to discern the existence of war crimes committed against them. Each POW was also assigned their own escort to act as a buffer between "past trauma and future shock". However, access to the former prisoners was screened carefully and most interviews and statements given by the men were remarkably similar, leading many journalists to believe that the American government and military had coached them beforehand. Izvestia, a Soviet newspaper, accused The Pentagon of brainwashing the men involved in order to use them as propaganda, while some Americans claimed the POWs were collaborating with the communists or had not done enough to resist pressure to divulge information under torture. The former prisoners were slowly reintroduced, issued their back pay and attempted to catch up on social and cultural events that were now history. Many of the returned POWs struggled to become reintegrated with their families and the new American culture as they had been held in captivity for between a year to almost ten years. The men had missed events including the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the race riots of 1968, the political demonstrations and anti-war protests, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon and the release of The Godfather. The returning of POWs was often a mere footnote following most other wars in U.S. history, yet those returned in Operation Homecoming provided the country with an event of drama and celebration. Operation Homecoming initially ignited a torrent of patriotism that had not been seen at any point during the Vietnam War. Overall, the POWs were warmly received as if to atone for the collective American guilt for having ignored and protested the majority of soldiers who had served in the conflict and already returned home. The joy brought by the repatriation of the 591 Americans did not last for long due to other major news stories and events. By May 1973, the Watergate scandal dominated the front page of most newspapers causing the American public's interest to wane in any story related to the war in Vietnam. Correspondingly, Richard Nixon and his administration began to focus on salvaging his presidency. Many worried that Homecoming hid the fact that people were still fighting and dying on the battlefields of Vietnam and caused the public to forget about the over 50,000 American lives the war had already cost. Veterans of the war had similar