# Lies from the government \[Vietnam POWs\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 15, 2024, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721 "2024-08-15T02:18:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Llama\_Llogophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2024, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/21 "2024-08-15T17:37:26Z")
> [@spifflog](#): > > I had the honor to conduct a four hour interview with VADM(ret.) James Stockdale in 2000. I asked him this very question and I was surprised but his answer. He felt there were no POWs left in Vietnam. Anywhere we could read or view it? Stockdale was a really interesting man - and I mean that completely sincerely. It’s a shame he is perhaps most often remembered for the 1992 election. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2024, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/22 "2024-08-15T17:37:46Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Haney states that the US government knew there were American POWs still MIA in Vietnam, and furthermore, that the North Vietnamese knew the Americans were aware of the existence of such POWs. Be more careful with terminology. A known POW cannot be MIA. An MIA might be an unknown POW, or a deserter, or a refugee, or even someone somehow surviving on their own in the wild. Or long dead. But the one thing an MIA cannot be is a known POW. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2024, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/23 "2024-08-15T18:48:18Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > Could the U.S. government have pushed harder to resolve MIA issues? Probably. Would any more live POWs have been found? Hard to say for certain, but probably not. As much as people want it to be true, there is just no evidence to support the live POW theories. There might have been a defector or two (in fact there was one), and I am sure we could have done a better job of getting bodies back, but I concur - no live POWs. > [@Velocity](#): > > The North Vietnamese were most likely hoping to extract concessions from America the way they did from France years earlier. They never asked for any. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2024, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/24 "2024-08-15T19:55:47Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > It occurs to me that you could have plausibly seen a similar POW issue raised after the Korean War since North Korea controlled half of the Korean peninsula and it was plausible to believe that North Korea could have had American POWs MIA in North Korea and refuse to release them (America has no jurisdiction or ability to search inside NK), but there wasn’t any Korean MIA POW conspiracy theory either. Most, but not all POWs were actually held by the Chinese. On the one hand against secretly holding POWs after the war there’s the fact that [21 American and 1 Briton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_and_British_defectors_in_the_Korean_War) refused repatriation after the war. On the other hand, [Cho Chang-ho](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cho_Chang-ho_(military_officer)) escaped captivity in 1994 after being held by North Korea for 43 years, though North Korea keeping South Korean POWs after the war has more internal logic to it. For what it’s worth, my opinion on the post-Vietnam POW/MIA issue is that the level of distrust in the American government to be honest about _anything_ related to the war was a big factor in it. Regardless of one’s political leanings, the level of bad faith demonstrated by the US government during the entire course of American involvement in Vietnam was off the charts, from the Pentagon not believing the war was winnable virtually from the outset to public statements of the “light at the end of the tunnel” and the communists being ‘unable to conduct offensives’ right before Tet in 1968, to the Nixon administration having to strongarm the South Vietnamese government into agreeing to the Paris Peace Accords ‘ending’ the war in exchange for a worthless promise to return if the accords broke down. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2024, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/25 "2024-08-15T20:10:29Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > However, the US government did not want to trade concessions in return for the POWs (because America was so sick and tired of the Vietnam War by that point) so the POWs were abandoned. This is a long running conspiracy theory popularized by movies like Rambo (whichever one was about rescuing POWs). It is not fact. > **[The Enduring Cult of the Vietnam ‘Missing in Action’](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/enduring-cult-vietnam-missing-action/tnamp/)** > > How a propaganda goof by Richard Nixon’s administration midwifed an urban legend that scarred American foreign policy and domestic politics for a generation. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2024, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/26 "2024-08-15T20:24:01Z")
Agree w @Dissonance. Both Watergate and darn near everything about the US involvement in Viet Nam shoved a huge wedge between ordinary mainstream citizen thinking and the federal government. Americans prior to that time were not necessarily in love with their government, but they did not view them as inherently incompetent or inherently untrustworthy. All that was changed by Watergate & Viet Nam. That loss of trust in government’s essential honesty and essential goodness (net of some rough edges) really opened the floodgates to CT-style thinking and a cottage industry duly sprang up to supply CTs in magazines and paperbacks. Some of which were about then-current events as they randomly occurred, and more of which were about events in then recent past, say 10-30 years ago then. e.g. The JFK assassination CTs had a lot more takers in the late 1970s than they did in 1965 a few months after the Warren Commission released their report. Why? Viet Nam and Watergate. Nothing to do with new evidence or JFK or the shooting itself. Same data, different _Zeitgeist_. CT belief has exploded since the WWW enabled CT-sellers to readily access a credulous audience. And enabled credulous individuals to find one another to reinforce their wackiness. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2024, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/27 "2024-08-16T16:49:59Z")
Another issue IIRC was which PoW’s survived capture and were killed (or died) afterwards, the implication being the evil commies just got off on killing American airmen instead of keeping them for leverage. I recall a discussion with someone from the US military(?) who was working with Vietnam after the war to help find and identify the remains of MIA’s. He mentioned one clue was if an airman died in a crash (instead of ejecting) then the sides of their shoes were blown out from the pressure from body fluids after a sudden stop at 600mph. But basically, the Vietnamese and Americans did indeed work to try to recover remains of MIA’s after the war. presumably if irate soldiers had killed a captured airman or they were tortured to death, and the evidence would have been obvious, the Vietnamese would have a motivation to hide the body. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2024, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/28 "2024-08-16T17:06:30Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > What I do find odd is seeing some U.S. governmental buildings flying the Vietnam POW MIA flag. Maybe those buildings are part of the [Department of Defense.