It is an issue that refuses to die, one that will not go away. The callous abandonment of our fighting men in Southeast Asia by venal politicians and criminal conspirators in Washington was, and is, a betrayal of America that our nation, sooner or later, must face up to and rectify. Harsh words, yes, but true nonetheless.

The betrayal did not end in 1973 when the State Department issued its infamous lie that consigned thousands of America’s finest, both living and dead, to oblivion: “There are no more prisoners in Southeast Asia. They are all dead.”

The betrayal did not even begin then. Historical researchers in the past few years have been unearthing enormous amounts of shocking evidence which show that the policy elites who have run the executive branch of the federal government throughout most of this century have knowingly abandoned tens of thousands of American servicemen in enemy hands, from World War I through World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Successive administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have participated in the betrayal. So have many in Congress and in the media.

Lies Upon Lies

As we have read many times in recent weeks, at the conclusion of the Paris Peace Agreement some 2,400 American service personnel were designated as POW/MIA or KIA/BNR (Killed In Action/Body Never Recovered). Since that time the Department of Defense has “resolved” some 280 cases, leaving 2,273 cases still unaccounted for. At least that is what the Administration continues to say, and what the media dutifully report. But even this “fact,” which even much of the loyal opposition seem to accept without question, appears to be yet another lie built on a lie.

The U.S. Senate report, An Examination of U.S. Policy Toward POW/MIAs, issued on May 23rd of this year, indicates that the real number of POW/MIAs left behind in Indochina may have been closer to 5,000, or double the official total. If this is true, then the North Vietnamese returned only 12 to 15 percent of our POWs when they sent back 591 men in Operation Homecoming. This means that they kept 85 percent or more of our men whom they held captive.

Whether the actual number is 2,273 or 5,000 is important, of course, but even more important is the official recognition that whatever the total, each single “number” is an individual, an American citizen, deserving of our country’s utmost effort to render a truthful accounting. They are real men with real families. And in hundreds of cases, contrary to the official “no evidence” policy statement, there is solid evidence that our men were (and in many cases still are) live captives.

They include America’s best and brightest, like:

• James W. Grace, shot down over Laos on June 14, 1969. He and his partner parachuted safely to the ground. A rescue helicopter recovered his partner, but Grace was lowered back down because the strap on the helicopter’s hoist was loose. What happened next has been shrouded in mystery, but Grace was left behind. Years later, family and friends identified him as a live POW in a communist Vietnamese propaganda film.

• Melvin A. Holland, left behind at Site 85, a secret mountaintop radar base in Laos overrun by the communists on March 11, 1968.

• James Ray, captured in Vietnam in March 1968. Ray was alive in a POW camp with eight others who were released.

• David Hrdlika, captured by the Pathet Lao in 1965. A photograph of him as a POW was published in Pravda, and Laotian radio played recordings of his prison “confessions.”

• Jacob Mercer, lost over Laos in 1972. His wife identified him in a 1985 photo brought out of Laos by a young Laotian pictured with Mercer in the photo. The Laotian claimed to be the nephew of the commandant at the POW camp where Mercer was being held.

• Donald Sparks, believed by his parents to have been killed in action, until a letter he had written to them from a POW camp was found on a dead Vietcong.

• Eugene DeBruin. A photograph of him in a prison camp was published in May 1964. His brother, Gerry DeBruin, traveled to Laos and talked with top Communist Party officials, who confirmed that he was a POW.

• Charles Shelton, whose plane was shot down over Laos in 1965. He was known to have parachuted to the ground safely, and CIA reports tracked him in captivity.

Over the last 18 years, in spite of over 1,400 first-hand, live sighting reports and more than 10,000 second- and third-hand reports, the government has steadily downgraded the status of hundreds of cases. Today, Colonel Charles Shelton is our only official POW in Southeast Asia. Seemingly deaf to the protests and cries of the families, the Departments of State and Defense continue their relentless push to “resolve” the cases by a “presumptive finding of death” so that normalization of relations with communist Vietnam will not be hindered.

