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Skip to comments.McCain and the POW Cover-up (How McCain left U.S. POWs and MIAs to rot in hell)
Posted on 03/05/2010 1:05:46 PM PST by rabscuttle385
The "war hero" candidate buried information about POWs left behind in Vietnam.
Research support provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute. This is an expanded version, with primary documents attached, of a story that appears in the October 6, 2008 issue of The Nation. (Watch Schanberg's appearance on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman.)
John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn't return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero who people would logically imagine as a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.
Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain's role in it, even as the Republican Party has made McCain's military service the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn't talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.
The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a special forces unit that was aborted twice by Washingtonand even sworn testimony by two Defense secretaries that "men were left behind." This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large numberthe documents indicate probably hundredsof the US prisoners held by Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973 and Hanoi released 591 men, among them Navy combat pilot John S. McCain.
The Pentagon had been withholding significant information from POW families for years. What's more, the Pentagon's POW/MIA operation had been publicly shamed by internal whistleblowers and POW families for holding back documents as part of a policy of "debunking" POW intelligence even when the information was obviously credible.
The pressure from the families and Vietnam veterans finally forced the creation, in late 1991, of a Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. The chairman was John Kerry. McCain, as a former POW, was its most pivotal member. In the end, the committee became part of the debunking machine.
One of the sharpest critics of the Pentagon's performance was an insider, Air Force Lieut. Gen. Eugene Tighe, who headed the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) during the 1970s. He openly challenged the Pentagon's position that no live prisoners existed, saying that the evidence proved otherwise. McCain was a bitter opponent of Tighe, who was eventually pushed into retirement.
Included in the evidence that McCain and his government allies suppressed or sought to discredit is a transcript of a senior North Vietnamese general's briefing of the Hanoi politburo, discovered in Soviet archives by an American scholar in 1993. The briefing took place only four months before the 1973 peace accords. The general, Tran Van Quang, told the politburo members that Hanoi was holding 1,205 American prisoners but would keep many of them at war's end as leverage to ensure getting war reparations from Washington.
Throughout the Paris negotiations, the North Vietnamese tied the prisoner issue tightly to the issue of reparations. They were adamant in refusing to deal with them separately. Finally, in a February 2, 1973, formal letter to Hanoi's premier, Pham Van Dong, Nixon pledged $3.25 billion in "postwar reconstruction" aid "without any political conditions." But he also attached to the letter a codicil that said the aid would be implemented by each party "in accordance with its own constitutional provisions." That meant Congress would have to approve the appropriation, and Nixon and Kissinger knew well that Congress was in no mood to do so. The North Vietnamese, whether or not they immediately understood the double-talk in the letter, remained skeptical about the reparations promise being honored - and it never was. Hanoi thus appears to have held back prisonersjust as it had done when the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and withdrew their forces from Vietnam. In that case, France paid ransoms for prisoners and brought them home.
In a private briefing in 1992, high-level CIA officials told me that as the years passed and the ransom never came, it became more and more difficult for either government to admit that it knew from the start about the unacknowledged prisoners. Those prisoners had not only become useless as bargaining chips but also posed a risk to Hanoi's desire to be accepted into the international community. The CIA officials said their intelligence indicated strongly that the remaining menthose who had not died from illness or hard labor or torturewere eventually executed.
My own research, detailed below, has convinced me that it is not likely that more than a fewif anyare alive in captivity today. (That CIA briefing at the agency's Langley, Virginia, headquarters was conducted "off the record," but because the evidence from my own reporting since then has brought me to the same conclusion, I felt there was no longer any point in not writing about the meeting.)
For many reasons, including the absence of a political constituency for the missing men other than their families and some veterans' groups, very few Americans are aware of the POW story and of McCain's role in keeping it out of public view and denying the existence of abandoned POWs. That is because McCain has hardly been alone in his campaign to hide the scandal.
The Arizona Senator, now the Republican candidate for President, has actually been following the lead of every White House since Richard Nixon's and thus of every CIA director, Pentagon chief and national security advisor, not to mention Dick Cheney, who was George H. W. Bush's defense secretary. Their biggest accomplice has been an indolent press, particularly in Washington.
[PDF: The Truth Bill]
An early and critical McCain secrecy move involved 1990 legislation that started in the House of Representatives. A brief and simple document, it was called "the Truth Bill" and would have compelled complete transparency about prisoners and missing men. Its core sentence reads: "[The] head of each department or agency which holds or receives any records and information, including live-sighting reports, which have been correlated or possibly correlated to United States personnel listed as prisoner of war or missing in action from World War II, the Korean conflict and the Vietnam conflict, shall make available to the public all such records held or received by that department or agency."
[PDF: The McCain Bill]
[PDF: DOD cites the McCain Bill in denying a FOIA request]
Bitterly opposed by the Pentagon (and thus McCain), the bill went nowhere. Reintroduced the following year, it again disappeared. But a few months later, a new measure, known as "the McCain Bill," suddenly appeared. By creating a bureaucratic maze from which only a fraction of the documents could emergeonly records that revealed no POW secretsit turned the Truth Bill on its head. (See one example, at left, when the Pentagon cited McCain's bill in rejecting a FOIA request.) The McCain bill became law in 1991 and remains so today. So crushing to transparency are its provisions that it actually spells out for the Pentagon and other agencies several rationales, scenarios and justifications for not releasing any information at alleven about prisoners discovered alive in captivity. Later that year, the Senate Select Committee was created, where Kerry and McCain ultimately worked together to bury evidence.
McCain was also instrumental in amending the Missing Service Personnel Act, which had been strengthened in 1995 by POW advocates to include criminal penalties, saying: "Any government official who knowingly and willfully withholds from the file of a missing person any information relating to the disappearance or whereabouts and status of a missing person shall be fined as provided in Title 18 or imprisoned not more than one year or both." A year later, in a closed House-Senate conference on an unrelated military bill, McCain, at the behest of the Pentagon, attached a crippling amendment to the act, stripping out its only enforcement teeth, the criminal penalties, and reducing the obligations of commanders in the field to speedily search for missing men and to report the incidents to the Pentagon.
About the relaxation of POW/MIA obligations on commanders in the field, a public McCain memo said: "This transfers the bureaucracy involved out of the [battle] field to Washington." He wrote that the original legislation, if left intact, "would accomplish nothing but create new jobs for lawyers and turn military commanders into clerks."
McCain argued that keeping the criminal penalties would have made it impossible for the Pentagon to find staffers willing to work on POW/MIA matters. That's an odd argument to make. Were staffers only "willing to work" if they were allowed to conceal POW records? By eviscerating the law, McCain gave his stamp of approval to the government policy of debunking the existence of live POWs.