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_POW/MIA_Accounting_Agency) ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2024, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/29 "2024-08-16T17:26:14Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > That’s the flip side of the “Corrupt America” conspiracy. Vietnam was keeping POWs because they were _just that evil_. They enjoyed torturing them so much they just couldn’t give it up. Yep, that was hammered home in “Rambo: First Blood Part II” - Vietnam was keeping the POWs in shitty jungle camps just so they could keep torturing them - any useful information they had would have been far, far out of date by the 1980s, but they kept torturing them anyway. > [@Velocity](#): > > What I do find odd is seeing some U.S. governmental buildings flying the Vietnam POW MIA flag. One would think those would be banned on government property for obvious saving-face reasons. It’s quite literally a [Federal Law](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/36/902) that the POW/MIA flag be flown daily over many federal facilities, including the White House, the Capitol, the Pentagon, major military bases, VA facilities, National Cemeteries, and Post Offices. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2024, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/30 "2024-08-16T17:37:12Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > presumably if irate soldiers had killed a captured airman or they were tortured to death, and the evidence would have been obvious, the Vietnamese would have a motivation to hide the body. Local villagers may have had even more motivation than any local soldiers. And just dumped the American’s remains wherever they dump the debris from dead farm critters. Of course nobody in the village ever told the local authorities a thing. Why bother? ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2024, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/31 "2024-08-17T18:11:04Z")
A vet friend of mine replied to the title question, “I think they are too damn mean for any POWs to be left alive”. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2024, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/32 "2024-08-18T02:57:29Z")
I wasn’t there during the war, but I’ve spent some time teaching in Vietnam and everyone is very gracious about having won. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2024, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/33 "2024-08-18T03:07:51Z")
For the Vietnamese, America was just one war. Right before America, it was fighting off France. Then right after America, it was fighting off China. To us, it was **the** war, but to them it was just one in a **series**. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2024, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/34 "2024-08-19T16:23:48Z")
And before France, it was Japan? I recall that part of the resistance against the Japanese occupation was led by a fellow called Ho Chi Minh. In fact, the Americns were very grateful for his help, and in return he expected them to let Vietnam become an independent nation. Instead, the Americans handed it back to France. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2024, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/35 "2024-08-19T16:35:18Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > I recall that part of the resistance against the Japanese occupation was led by a fellow called Ho Chi Minh. In fact, the Americns were very grateful for his help, and in return he expected them to let Vietnam become an independent nation. Instead, the Americans handed it back to France. I watched the Ken Burns series on the Vietnam War just before I visited Vietnam briefly in 2019. I didn’t know much about the history prior to the US involvement, and my biggest take-away is how Ho Chi Min tried to get help from anyone, at all, to make Vietnam independent. He ended up going Communist largely because the Soviets were the only ones who would give him the time of day. If almost anyone else had given him a chance, the history of that period would have been very different. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2024, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/36 "2024-08-19T16:57:27Z")
Ho was a Communist long before the Japanese occupation, and he would’ve remained a committed one no matter who was helping him. If handled correctly, he could have been a thorn in Mao’s side as much as Tito was in Stalin’s. But in McCarthy-era USA, red was only seen in one shade. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2024, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/37 "2024-08-19T22:23:14Z")
Yeah, Ho Chi Mihn was a communist. He was also a nationalist. He went communist all the way back in his education in France in 1919, he was a founding member of the French Communist Party and the founder of the Vietnamese Communist Party in 1930. He didn’t just turn to communism because they were the only ones willing to give aid to him post-WWII. As @Slithy_Tove notes, the problem was communism was seen at the time as Communism with a capital C, a monolith being directed by Moscow with no shades to it. Handled differently, Ho was probably a nationalist first and a communist second. But communism wasn’t seen that way, and supporting France in the emerging Cold War was (understandably) seen as being far more important than the nationalistic desires of a colony in Southeast Asia that most American policy makers couldn’t even find on a map. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2024, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/38 "2024-08-20T19:29:46Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > For what it’s worth, my opinion on the post-Vietnam POW/MIA issue is that the level of distrust in the American government to be honest about _anything_ related to the war was a big factor in it. Its also just the human desire for hope. If someone has a love one who is listed as MIA, they hold out hope that somehow they are still alive being held somewhere and so unable to contact you. Even after the war is over and everyone else comes back some still hold onto that the hope that they are somewhere out there and can be rescued even if its totally irrational. To give up on that hope is to give up on them. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2024, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/39 "2024-08-21T19:54:03Z")
That’s why I pointed out that after most of the pre-WWI wars, the US or allies controlled the battlefields and/or enjoyed much greater trust from the populace. So the family of someone who was MIA after WWI, WWII or Korea could reasonably expect that the government had done what it could to find their loved one, and that if they were MIA, they were legitimately MIA, and probably dead. After Vietnam, there was a lot less trust in the government which was coupled with the fact that the North Vietnamese held the “battlefield” (the vast, vast majority of MIA after WWI have been aircrews), and there was no way of verifying by finding the crash site, etc. So there was fertile ground for the more conspiracy theory-minded to believe that some proportion of the MIA weren’t people whose planes crashed in the mountains and nobody saw where, or who bailed out and died somewhere on the ground, but rather were captured and held by the NVA. I mean, it _could_ have happened I guess, but logically, there was nothing in it for the North Vietnamese, and Occam’s Razor points toward it being unrecovered plane crashes that nobody knew where they were, not long-term prisoners in hidden jungle prisons deep in the Vietnamese jungle somewhere. ---
**Author:** ![spifflog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@spifflog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spifflog)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2024, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721/40 "2024-08-21T20:03:18Z")
I’ve never transcribed it or posted it I’m afraid. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lies-from-the-government-vietnam-pows/1005721.md?page=3)