Exposing the Deceit

After two decades of massive betrayal, deception and cover-up that have sentenced good men to rot in jungles and their families to suffer and grieve needlessly, the conspiracy is unraveling. Events and developments beyond the control of Washington’s Insiders are wreaking havoc on their schemes. Here are five examples of “wild cards” that are helping to rend asunder the tissue of lies and deceit:

1) Independent forensic experts have proven, and continue to prove further, that the U.S. Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii (CIL-HI) has repeatedly, blatantly and deliberately lied about a large number of POW/MIA “remains” it has identified. In one shocking case after another, CIL-HI has tried to pass off empty coffins — or coffins containing Vietnamese skeletons, bits of animal bones, rocks, even aircraft fragments — as the remains of our servicemen.

2) The publication last September of the explosive book, Kiss The Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POWs in Vietnam, by Monica Jensen-Stevenson and William Stevenson, was a shot of gasoline on the long-smoldering POW fire. The Stevensons presented to a large reading audience compelling evidence that the POW/MIA abandonment and cover-up involved not only political expediency, ineptitude and bureaucratic inertia, but criminal conspiracy on a massive scale at the highest levels of our government. Their best-selling hardback has just come out in paperback, in time to help further ignite the issue.

3) In February of this year, Colonel Millard “Mike” Peck, the chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Special Office for POW/MIAs, resigned in disgust, claiming that his office was being used as a “toxic waste dump” to bury the whole “mess” out of sight and mind. He has continued to speak out, and other officials with inside knowledge are also coming forward.

4) The publication of two bombshell Senate reports by Senators Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Charles Grassley (R-IA) in the past few months, based on first-time access to DIA classified documents, blast gaping holes in the Establishment’s POW/MIA position.

5) Several recent photographs have positively and reliably identified missing American soldiers.

Popular Support

These and other events came together at the right time to create a popular groundswell that caused the liberal opposition to Senator Bob Smith’s (R-NH) Senate Resolution 82 to melt like a popsicle on the Potomac in August. Opponents of Smith’s legislation to create a Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs flip-flopped and joined the stampede, eventually approving the resolution by unanimous vote.

Former Congressman Bill Hendon, who has made 24 trips to Southeast Asia and has long been a point man on this issue, described the creation of the committee as “the nuclear detonation in this whole POW issue.” Hendon told THE NEW AMERICAN: “We have come from a long, long guerilla campaign, to conventional warfare, and now to nuclear warfare. Contrary to what the Administration is telling us, the story isn’t over in Southeast Asia. The real story is over in the Pentagon and the State Department …. They’re still covering up and have been covering up since before I went to Congress.”

It is the hope of Hendon and many others that the new Select Committee will expose the cover-up and bring forth the information that will help bring our men home. The committee got off to a much better start than anyone had hoped with the appointment of Republican Senators Bob Smith, Jesse Helms, Charles Grassley, and Hank Brown, all of whom have excellent records on this issue.

On the Democrat side, Majority Leader George Mitchell (ME) appointed John Kerry (MA), Thomas Daschle (SD), Dennis DeConcini (AZ), Bob Kerrey (NE), Harry Reid (NV), and Charles Robb (VA) — not exactly a sterling lineup, especially since John Kerry was named chairman. Kerry, a pro-Hanoi, radical spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, boasted when elected to the Senate in 1984 that he was going there to fight Senator Jeremiah Denton, one of America’s most highly decorated POWs. This together with Kerry’s membership in Skull and Bones at Yale should make him acceptable to the Bonesman occupying the White House.

There is one slot left to be filled — that of vice-chairman, and Minority Leader Bob Dole has been holding out on that appointment, reportedly in an effort to convince John McCain to take the post. McCain, a former POW himself, is a Bush Republican nonetheless, and is considered by POW activists to be very dangerous to the cause. He has used his former POW status in the past effectively to carry water for the Establishment and to water down POW legislation.

How We Got Where We Are

The primary purpose of the new committee should be to make sure no effort is spared to find and recover our live POWs and to identify and recover the remains of the deceased. Investigation of the classified files on our POW/MIAs will certainly reveal much. Which is why a genuine accounting has been so steadfastly opposed by so many interests.

In the addendum to its October 1990 report on our POWs, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Minority Staff observed: “To date, this inquiry has not established responsibility for the monumental decisions that have occurred affecting U.S. citizens held by adversary governments during the Second Indochina War.” Moreover, it noted: “It can be assumed United States officials of the various departments knew a large number of U.S. citizens were being held captive; the negotiators of the Paris Peace Accords had to have this knowledge also; and the various administrations and their appointees must have known this information as well. Whatever the reasons are for keeping the secret, it has not resulted in the return of anyone, with the exception of Robert Garwood who found his own way out.”