McCain has insisted again and again that all the evidencedocuments, witnesses, satellite photos, two Pentagon chiefs' sworn testimony, aborted rescue missions, ransom offers apparently scornedhas been woven together by unscrupulous deceivers to create an insidious and unpatriotic myth. He calls it the "bizarre rantings of the MIA hobbyists." He has regularly vilified those who keep trying to pry out classified documents as "hoaxers," charlatans," "conspiracy theorists" and "dime-store Rambos."
Some of McCain's fellow captives at Hoa Lo prison in Hanoi didn't share his views about prisoners left behind. Before he died of leukemia in 1999, retired Col. Ted Guy, a highly admired POW and one of the most dogged resisters in the camps, wrote an angry open letter to the senator in an MIA newslettera response to McCain's stream of insults hurled at MIA activists. Guy wrote: "John, does this [the insults] include Senator Bob Smith [a New Hampshire Republican and activist on POW issues] and other concerned elected officials? Does this include the families of the missing where there is overwhelming evidence that their loved ones were 'last known alive'? Does this include some of your fellow POWs?"
[PDF: DOD denies access to McCain's 1973 debriefing]
It's not clear whether the taped confession McCain gave to his captors to avoid further torture has played a role in his post-war behavior in the Senate. That confession was played endlessly over the prison loudspeaker system at Hoa Loto try to break down other prisonersand was broadcast over Hanoi's state radio. Reportedly, he confessed to being a war criminal who had bombed civilian targets. The Pentagon has a copy of the confession but will not release it. Also, no outsider I know of has ever seen a non-redacted copy of the debriefing of McCain when he returned from captivity, which is classified but could be made public by McCain. (See the Pentagon's rejection of my attempt to obtain records of this debriefing, at left.)
All humans have breaking points. Many men undergoing torture give confessions, often telling huge lies so their fakery will be understood by their comrades and their country. Few will fault them. But it was McCain who apparently felt he had disgraced himself and his military family. His father, John S. McCain II, was a highly regarded rear admiral then serving as commander of all US forces in the Pacific. His grandfather was also a rear admiral.
In his bestselling 1999 autobiography, Faith of My Fathers, McCain says he felt bad throughout his captivity because he knew he was being treated more leniently than his fellow POWs, owing to his high-ranking father and thus his propaganda value. Other prisoners at Hoa Lo say his captors considered him a prize catch and called him the "Crown Prince," something McCain acknowledges in the book.
Also in this memoir, McCain expresses guilt at having broken under torture and given the confession. "I felt faithless and couldn't control my despair," he writes, revealing that he made two "feeble" attempts at suicide. (In later years, he said he tried to hang himself with his shirt and guards intervened.) Tellingly, he says he lived in "dread" that his father would find out about the confession. "I still wince," he writes, "when I recall wondering if my father had heard of my disgrace."
He says that when he returned home, he told his father about the confession, but "never discussed it at length"and the Admiral, who died in 1981, didn't indicate he had heard anything about it before. But he had. In the 1999 memoir, the senator writes: "I only recently learned that the tape...had been broadcast outside the prison and had come to the attention of my father."
Is McCain haunted by these memories? Does he suppress POW information because its surfacing would rekindle his feelings of shame? On this subject, all I have are questions.
Many stories have been written about McCain's explosive temper, so volcanic that colleagues are loathe to speak openly about it. One veteran congressman who has observed him over the years asked for confidentiality and made this brief comment: "This is a man not at peace with himself."
He was certainly far from calm on the Senate POW committee. He browbeat expert witnesses who came with information about unreturned POWs. Family members who have personally faced McCain and pressed him to end the secrecy also have been treated to his legendary temper. He has screamed at them, insulted them, brought women to tears. Mostly his responses to them have been versions of: How dare you question my patriotism? In 1996, he roughly pushed aside a group of POW family members who had waited outside a hearing room to appeal to him, including a mother in a wheelchair.
But even without answers to what may be hidden in the recesses of McCain's mind, one thing about the POW story is clear: If American prisoners were dishonored by being written off and left to die, that's something the American public ought to know about.
[PDF: New York Times, Feb. 2, 1973]
1. In Paris, where the Vietnam peace treaty was negotiated, the United States asked Hanoi for the list of American prisoners to be returned, fearing that Hanoi would hold some prisoners back. The North Vietnamese refused, saying they would produce the list only after the treaty was signed. Nixon agreed with Kissinger that they had no leverage left, and Kissinger signed the accord on January 27, 1973, without the prisoner list. When Hanoi produced its list of 591 prisoners the next day, US intelligence agencies expressed shock at the low number. Their number was hundreds higher. The New York Times published a long, page-one story on February 2, 1973, about the discrepancy, especially raising questions about the number of prisoners held in Laos, only nine of whom were being returned. The headline read, in part: "Laos POW List Shows 9 from US Document Disappointing to Washington as 311 Were Believed Missing." And the story, by John Finney, said that other Washington officials "believe the number of prisoners [in Laos] is probably substantially higher." The paper never followed up with any serious investigative reportingnor did any other mainstream news organization.
2. Two defense secretaries who served during the Vietnam War testified to the Senate POW committee in September 1992 that prisoners were not returned. James Schlesinger and Melvin Laird, both speaking at a public session and under oath, said they based their conclusions on strong intelligence dataletters, eyewitness reports, even direct radio contacts. Under questioning, Schlesinger chose his words carefully, understanding clearly the volatility of the issue: "I think that as of now that I can come to no other conclusion...some were left behind." This ran counter to what President Nixon told the public in a nationally televised speech on March 29, 1973, when the repatriation of the 591 was in motion: "Tonight," Nixon said, "the day we have all worked and prayed for has finally come. For the first time in twelve years, no American military forces are in Vietnam. All our American POWs are on their way home." Documents unearthed since then show that aides had already briefed Nixon about the contrary evidence.
Schlesinger was asked by the Senate committee for his explanation of why President Nixon would have made such a statement when he knew Hanoi was still holding prisoners. He replied: "One must assume that we had concluded that the bargaining position of the United States...was quite weak. We were anxious to get our troops out and we were not going to roil the waters..." This testimony struck me as a bombshell. The New York Times appropriately reported it on page one but again there was no sustained follow-up by the Times or any other major paper or national news outlet.
3. Over the years, the DIA received more than 1,600 first-hand sightings of live American prisoners and nearly 14,000 second-hand reports. Many witnesses interrogated by CIA or Pentagon intelligence agents were deemed "credible" in the agents' reports. Some of the witnesses were given lie-detector tests and passed. Sources provided me with copies of these witness reports, which are impressive in their detail. A lot of the sightings described a secondary tier of prison camps many miles from Hanoi. Yet the DIA, after reviewing all these reports, concluded that they "do not constitute evidence" that men were alive.
4. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, listening stations picked up messages in which Laotian military personnel spoke about moving American prisoners from one labor camp to another. These listening posts were manned by Thai communications officers trained by the National Security Agency (NSA), which monitors signals worldwide. The NSA teams had moved out after the fall of Saigon in 1975 and passed the job to the Thai allies. But when the Thais turned these messages over to Washington, the intelligence community ruled that since the intercepts were made by a "third party"namely Thailandthey could not be regarded as authentic. That's some Catch-22: The US trained a third party to take over its role in monitoring signals about POWs, but because that third party did the monitoring, the messages weren't valid.
Here, from CIA files, is an example that clearly exposes the farce. On December 27, 1980, a Thai military signal team picked up a message saying that prisoners were being moved out of Attopeu (in southern Laos) by aircraft "at 1230 hours." Three days later a message was sent from the CIA station in Bangkok to the CIA director's office in Langley. It read, in part: "The prisoners...are now in the valley in permanent location (a prison camp at Nhommarath in Central Laos). They were transferred from Attopeu to work in various places...POWs were formerly kept in caves and are very thin, dark and starving." Apparently the prisoners were real. But the transmission was declared "invalid" by Washington because the information came from a "third party" and thus could not be deemed credible.
5. A series of what appeared to be distress signals from Vietnam and Laos were captured by the government's satellite system in the late 1980s and early '90s. (Before that period, no search for such signals had been put in place.) Not a single one of these markings was ever deemed credible. To the layman's eye, the satellite photos, some of which I've seen, show markings on the ground that are identical to the signals that American pilots had been specifically trained to use in their survival coursessuch as certain letters, like X or K, drawn in a special way. Other markings were the secret four-digit authenticator numbers given to individual pilots. But time and again, the Pentagon, backed by the CIA, insisted that humans had not made these markings. What were they, then? "Shadows and vegetation," the government said, insisting that the markings were merely normal topographical contours like saw-grass or rice-paddy divider walls. It was the automatic responseshadows and vegetation. On one occasion, a Pentagon photo expert refused to go along. It was a missing man's name gouged into a field, he said, not trampled grass or paddy berms. His bosses responded by bringing in an outside contractor who found instead, yes, shadows and vegetation. This refrain led Bob Taylor, a highly regarded investigator on the Senate committee staff who had examined the photographic evidence, to comment to me: "If grass can spell out people's names and a secret digit codes, then I have a newfound respect for grass."
6. On November 11, 1992, Dolores Alfond, the sister of missing airman Capt. Victor Apodaca and chair of the National Alliance of Families, an organization of relatives of POW/MIAs, testified at one of the Senate committee's public hearings. She asked for information about data the government had gathered from electronic devices used in a classified program known as PAVE SPIKE.
The devices were motion sensors, dropped by air, designed to pick up enemy troop movements. Shaped on one end like a spike with an electronic pod and antenna on top, they were designed to stick in the ground as they fell. Air Force planes would drop them along the Ho Chi Minh trail and other supply routes. The devices, though primarily sensors, also had rescue capabilities. Someone on the grounda downed airman or a prisoner on a labor gang could manually enter data into the sensor. All data were regularly collected electronically by US planes flying overhead. Alfond stated, without any challenge or contradiction by the committee, that in 1974, a year after the supposedly complete return of prisoners, the gathered data showed that a person or people had manually entered into the sensorsas US pilots had been trained to do"no less than 20 authenticator numbers that corresponded exactly to the classified authenticator numbers of 20 US POWs who were lost in Laos." Alfond added, according to the transcript: "This PAVE SPIKE intelligence is seamless, but the committee has not discussed it or released what it knows about PAVE SPIKE."
McCain attended that committee hearing specifically to confront Alfond because of her criticism of the panel's work. He bellowed and berated her for quite a while. His face turning anger-pink, he accused her of "denigrating" his "patriotism." The bullying had its effectshe began to cry.
After a pause Alfond recovered and tried to respond to his scorching tirade, but McCain simply turned away and stormed out of the room. The PAVE SPIKE file has never been declassified. We still don't know anything about those twenty POWs.
7. As previously mentioned, in April 1993, in a Moscow archive, a researcher from Harvard, Stephen Morris, unearthed and made public the transcript of a briefing that General Tran Van Quang gave to the Hanoi politburo four months before the signing of the Paris peace accords in 1973.
In the transcript, General Quang told the Hanoi politburo that 1,205 US prisoners were being held. Quang said that many of the prisoners would be held back from Washington after the accords as bargaining chips for war reparations. General Quang's report added: "This is a big number. Officially, until now, we published a list of only 368 prisoners of war. The rest we have not revealed. The government of the USA knows this well, but it does not know the exact number...and can only make guesses based on its losses. That is why we are keeping the number of prisoners of war secret, in accordance with the politburo's instructions." The report then went on to explain in clear and specific language that a large number would be kept back to ensure reparations.
The reaction to the document was immediate. After two decades of denying it had kept any prisoners, Hanoi responded to the revelation by calling the transcript a fabrication.
Similarly, Washingtonwhich had over the same two decades refused to recant Nixon's declaration that all the prisoners had been returnedalso shifted into denial mode. The Pentagon issued a statement saying the document "is replete with errors, omissions and propaganda that seriously damage its credibility," and that the numbers were "inconsistent with our own accounting."
Neither American nor Vietnamese officials offered any rationale for who would plant a forged document in the Soviet archives and why they would do so. Certainly neither Washington nor Moscowclosely allied with Hanoiwould have any motive, since the contents were embarrassing to all parties, and since both the United States and Vietnam had consistently denied the existence of unreturned prisoners. The Russian archivists simply said the document was "authentic."
8. In his 2002 book, Inside Delta Force, Retired Command Sgt. Major Eric Haney described how in 1981 his special forces unit, after rigorous training for a POW rescue mission, had the mission suddenly aborted, revived a year later and again abruptly aborted. Haney writes that this abandonment of captured soldiers ate at him for years and left him disillusioned about his government's vows to leave no men behind.
"Years later, I spoke at length with a former highly placed member of the North Vietnamese diplomatic corps, and this person asked me point-blank: 'Why did the Americans never attempt to recover their remaining POWs after the conclusion of the war?'" Haney writes. He continued, saying that he came to believe senior government officials had called off those missions in 1981 and 1982. (His account is on pages 314 to 321 of my paperback copy of the book.)
9. There is also evidence that in the first months of Ronald Reagan's presidency in 1981, the White House received a ransom proposal for a number of POWs being held by Hanoi in Indochina. The offer, which was passed to Washington from an official of a third country, was apparently discussed at a meeting in the Roosevelt Room attended by Reagan, Vice-President Bush, CIA director William Casey and National Security Advisor Richard Allen. Allen confirmed the offer in sworn testimony to the Senate POW committee on June 23, 1992.
