dornan of California, assert that McCain was stonewalling the release of POW documents because his own records included transcripts of interviews he gave to communist and other media outlets in which he said the U.S. military had deliberately bombed civilian targets in North Vietnam.

Members of the committee included Vietnam veterans among the senators — Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass), Vice Chairman Bob Smith (R-NH), Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), McCain and others. (The only Vietnam vet who opted out was Sen. Al Gore.) The committee had two objectives. One was to investigate persistent rumors that Vietnam was still holding U.S. servicemen as prisoners. The second goal was to create a plan for normalizing relations between the United States and Vietnam.

McCain and other committee members traveled to Vietnam on fact-finding missions. Witnesses who appeared at committee hearings included Nixon era defense secretaries Melvin Laird and James Schlesinger and Nixon Sec. of State Henry Kissinger, among many others. In the end, no evidence was found that Americans were being held in Vietnam, and relations between the two countries were normalized.

Rough transcript of the video follows:

[…]

Day: February 17, 2008

Vietnam POW Activists Called McCain ‘Songbird’ and ‘Manchurian Candidate’

Poetic Justice

Verbatim

“The man is afraid of the voice of the people and that the people understand and know what he’s doing. He’s trying to stifle the ability of journalists to let the people of America know what’s really going on with their government.”

— “Kamala Harris called President Donald Trump’s ban of CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House ‘absolutely abhorrent,’” The Wrap reports.

“Not one of them is trained in technical skills. Not one research PhD, as opposed to China, where half the cabinet is science and technology PhDs. We’re led by grifters and fools.”

— Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs, on X, on President Trump’s 35-person cabinet.

“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far… The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”

— Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), breaking with President Trump in a direct-to-camera video.

Numerati

1,000

10%

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71%

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$9.5 billion

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470

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