And when Marine Private Garwood finally found his own way out, after 14 years as a prisoner of war, the real traitors who had left him and the others behind court-martialed him as an enemy collaborator so that he would not be believed when he told about POWs still over in Asia.

The crying need for a thorough investigation of our POW/MIA effort is nowhere more apparent than when looking at the constantly recirculating top policy people. Ken Quinn, chairman of the U.S. government’s POW/MIA Interagency Group, is a case in point. In a May 28, 1991 letter to Ted Sampley, chairman of Homecoming II, Senator Bob Smith wrote:

In 1977 and 1978, Ken Quinn was part of the Carter Administration team that went to Paris and privately proposed to Vietnam normalization of relations with no preconditions. No mention was ever made of our American prisoners of war during these talks. This fact has been known by many of us here in the United States ….

Moreover, although Presidents Reagan and Bush have now made this issue one of highest national priority, people like Ken Quinn are still handling POW/MIA matters and still privately telling Vietnam not to worry about the POW/MIA issue as far as normalization of relations is concerned. So long as Vietnam and the United States give the outward public appearance that both sides are “working” on the issue (i.e. setting up an office in Hanoi), that’s enough to put the issue aside.

This is disgraceful, and Mr. Quinn sent these signals to Vietnam as recently as this past February when he discreetly flew down to Montego Bay, Jamaica to meet with the same Vietnamese officials he dealt with in 1977 and 1978. While in Jamaica, Ken Quinn once again proposed normalization of relations with no preconditions. He never even brought up the need for a full accounting of American POWs and MIAs …. Our own intelligence sources have confirmed that this was the impression Viet-nam received from Ken Quinn in Jamaica.

Vietnamese Cooperation?

This same Ken Quinn got in a bit of a spot when called to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs this past April 25th. Asked by Senator Alan Cranston (D-CA) if the Vietnamese were letting U.S. investigators “look where we wish to look,” Quinn responded: “I think that we recognize and General Vessey expressed appreciation for the cooperation the Vietnamese Government has extended to us to this date.”

Cooperation? Not one single live POW in nearly 20 years, and only a few phony “remains” dribbling out from time to time is cooperation? Returning the remains of Lieutenant Ronald Dodge in 1981 without comment, after he had been shown alive being paraded through Vietnamese villages in communist propaganda films, is cooperation? Cooperation in building Mr. Bush’s new world order, yes. But cooperation in truthfully resolving the POW/MIA situation? It’s diabolical to even suggest such blatant deceit.

But wait. It gets even worse — or better, depending on your point of view. Quinn was forced to squirm and stammer when he was asked a couple of questions that exposed the big lie. From the transcript:

Cranston: Are we able to state we want to go to this prison, this camp, or this mine, or whatever and go at that moment to that place?

Quinn: Uuh… I would have, well … err… I’ve not heard the issue brought up about going to prisons … uuh … and … looking there, so … err, if I could I’d have to take that and ask. I just don’t know the answer on that, but that’s not come up about going to particular prison sites since I’ve been on the job, but… (interrupted).

Cranston: What about work camps?

Quinn: (continues) … but in terms of going to villages or hamlets, what we have… uuh… insisted on, or worked very diligently to achieve is to have planning when we would go out there and so that people would be available to us to interview them, that we’d not go out in a haphazard way, and then come back with essentially having not gotten any results from being out there. So we’re working very hard in joint planning ….

In case you couldn’t tell, the tongue-tied Mr. Quinn was trying to find a way to get around admitting that he and his underlings have not even asked the Vietnamese about live POWs. Said Senator Smith: “I believe Ken Quinn’s actions are an insult to both the families of American servicemen still missing from Vietnam and to the veterans who fought in this war. It appears that he has his own agenda — trade and business with the Communists in Hanoi, and not doing everything possible to bring home our POWs and MIAs.”