Allen was allowed to testify behind closed doors and no information was released. But a San Diego Union-Tribune reporter, Robert Caldwell, obtained the portion relating to the ransom offer and reported on it. The ransom request was for $4 billion, Allen testified. He said he told Reagan that "it would be worth the president's going along and let's have the negotiation." When his testimony appeared in the Union-Tribune, Allen quickly wrote a letter to the panel, this time not under oath, recanting the ransom story and claiming his memory had played tricks on him. His new version was that some POW activists had asked him about such an offer in a meeting that took place in 1986, when he was no longer in government. "It appears," he said in the letter, "that there never was a 1981 meeting about the return of POW/MIAs for $4 billion."
But the episode didn't end there. A Treasury agent on Secret Service duty in the White House, John Syphrit, came forward to say he had overheard part of the ransom conversation in the Roosevelt Room in 1981, when the offer was discussed by Reagan, Bush, Casey, Allen and other cabinet officials.
Syphrit, a veteran of the Vietnam War, told the committee he was willing to testify but they would have to subpoena him. Treasury opposed his appearance, arguing that voluntary testimony would violate the trust between the Secret Service and those it protects. It was clear that coming in on his own could cost Syphrit his career. The committee voted 7 to 4 not to subpoena him.
In the committee's final report, dated January 13, 1993 (on page 284), the panel not only chastised Syphrit for his failure to testify without a subpoena ("The committee regrets that the Secret Service agent was unwilling..."), but noted that since Allen had recanted his testimony about the Roosevelt Room briefing, Syphrit's testimony would have been "at best, uncorroborated by the testimony of any other witness." The committee omitted any mention that it had made a decision not to ask the other two surviving witnesses, Bush and Reagan, to give testimony under oath. (Casey had died.)
10. In 1990, Colonel Millard Peck, a decorated infantry veteran of Vietnam then working at the DIA as chief of the Asia Division for Current Intelligence, asked for the job of chief of the DIA's Special Office for Prisoners of War and Missing in Action. His reason for seeking the transfer, which was not a promotion, was that he had heard from officials throughout the Pentagon that the POW/MIA office had been turned into a waste-disposal unit for getting rid of unwanted evidence about live prisonersa "black hole," these officials called it.
[PDF: Millard A. Peck's Feb. 12, 1991, letter of resignation
Peck explained all this in his telling resignation letter of February 12, 1991, eight months after he had taken the job. He said he viewed it as "sort of a holy crusade" to restore the integrity of the office but was defeated by the Pentagon machine. The four-page, single-spaced letter was scathing, describing the putative search for missing men as "a cover-up."
Peck charged that, at its top echelons, the Pentagon had embraced a "mind-set to debunk" all evidence of prisoners left behind. "That national leaders continue to address the prisoner of war and missing in action issue as the 'highest national priority,' is a travesty," he wrote. "The entire charade does not appear to be an honest effort, and may never have been....Practically all analysis is directed to finding fault with the source. Rarely has there been any effective, active follow through on any of the sightings, nor is there a responsive 'action arm' to routinely and aggressively pursue leads."
"I became painfully aware," his letter continued, "that I was not really in charge of my own office, but was merely a figurehead or whipping boy for a larger and totally Machiavellian group of players outside of DIA...I feel strongly that this issue is being manipulated and controlled at a higher level, not with the goal of resolving it, but more to obfuscate the question of live prisoners and give the illusion of progress through hyperactivity." He named no names but said these players are "unscrupulous people in the Government or associated with the Government" who "have maintained their distance and remained hidden in the shadows, while using the [POW] Office as a 'toxic waste dump' to bury the whole 'mess' out of sight." Peck added that "military officers...who in some manner have 'rocked the boat' [have] quickly come to grief."
Peck concluded: "From what I have witnessed, it appears that any soldier left in Vietnam, even inadvertently, was, in fact, abandoned years ago, and that the farce that is being played is no more than political legerdemain done with 'smoke and mirrors' to stall the issue until it dies a natural death."
The disillusioned Colonel not only resigned but asked to be retired immediately from active military service. The press never followed up.
I covered the war in Cambodia and Vietnam, but came to the POW information only slowly afterward, when military officers I knew from that conflict began coming to me with maps and POW sightings and depositions by Vietnamese witnesses.
I was then city editor of the New York Times, no longer involved in foreign or national stories, so I took the data to the appropriate desks and suggested it was material worth pursuing. There were no takers. Some years later, in 1991, when I was an op-ed columnist at Newsday, the aforementioned special Senate committee was formed to probe the POW issue. I saw this as an opening and immersed myself in the reporting.
At Newsday, I wrote thirty-five columns over a two-year period, as well as a four-part series on a trip I took to North Vietnam to report on what happened to one missing pilot who was shot down over the Ho Chi Minh trail and captured when he parachuted down. After Newsday, I wrote thousands more words on the subject for other outlets. Some of the pieces were about McCain's key role.
Though I wrote on many subjects for Life, Vanity Fair and Washington Monthly, my POW articles appeared in Penthouse, the Village Voice and APBnews.com. Mainstream publications just weren't interested. Their disinterest was part of what motivated me, and I became one of a very short list of journalists who considered the story important.
Serving in the army in Germany during the Cold War and witnessing combat first-hand as a reporter in India and Indochina led me to have great respect for those who fight for their country. To my mind, we dishonored US troops when our government failed to bring them home from Vietnam after the 591 others were releasedand then claimed they didn't exist. And politicians dishonor themselves when they pay lip service to the bravery and sacrifice of soldiers only to leave untold numbers behind, rationalizing to themselves that it's merely one of the unfortunate costs of war.
John McCainnow campaigning for the White House as a war hero, maverick and straight shooterowes the voters some explanations. The press were long ago wooed and won by McCain's seeming openness, Lone Ranger pose and self-deprecating humor, which may partly explain their ignoring his record on POWs. In the numerous, lengthy McCain profiles that have appeared of late in papers like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, I may have missed a clause or a sentence along the way, but I have not found a single mention of his role in burying information about POWs. Television and radio news programs have been similarly silent.
Reporters simply never ask him about it. They didn't when he ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination in 2000. They haven't now, despite the fact that we're in the midst of another wara war he supports and one that has echoes of Vietnam.
The only explanation McCain has ever offered for his leadership on legislation that seals POW files is that he believes the release of such information would only stir up fresh grief for the families of those who were never accounted for in Vietnam. Of the scores of POW families I've met over the years, only a few have said they want the books closed without knowing what happened to their men. All the rest say that not knowing is exactly what grieves them.
Isn't it possible that what really worries those intent on keeping the POW documents buried is the public disgust that the contents of those files would generate?
In its early months, the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs gave the appearance of being committed to finding out the truth about the MIAs. As time went on, however, it became clear that they were cooperating in every way with the Pentagon and CIA, who often seemed to be calling the shots, even setting the agendas for certain key hearings. Both agencies held back the most important POW files. Dick Cheney was the Pentagon chief then; Robert Gates, now the Pentagon chief, was the CIA director.
