Alexander Cockburn raises the question of John McCain's collaboration with his captors as a POW. His piece is a come-on to an article by Douglas Valentine which is available by subscription only. Save your money--it is available here for free.

So, McCain leveraged some details to get some medical attention, not anything too contemptible. Who’s to judge someone in the position?

But McCain was held for five and half years. The first two weeks’ behavior might have been pragmatism, but McCain soon became North Vietnam’s go-to collaborator.

McCain provided his voice in radio broadcasts for the North Vietnamese. General Vo Nguyen Giap, a nationalist celebrity of the time, interviewed him. McCain’s uneasy compliance was a moment of affirmation for Vietnamese. His Vietnamese handlers thereafter used him regularly as prop at meetings with foreign delegations, including the Cubans. McCain became what he is today, a psywar stooge.

Vietnamese radio propagandists made good use of McCain. He was on the air so often that, on June 4, 1969, a U.S. wire service headlined a story entitled "PW Songbird Is Pilot Son of Admiral".

The story reported that McCain collaborated in psywar offensives, aimed at American servicemen. "The broadcast was beamed to American servicemen in South Vietnam as a part of a propaganda series attempting to counter charges by U.S. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird that American prisoners are being mistreated in North Vietnam."

I have not seen the wire service story mentioned but I'm sure the Democratic National Committee has a copy. It will be interesting to see to what extent attacks on John McCain's record as a POW reach the mainstream press.

This Pensito Review article contains a video discussion by some POW activists along with a transcript. Here is an excerpt of a part of the discussion between Congressman Bob Dornan and former Senate Chief Investigator, U.S. Senate Minority Staff, Tracy Usry.

USRY: Information shows that he made over 32 tapes of propaganda for the Vietnamese government. Certainly, you do what you need to do to stay alive. Nobody would fault anybody for that. But there comes a point in time when enough is enough.

REP: DORNAN: They made those transcriptions, and in the transcriptions, I heard a POW who heard them comin’ into his cell and said, “Oh, my God, is that Admiral McCain’s son? Is that the admiral’s son? Is that Johnny — telling us that our principal targets are schools, orphanages, hospitals, temples, churches?” That was Jane Fonda’s line. Where are those transcriptions? Believe me — they’re in the archives of the museum, the bragging military phony museum in Hanoi. McCain could not have wanted those [to] turn up in the middle of a presidential race. He knows that. I know that, and a few other people know that, and that’s why he went against Bob Dole’s legislation.

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