Frustrated Official

It was this kind of insulting policy that led Colonel Mike Peck to resign as head of DIA’s POW office. “It’s like,” said Peck on a recent 20/20 interview, “we were sending a message to the Vietnamese that, ‘Hey, guys, all we really want are bones. If you can account for these people by giving us boxes of bones or if you can make a good enough case, we’ll check them off as dead.’ And it appeared to me to be a way of writing off — basically writing off our MIAs and proving they were dead, rather than going in and trying to prove that they’re alive and doing something about it.”

On NBC’s Today show on August 5th, Peck charged: “…it seemed like there was an effort primarily to just stretch this entire thing out and make an illusion of progress until eventually it died a natural death.” In other words, until all POW’s were finally dead and/or the families had accepted DOD’s presumptive finding of death designation.

NBC’s Faith Daniels asked Peck, “Wouldn’t Hanoi have something to gain by handing over POW’s if it’s still holding them?” Peck answered: “No, I don’t think they would do that. I think what their rationale is is to hold these people as bargaining chips, because that’s the only collateral they have. That’s the one thing that the Hanoi regime has that they can always put out on a bargaining table that will ensure that the United States returns …. When they no longer feel that they need them — when they get such things as aid, trade, recognition, World Bank loans, a seat in the UN — they have no more need for hostages; they have no more need to bring the United States back to the bargaining table. They can get rid of these guys.

Ms. Daniels: “Kill them?”

Colonel Peck: “Yeah, I think it would be very embarrassing for the regime to all of a sudden, once they get everything they want, release a number of POW’s back to the United States. I don’t think the American people would stand for it.”

Supplying the Enemy

What followed then in the Today interview should have created a national uproar:

Ms. Daniels: You were ordered to hand over all your documentation and procedures of investigation to Hanoi.

Colonel Peck: That’s true.

Ms. Daniels: Why would they do that? Why would they tell you to give that all to our former enemy?.

Colonel Peck: The rationale that was given at the time — I thought it was very spurious logic — because the rationale at the time was if we can gain a measure of trust and if we can prove to the Vietnamese that we’re honest, open, forthcoming, and that we’re really nice guys, they will reciprocate. And…

Ms. Daniels: Instead we gave them the ability to sort of answer all the questions without really getting to the bottom of anything.

Colonel Peck: That’s exactly what I thought ….

In his interview with Tom Jarriel for the August 2nd 20/20 program, Colonel Peck was even more explicit regarding the information that had been given to the Vietnamese communists holding our POW’s.

“My office was directed to basically lay out everything that we did for the Vietnamese,” Peck explained. “In other words, we were going to give them chapter and verse on methodology — how we did business, how we dealt with live sightings… how we dealt with the various reports that came in and basically hold nothing back.”

The colonel continued: “That was information that you couldn’t get your hands on, the U.S. Congress can’t get their hands on and the families can’t get their hands on, not in that detail, and the American people can’t get their hands on. And yet, we handed it over to the opposition and said, ‘Now you be good with that now.'”

For years families of missing servicemen and members of Congress have been arguing that keeping the POW/MIA files locked up under the cloak of “national security” was a cruel farce and an obvious cover-up. The communists obviously know about the live Americans and the remains that they are holding. Our government has considerable evidence regarding live POWs and a whole warehouse of “remains” held by the communists in Southeast Asia. Now our government has turned over to the communists all the information in our files. So they know what our intelligence sources are and where and how they operate.

According to national security and intelligence personnel we have interviewed, this kind of transfer of classified information to a foreign power, especially one with whom we were formerly at war and do not now have diplomatic relations, is virtually unheard of. Title 18 of the U.S. Code, chapter 37, section 798, makes it a serious federal crime for anyone who “knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person … any classified information.”

Executive Orders

Executive Order 12356, signed by President Ronald Reagan on April 2, 1982, specifies that classified information — that means even the lowest level of classification, “confidential” — may not be disseminated outside the originating agency “except as provided by directives issued by the President through the National Security Council.” Which means that the transfer of our POW/MIA files to the Vietnamese, which Colonel Peck was ordered to do and did carry out, could not have happened without a specific directive from President Bush himself. According to the Information Security Oversight Office, which has jurisdiction in these matters, it would be next to impossible for a transfer of this kind to take place without the President’s signature.