Further, the committee failed to question any living president. Reagan declined to answer questions; the committee didn't contest his refusal. Nixon was given a pass. George H.W. Bush, the sitting president, whose prints were all over this issue from his days as CIA chief in the 1970s, was never even approached.
Troubled by these signs, several committee staffers began asking why the agencies they should be probing had been turned into committee partners and decision makers. Memos to that effect were circulated. The staff made the following finding, using intelligence reports marked "credible" that covered POW sightings through 1989: "There can be no doubt that POWs were alive...as late as 1989." That finding was never released. Eventually, much of the staff was in rebellion.
[PDF: Newsday, Jan. 7, 1993]
This internecine struggle (see coverage, at left) continued right up to the committee's last official actthe issuance of its final report. The "Executive Summary," which comprised the first forty-three pageswas essentially a whitewash, saying that only "a small number" of POWs could have been left behind in 1973 and that there was little likelihood that any prisoners could still be alive. The Washington press corps, judging from its coverage, seems to have read only this air-brushed summary, which had been closely controlled.
But the rest of the 1,221-page Report on POW/MIAs was quite different. Sprinkled throughout are pieces of hard evidence that directly contradict the summary's conclusions. This documentation established that a significant number of prisoners were left behindand that top government officials knew this from the start. These candid findings were inserted by committee staffers who had unearthed the evidence and were determined not to allow the truth to be sugar-coated.
If the Washington press corps did actually read the body of the report and then failed to report its contents, that would be a scandal of its own. The press would then have knowingly ignored the steady stream of findings in the body of the report that refuted the summary and indicated that the number of abandoned men was not small but considerable. The report gave no figures but estimates from various branches of the intelligence community ranged up to 600. The lowest estimate was 150.
Highlights of the report that undermine the benign conclusions of the Executive Summary:
[PDF: POW/MIAs Report, pp. 207-209]
Pages 207-209: These three pages contain revelations of what appear to be either massive intelligence failures, or bad intentionsor both. The report says that until the committee brought up the subject in 1992, no branch of the intelligence community that dealt with analysis of satellite and lower-altitude photos had ever been informed of the specific distress signals US personnel were trained to use in the Vietnam war, nor had they ever been tasked to look for any such signals at all from possible prisoners on the ground.
The committee decided, however, not to seek a review of old photography, saying it "would cause the expenditure of large amounts of manpower and money with no expectation of success." It might also have turned up lots of distress-signal numbers that nobody in the government was looking for from 1973 to 1991, when the committee opened shop. That would have made it impossible for the committee to write the Executive Summary it seemed determined to write.
The failure gets worse. The committee also discovered that the DIA, which kept the lists of authenticator numbers for pilots and other personnel, could not "locate" the lists of these codes for Army, Navy or Marine pilots. They had lost or destroyed the records. The Air Force list was the only one intact, as it had been preserved by a different intelligence branch.
The report concluded: "In theory, therefore, if a POW still living in captivity [today], were to attempt to communicate by ground signal, smuggling out a note or by whatever means possible, and he used his personal authenticator number to confirm his identity, the US Government would be unable to provide such confirmation, if his number happened to be among those numbers DIA cannot locate."
It's worth remembering that throughout the period when this intelligence disaster occurredfrom the moment the treaty was signed in 1973 until 1991the White House told the public that it had given the search for POWs and POW information the "highest national priority."
[PDF: POW/MIAs Report, p. 13]
Page 13: Even in the Executive Summary, the report acknowledges the existence of clear intelligence, made known to government officials early on, that important numbers of captured US POWs were not on Hanoi's repatriation list. After Hanoi released its list (showing only ten names from Laosnine military men and one civilian), President Nixon sent a message on February 2, 1973, to Hanoi's Prime Minister Pham Van Dong. saying: "US records show there are 317 American military men unaccounted for in Laos and it is inconceivable that only ten of these men would be held prisoner in Laos."
Nixon was right. It was inconceivable. Then why did the president, less than two months later, on March 29, 1973, announce on national television that "all of our American POWs are on their way home"?
On April 13, 1973, just after all 591 men on Hanoi's official list had returned to American soil, the Pentagon got into step with the president and announced that there was no evidence of any further live prisoners in Indochina (this is on page 248).
[PDF: POW/MIAs Report, p. 248]
[PDF: POW/MIAs Report, p. 91]
Page 91: A lengthy footnote provides more confirmation of the White House's knowledge of abandoned POWs. The footnote reads:
"In a telephone conversation with Select Committee Vice-Chairman Bob Smith on December 29, 1992, Dr. Kissinger said that he had informed President Nixon during the 60-day period after the peace agreement was signed that US intelligence officials believed that the list of prisoners captured in Laos was incomplete. According to Dr. Kissinger, the President responded by directing that the exchange of prisoners on the lists go forward, but added that a failure to account for the additional prisoners after Operation Homecoming would lead to a resumption of bombing. Dr. Kissinger said that the President was later unwilling to carry through on this threat."
When Kissinger learned of the footnote while the final editing of the committee report was in progress, he and his lawyers lobbied fiercely through two Republican allies on the panelone of them was John McCainto get the footnote expunged. The effort failed. The footnote stayed intact.
[PDF: Newsday, Jan. 8, 1973]
[PDF: POW/MIAs Report, pp. 85-86]
Pages 85-86: The committee report quotes Kissinger from his memoirs, writing solely in reference to prisoners in Laos: "We knew of at least 80 instances in which an American serviceman had been captured alive and subsequently disappeared. The evidence consisted either of voice communications from the ground in advance of capture or photographs and names published by the Communists. Yet none of these men was on the list of POWs handed over after the Agreement."
Then why did he swear under oath to the committee in 1992 that he never had any information that specific, named soldiers were captured alive and hadn't been returned by Vietnam?
[PDF: POW/MIAs Report, p. 89]
Page 89: In the middle of the prisoner repatriation and US troop-withdrawal process agreed to in the treaty, when it became clear that Hanoi was not releasing everyone it held, a furious chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas Moorer, issued an order halting the troop withdrawal until Hanoi complied with the agreement. He cited in particular the known prisoners in Laos. The order was retracted by President Nixon the next day. In 1992, Moorer, by then retired, testified under oath to the committee that his order had received the approval of the President, the national security advisor and the secretary of defense. Nixon, however, in a letter to the committee, wrote: "I do not recall directing Admiral Moorer to send this cable."
The report did not include the following information: Behind closed doors, a senior intelligence officer had testified to the POW committee that when Moorer's order was rescinded, the angry admiral sent a "back-channel" message to other key military commanders telling them that Washington was abandoning known live prisoners. "Nixon and Kissinger are at it again," he wrote. "SecDef and SecState have been cut out of the loop." In 1973, the witness was working in the office that processed this message. His name and his testimony are still classified. A source present for the testimony provided me with this information and also reported that in that same time period, Moorer had stormed into Defense Secretary Schlesinger's office and, pounding on his desk, yelled: "The bastards have still got our men." Schlesinger, in his own testimony to the committee a few months later, was asked aboutand corroboratedthis account.
[PDF: POW/MIAs Report, pp. 95-98]
Pages 95-96: In early April 1973, Deputy Defense Secretary William Clements "summoned" Dr. Roger Shields, then head of the Pentagon's POW/MIA Task Force, to his office to work out "a new public formulation" of the POW issue; now that the White House had declared all prisoners to have been returned, a new spin was needed. Shields, under oath, described the meeting to the committee. He said Clements told him: "All the American POWs are dead." Shields said he replied: "You can't say that." Clements shot back: "You didn't hear me. They are all dead." Shields testified that at that moment he thought he was going to be fired, but he escaped from his boss's office still holding his job.
Pages 97-98: A couple of days later, on April 11, 1973, a day before Shields was to hold a Pentagon press conference on POWs, he and Gen. Brent Scowcroft, then the deputy national security advisor, went to the Oval Office to discuss the "new public formulation" and its presentation with President Nixon.
The next day, reporters right off asked Shields about missing POWs. Shields fudged his answers. He said: "We have no indications at this time that there are any Americans alive in Indochina." But he went on to say that there had not been "a complete accounting" of those lost in Laos and that the Pentagon would press on to account for the missinga seeming acknowledgement that some Americans were still alive and unaccounted for.
The press, however, seized on Shields' denials. One headline read: "POW Unit Boss: No Living GIs Left in Indochina."
Page 97: The POW committee, knowing that Nixon taped all his meetings in the Oval Office, sought the tape of that April 11, 1973, Nixon-Shields-Scowcroft meeting to find out what Nixon had been told and what he had said about the evidence of POWs still in Indochina. The committee also knew there had been other White House meetings that centered on intelligence about live POWs. A footnote on page 97 states that Nixon's lawyers said they would provide access to the April 11 tape "only if the Committee agreed not to seek any other White House recordings from this time period." The footnote says that the committee rejected these terms and got nothing. The committee never made public this request for Nixon tapes until the brief footnote in its 1993 report.
None of this compelling evidence in the committee's full report dislodged McCain from his contention that the whole POW issue was a concoction by deluded purveyors of a "conspiracy theory. But an honest review of the full report, combined with the other documentary evidence, tells the story of a frustrated and angry president, and his national security advisor, furious at being thwarted at the peace table by a small, much less powerful country that refused to bow to Washington's terms. That President seems to have swallowed hard and accepted a treaty that left probably hundreds of American prisoners in Hanoi's hands, to be used as bargaining chips for reparations.
Maybe Nixon and Kissinger told themselves that they could get the prisoners home after some time had passed. But perhaps it proved too hard to undo a lie as big as this one. Washington said no prisoners were left behind, and Hanoi swore it had returned all of them. How could either side later admit it had lied? Time went by and as neither side budged, telling the truth became even more difficult and remote. The public would realize that Washington knew of the abandoned men all along. The truth, after men had been languishing in foul prison cells, could get people impeached or thrown in jail.
Which brings us to today, when the Republican candidate for President is the contemporaneous politician most responsible for keeping the truth about his matter hidden. Yet he says he's the right man to be the Commander-in-Chief, and his credibility in making this claim is largely based on his image as a POW hero.
On page 468 of the 1,221-page report, McCain parsed his POW position oddly: "We found no compelling evidence to prove that Americans are alive in captivity today. There is some evidencethough no proofto suggest only the possibility that a few Americans may have been kept behind after the end of America's military involvement in Vietnam."
"Evidence though no proof." Clearly, no one could meet McCain's standard of proof as long as he is leading a government crusade to keep the truth buried.
To this reporter, this sounds like a significant story and a long overdue opportunity for the press to finally dig into the archives to set the historical record straightand even pose some direct questions to the candidate.
Sydney H. Schanberg, a journalist for nearly 50 years, has written extensively on foreign affairs--particularly Asia--and on domestic issues such as ethics, racial problems, government secrecy, corporate excesses and the weaknesses of the national media.
Most of his journalism career has been spent on newspapers but his award-winning work has also appeared widely in other publications and media. The 1984 movie, The Killing Fields, which won several Academy Awards, was based on his book The Death and Life of Dith Pran - a memoir of his experiences covering the war in Cambodia for the New York Times and of his relationship with his Cambodian colleague, Dith Pran.
For his accounts of the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, Schanberg was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting "at great risk." He is also the recipient of many other awards - including two George Polk awards, two Overseas Press Club awards and the Sigma Delta Chi prize for distinguished journalism. (Watch Schanberg's appearance on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman.)
People who read The Nation don't care about POWs or people in uniform. So what was their point for printing this, other than as a hit piece on McCain during the election?
Where was The Nation on this very issue when Kerry (McCain's partner in crime) was running for president?
MIA, that's where.
How can JD sum this up in an ad?
I don't like McCain, but anything printed in The Nation is a commie lie, and anybody on FR who believes anything from "The Nation" is an idiot.
You ever watch Democracy Now!, Rabs? They make Olbermann look sane by comparison.
The other POWs didn't get warm clothing and hot coffee. They shivered in shorty pajamas and ate wormy rice.
"a memoir of his experiences covering the war in Cambodia for the New York Times"
I should have known the New York Times was involved. There is no limit how low these people will go.
Get this commie cr@p out of here, you commie.
This is the same crap that the Obama campaign was putting out in 2008.
Can't JD do better than copying Obama????
Ever heard of a propaganda photo, Joe?
Hit piece. And The Nation? Now THERE'S a credible source (snort).
Following years of U.S. carpet bombing campaigns over Cambodia and Laos, Schanberg wrote in The New York Times about the departure of the Americans and the coming regime change, writing about the Cambodians that "it is difficult to imagine how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone." The Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975 and killed approximately two million people. A dispatch he wrote on April 13, 1975, written from Phnom Penh, ran with the headline "Indochina without Americans: for most, a better life."[1] However, in the same piece, Schanberg also wrote, "This is not to say that the Communist-backed governments which will replace the American clients can be expected to be benevolent. Already, in Cambodia, there is evidence in the areas led by the Communist-led Cambodian insurgents that life is hard and inflexible, everything that Cambodians are not." However, in the same article, Schanberg then went on to reject claims that the communist takeover of Cambodia could lead to state-sponsored genocide: "Wars nourish brutality and sadism, and sometimes certain people are executed by the victors but it would be tendentious to forecast such abnormal behavior as a national policy under a Communist government once the war is over."
I agree and why would a left wing print this about a person that votes with them a lot of the time?