President Bush obviously views normalizing relations with Vietnam as an important plank in his new world order. And he is willing to help the Vietnamese “resolve” the POW/MIA stumbling block by providing the communists with the very information that he, like previous administrations, considers “too sensitive” for the families or even members of Congress with top security clearances to see.

One of the most disgraceful aspects of this whole issue has been the ongoing cynical exploitation and manipulation of the families of the POWs and MIAs by one administration after another. This recurring paradigm was set in motion by the Nixon White House, and is perhaps best expressed in the April 29, 1971 memo below from Brigadier General James Hughes to H. R. Haldeman.

The POW families were a critical part of the Nixon reelection campaign, but the general was concerned that the families were beginning to get upset with the Administration’s bogus efforts to free their loved ones:

You are aware of my increasing concern about purely PR therapy being effective for much longer. Nevertheless, after a meeting with Al Haig and Chuck Colson, I feel that increased efforts in the “cosmetic” area are warranted and indeed essential to keep the families with us during the critical period of the next six to eight weeks ….

Hughes then outlined plans to pacify the families by aging meetings with Henry Kissinger, Al Haig, and others. “According to Al Haig,” said Hughes, “the next eight weeks are critical and the efforts of the Ad Hoc Coordinating Committee on POW/MIA matters will be devoted to keeping the families on the reservation in order to buy this time.”

This same exploitation of the families continued through subsequent administrations, as shown, for example, in a memo from Carter National Security Council staffer Michel Oksenberg to David Aaron on March 12, 1979. Referring to Robert Garwood, Oksenberg remarked that “the defector is now on his way home.” They had branded him a defector before even debriefing him. Oksenberg continued: “The point is that his return will generate new stories about the MIA issue and particularly about the possibility that additional Americans remain in Hanoi …. [I]t would be politically wise for the President to indicate his own continued concern with the MIAs.”

“This is a ‘right wing’ issue,” said Oksenberg, “and I think it gains the President politically to indicate his continued interest in the issue …. “

Establishment Takeover

It was around the time of the Oksenberg memo that the government Insiders were arranging a takeover of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia. The League was brought within the government’s official Interagency Group (IAG) and Ann Mills Griffiths, the League’s executive director, became part of the Establishment.

In his letter of resignation from DIA Colonel Peck mentioned Ann Griffiths among the “Machiavellian group of players” and “puppet masters” who sabotaged his efforts. “Although assiduously ‘churning’ the account to give a tawdry illusion of progress,” said Peck, “she is adamantly opposed to any initiative to actually get to the heart of the problem, and, more importantly, interferes in or actively sabotages POW-MIA analyses or investigations.”

Senators Helms, Smith and Grassley have each commented on the fanatical zeal with which Griffiths has sought to sabotage their investigative efforts. Smith commented on the floor of the Senate on March 4th that “there is one person from outside the Government who participates in these interagency groups which I, as a U.S. Senator, and you and anyone else in the Senate cannot. This person is Ann Griffiths, director of the National League of Families, who purports to represent all POW families from the Vietnam conflict. In fact, Mr. President, she does not represent all families.”

Furthermore, said the senator, “this nonelected, nongovernmental person has been given access to highly sensitive, top secret documents and is allowed to shape Government policy as a member of this group. Moreover, she has been actively and secretly lobbying the Defense Department to prevent members of the U.S. Senate from reviewing over 1,400 eyewitness accounts of POWs, the same documents that she has access to. I submit that something is terribly wrong when a nonelected, nongovernment person actively lobbies to forbid elected representatives of the American people from seeing these very documents.”

According to Diane Van Rensalaar, a member of the nine-member board of the National League of Families, “Ann Griffiths and Stephen Solarz are two of the biggest road blocks to families finding out about their missing servicemen. They are like two lions guarding the gate, making sure that nothing gets out and no one gets in. Mrs. Van Rensalaar, whose Navy pilot husband Larry was shot down in 1968, told THE NEW AMERICAN that she believes it “has become increasingly clear to the families that Griffiths is not at all interested in truthfully resolving this issue … and she has very little credibility as a result.”

McDaniel’s View

Because of Griffiths’ actions, the National League has come under increasing fire from many POW and veterans groups. The Special Forces Association, at the January meeting of its National Board of Directors this year, unanimously voted to withdraw its endorsement of the League. Local VFW and American Legion Posts are following suit.