Are we seriously citing The Nation and Amy Goodman's Democracy Now?? Come on. You will not find a person on this planet more committed to the destruction of American values and the American military than Amy Goodman. She routinely refers to "war crimes", the wholesale slaughter of women and children by American soldiers, and has never met an enemy of this country she couldn't support.
When Amy Goodman takes a position, its a good idea to go the other way.
I don't like McCain, but I will not besmirtch his service to this country in Vietnam. He is a legitimate war hero, and has my respect for that.
I held my nose and pulled the lever for him in 2008, and will not ever do so again. I sincerely hope that JD Hayworth wins in Arizona ... but a denigration of John McCain's military service is a denigration of the service of every soldier that spent time in Vietnam or since.
"The Nation" leftists like YOU, Schanberg, did everything in your power to LOSE the war in Vietnam, cost 2 million Cambodian lives and PI$$ED all over returning soldiers. And now we're supposed to believe you are OH SO CONCERNED about MIA's and POW'S!!! BULLSHITE!!!
Hey this is from a guy who won Pulitzer's by writing about how much better off Cambodia would be with the Americans out of the region.
I am no fan of McCain. I have never liked what happened to our POW/MIA left behind. But I doubt any leftie who relies on "...I was told personally..." as a proof of factuality
Sydney H. Schanberg is a leftwing wacko of the worst kind. He has a major responsibility for those two million Cambodian deaths.
Well, I always assumed what was in this article was true, but now that I see The Nation is promoting it, that makes me doubt the story is true after all. The Nation promoting someone is like Joe Isuzu saying "Trust Me"
Schanberg; isn't he the creep who was all for the Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia and left Dith Pran behind to suffer the consequences of working for the Americans? Just curious.
Sydney Schandberg knows his stuff. Also let's not forget that Juan McCain's friend Kerry got an exclusive for Colliers Intl Real Estate on Vietnam after normalization. Kerry's realtives own Colliers. They are a huge commercial real estate broker.
After Vietnam - all the scum like McCain, Kerry, Kissenger, Carter wanted it to go away.
Yep, he's the guy - another in a long line of NY Slimes pinko toadies.
Are you drinking some Democracy Now! bongwater? This guy is an apologist for commies in the grand tradition of the NY Slimes.
In addition, POW's were left behind and McCain knows it. He also has NO call to be rude to the searches of the truth about the POW/MIA situation.
I believe it because I was THERE, I know what I SAW and I know what I was ORDERED to do about it.
So screw you, I am not an idiot.
RVN '68 - 69 and not far away for three more.
That is what I thought. No surprise there; I doubt there is any other kind at the NYSlimes.
I agree.
I for one refuse to read Louis Farakhan, or Rev. Wright CRAP.
You must not know how radically leftist The Nation is.
It isn't just a very liberal publication that can be taken with a grain of salt, it is radically, insanely, leftist and is useless for information.
For much of my adult life I have tried to read much of the left including In These Times, The Nation, The Progressive and such, and I can tell you that the Nation is just a radical rag with no value.
I recall a story, during the '08 campaign, and I think from The Nation, that McCain was a not really kept in a cell, but in a hotel and given prostitutes, in exchange for cooperating with the north. The story was an outrage - and almost made me like McCain. Does anyone else recall this? Had the election been close, this and the story that it is McCain who is not a "natural born citizen" would have been the topic of "serious" MSM discussion.
I have worked with Col. Millard "Mike" Peck and nothing that was written about him and the problems he had, is a lie.
33 Irving Place
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The oldest and most leftwing of all popular American weekly magazines
Supported the Russian Revolution and was first U.S. magazine to publish the Soviet Constitution
Opposed Americas Cold War policies after World War II and generally supported the Communist bloc
Founded in 1865 by politically radical abolitionists, The Nation is the oldest weekly magazine in the United States and the farthest Left of all popular American magazines.
The magazines first major backer, who helped it launch in 1865 with $100,000, was the Boston lead pipe manufacturer who had supplied John Brown with munitions for his raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. Its first literary editor was the son of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.
By 1881 The Nation had shrunk to little more than a book review insert in Henry Villards New York Evening Post newspaper, as it wallowed through a succession of editors. In 1918 Henrys son Oscar Garrison Villard (who helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) took over The Nation and shifted it politically far to the Left, where it remains today. The Russian Revolution was underway, and the magazine was the first in America to publish the Soviet Constitution.
Villard retired in 1932. He was succeeded by Freda Kirchwey, a Stalinist who moved the magazine to the far left on issues of birth control and sexual freedom, and supported the Communists in the Spanish Civil War. She became a target of radical wrath, however, when she refused to endorse the pro-Soviet Progressive Party campaign of Henry Wallace in 1948, which was launched to oppose the Cold War.
Carey McWilliams replaced Kirchwey as The Nations Editor in 1955. The magazine took the Soviet side in challenging Americas Cold War policies, attacking the U.S. defense program and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It also provided a platform for pro-Soviet Marxists like Gabriel Kolko and Howard Zinn, and for a young consumer advocate named Ralph Nader. (In 2004, however, the Editors of The Nation would ridicule Nader and his presidential campaign, favoring instead Democratic candidate John Kerry.)
Marc Cooper, the former host of the syndicated radio program RadioNation, is a Contributing Editor for The Nation.
But John McCain the POW was another matter. Let's not forget that he was offered an "early out" by the North Vietnamese because of his father. He declined and did hard time until the end. I can think of no reason why he would have covered up or tried to hide any information about POWs not repatriated. I think this article is just a hateful piece of trash.
I'm not and never have been a resident of Arizon. But I've donated a lot of money to JD Hayworth's campaign because I detest the mockery McCain has made of the Republican party, and the damage he's been personally responsible for.
That being said, this article is vile and it's from a vile source. It does not belong on Free Republic. We are better than this.
"I can think of no reason why he would have covered up or tried to hide any information about POWs not repatriated."
Yet, he did so.
(How McCain left U.S. POWs and MIAs to rot in hell)"
and he's STILL being endorsed by PALIN.
He is not a commie. You can't handle the truth. John McCain is a POS.
GEEZE rabs...you're being attacked for your source! Frankly, I'm not familiar with the source, so I could care less who wrote it.... Is there anything in the content that isn't true or have the McShamnesties just come calling?
The story is 100% true. Had friends in military intell who specifically told me that COng held 1200 POW and the deal was to turn over half now, and half after Congress paid reparations. The Dem Congress welched on its end of the deal.
Obviously, Nixon had no leverage by 1974, but he did not have to go along with it in 1973. The 1992 group that said we had no POWs in 1992 ignored the rescue signals that were visible in 1992 from multiple POWs in Laos who heard that the US was again looking for them.