In the past two months, the League has joined the White House, the liberal Establishment media, and members of Congress in attacking POW activist groups as “unscrupulous,” “exploiters,” and “racketeers.” It has largely backfired because the integrity and sacrifice of most of the POW activists is well known.

One of the targets of this campaign is retired Navy Captain Eugene “Red” McDaniel. But McDaniel has stood up to his attackers. Testifying before Mr. Solarz’s Subcommittee on Pacific and Asian Affairs of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on August 2, 1991, McDaniel went after Solarz himself:

Mr. Chairman, over the years I have watched this subcommittee attempt to discredit many good people who have raised questions about that [POW/MIA] policy. I have watched this subcommittee impugn the integrity of H. Ross Perot, a man who has devoted 30 years of his life to the effort to bring POWs home. I have watched this subcommittee impugn the integrity of former Congressman Billy Hendon and John LeBoutillier and former POW Bobby Garwood, who told us about seeing other POWs. Most recently, I have watched this subcommittee attempt to impugn the integrity of Colonel Millard Peck ….

We will, no doubt, be seeing more attempts to impugn not only Peck but many other individuals and groups involved in this fight. Those responsible for the ongoing betrayal of our POW/MIAs realize the truth of Peck’s statement recently on ABC’s 20/20. When asked by Tom Jarriel what would be the impact if the American people saw the data that the colonel had seen on live sightings, Peck replied: “I think if the American people were to see that information, there’d be a grassroots uprising.”

Pleading for a Father

On November 8, 1990, Barbara Robertson received a call from Gladys Fleckenstein. Mrs. Fleckenstein had heard from her Navy casualty officer about a possible live sighting involving her son, Larry Stevens, and Barbara’s husband John, both missing in action in Southeast Asia since the 1960s. Mrs. Robertson flew immediately to Washington, where she was joined by her daughter, Shelby Robertson Quast. The next morning, they went together to the Pentagon. “We were two very determined women, and we were not going to be denied,” Mrs. Robertson told THE NEW AMERICAN.

Famous Photo

After much persistence, they were shown a blurry fax of the now-famous photo of the trio of U.S. POWs. Actually the fax was of a strip of the photo which showed only the man purported to be Colonel Robertson. Not satisfied with the very poor quality, the Robertsons wanted to see the original. They were told the government did not have the photo and that they should come back the following day.

The next morning, Saturday, November 10th, they returned to the Defense Intelligence Agency. They wanted to contact the source of the photo. DIA analyst Warren Gray said that he had just talked with the source and the source was not interested in talking to anyone about the matter.

“I insisted I wanted to hear the source say it himself. and if I heard it I would be satisfied,” Shelby Quast told us. “Mr. Gray said that wouldn’t be possible. Col. Peck ordered him to make the telephone call [to the source] for us. Gray just turned around and walked off.” Mrs. Quast was not only shocked at this blatant display of insubordination, but was frightened at the prospect of losing the one chance to obtain Information that might lead to the father she had not seen in 24 years.

Desperate Plea

“I was desperate; I felt I had my dad’s life in my hands,” said Mrs. Quast. “I’m not one of those who easily cry, but I cried and begged and pleaded — ‘He’s my father, He’s my father’ — and they couldn’t shut me up.” Colonel Peck went back and ordered Gray again to make the call. In a matter of just a few minutes, Peck told Shelby Quast to pick up a telephone extension, On the line from California was a Cambodian man, the source who she had been told was not interested in talking to her. “He was estatic, his voice breaking with emotion. ‘I’m so happy …. I’ve been trying for six months to find some family member,’ he told me.” Not only had she been lied to about the source, but the family had been kept in the dark about the photo for half a year, and probably never would have been informed of its existence if they had not persisted. The DIA, which claims to be working diligently to resolve each POW/MIA case as a matter of the “highest national priority,” had not even sent anyone to meet and interview the source and obtain a copy of the photo.

“When Mike Peck walked me out of the Pentagon that day he knew what he had done,” say Mrs. Quast. “He had probably thrown out his career …. He had allowed decency to override Pentagon policy. He’s a hero in every sense of the word.”

That same day she flew to California, where she met the Cambodian “source” and received the photograph. didn’t ask for money, he didn’t ask for anything. He just wanted to help.”