There were four people on the group to find the POWs in 1992: Sen. John Kerry (did you know he served in Vietnam?), Sen. John McCain (I've heard he broke early, but I'd do far worse), Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfeld.
It ain't an easy message, but was why I worked my ass off to take down Kerry in 2004 (thank you Swift Boat vets) and why I always ranked McCain dead last, after Ron Paul et. al. as a Presidential candidate. McCain *knew* we had guys left behind, because in his seven years in captivity, he met some of them. Not many; the prisoners in Laos stayed in Laos. I don't know whether the 420 prisoners in Laos were counted as part of the 600 missing POWs, but my guess is that they were in addition to those 600. So that would leave about a 1000 POWS left.
Plus, a handful of prisoners escaped Indochina over the years. Dead prisoners don't escape.
Vote JD in the primary. Vote your conscience in November.
Let's put it this way, if this was written by Michael Moore, would it make you question its legitmacy? Schanberg makes Michael Moore look like a Barry Goldwater Republican and has a history of bogus, leftist propaganda. If he said it was daytime, I would double check my watch.
What he better do is leave it alone.
"I think this article is just a hateful piece of trash. "
Not true. Do your homework. Team John F. Kerry/McCain.
As I mentioned above, I already believed this, most of it is common knowledge, however, now that the Nation is pushing it, it makes me question that belief.
What does Bud Day have to say about this?
American POWs have been coming out of Vietnam?
I'm not familiar with the author but, judging by the comments on the thread, he is such a talented commie he was able to invent bills, attribute their authorship to McCain and get them inserted into the Congressional record. Amazing!
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If you have previously studied French, German, Russian, or Spanish and wish to continue your studies at Stetson, you must take a placement test. The placement tests for Spanish, French, and German are on-line; see Modern Languages Placement Tests for instructions on taking the placement tests. For Russian, you must schedule an on campus interview with w faculty member from that program.
All students may take Modern Language as a part of their General Education. Whether Modern Language is specifically required or an option that can be used to fill a requirement depends on the College or School that you are enrolled in.
Modern Languages is one of six Knowledge Areas in the General Education requirements; you are required to complete one unit each from five of the six areas, and it is up to you to decide whether Modern Language is one of the five that you are choosing to do. Courses that meet the Modern Languages requirement enhance your knowledge of the world by developing your proficiency in another modern language and by emphasizing the role of language in culture. You can meet this requirement by completing a Stetson course numbered 102 or higher in French, German, Russian, or Spanish. Arabic offered through a Language Consortium joins this list in spring 2016. The course must be taken at Stetson or through the consortium; transfer credit or credit earned from AP or IB exams for a language course numbered 102 or higher will not satisfy the requirement. Courses that satisfying this category have an "L" tagged to the end of the three-digit course number.
Special topics courses for languages other than French, German, Russian, or Spanish are routinely offered at Stetson. Students in the College of Arts and Sciences may take them, but they will not satisfy the Modern Language option in the General Education requirements. The special topics language courses will count as an elective unless it satisfies a requirement for your major or a minor.
If your major requires an "L" course you may use it to satisfy the Modern Languages requirement. There is the limitation that no more than three courses required for your major may be used to satisfy General Education requirements.
Modern Language is required for all students in the School of Business. Students have two options for satisfying this requirement:
- Complete a 102 level course in one modern language other than English. Stetson always offers French, German, Russian, or Spanish, and often offers special topics courses in other languages. You may transfer credit from another school to satisfy this requirement.
- Demonstrate proficiency through the 102 level by exemption exam.
The requirements for students in the School of Music depend on the student's major. See the requirements for the individual majors for details: School of Music.
Revised: 05/29/15


text:
Travel briefs: Fireflies abound at Smoky Mountains
Sunday, May 22, 2005
GATLINBURG, Tenn. -- Maybe you know them as fireflies or lightning bugs or June bugs.
They're actually bioluminescent beetles, a species known to scientists as Photinus carolinus, and one of their most spectacular light shows takes place each June in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
The fireflies in the Smokies -- unlike most fireflies -- light up precisely in unison. The synchronized display is actually a mating ritual in which the male attracts the female by flashing a yellow-green light twice per second, in timed bursts of four to eight flashes.
Visitors to the Smokies who want to learn more about the phenomenon can attend lectures on the subject with two scientists who've studied it at the Little River trailhead in Elkmont on June 6 and 8, from 8 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. For details, call the Smoky Mountain Field School at (865) 974-0150.
Magazine lists best luxury travel options
MALIBU, Calif. -- A hotel in Hungary and a seaside Thai resort topped the annual "Best of the Best" travel list appearing in the June issue of Robb Report, the luxury lifestyle magazine.
The Gresham Palace, a Four Seasons hotel -- www.fourseasons.com/budapest -- is located in a newly restored Art Nouveau landmark on the banks of the Danube River in Budapest. The 1906 building originally housed a British insurance company. It was damaged during World War II and fell into disrepair under Communism.
Now beautifully restored, the hotel's wrought-iron gates boast peacock motifs, the stone facade is decorated with arches and cathedral windows, and indoors you'll find a soaring winter garden.
Also on the Robb Report's "Best of" list is Trisara, which opened on the island of Phuket in Thailand just two months before the tsunami hit in December. The resort incurred only minor damage. Trisara has 2000-square-foot ocean-view villas; a spa offering yoga, meditation, massage and other treatments; and landscaping that includes waterfalls cascading through 40 lush acres to the sea.


text:
Check BNN and Bulbanews for up-to-date Pokémon news and discuss it on the forums or in our IRC channel #bulbagarden on irc.systemnet.info.
Difference between revisions of "BW099"
m (→Trivia)
Blazingfist (Talk | contribs)
(→Trivia: This kind of trivia has been removed before: http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/w/index.php?title=Riku&diff=1795347&oldid=1795346)
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* Cilan [[breaking the fourth wall|breaks the fourth wall]] twice during the episode by pushing the split screens featuring Soran and Riku apart from each other.
* Cilan [[breaking the fourth wall|breaks the fourth wall]] twice during the episode by pushing the split screens featuring Soran and Riku apart from each other.
* Ash owns a Pokémon from both of the {{type|Water}} species which Soran and Riku caught: {{AP|Buizel}} and {{AP|Corphish}}.
* Ash owns a Pokémon from both of the {{type|Water}} species which Soran and Riku caught: {{AP|Buizel}} and {{AP|Corphish}}.
* Riku's and Soran's names could be a reference to the ''{{wp|Kingdom Hearts}}'' characters Riku and Sora.
* Iris narrates the preview for the [[BW100|next episode]].
* Iris narrates the preview for the [[BW100|next episode]].
Revision as of 17:19, 30 January 2013
|This article is about an episode of the Pokémon anime that has not been dubbed into English. As such, its coverage may contain romanized Japanese names, rather than dub names.
| A Surface to Air Tag Battle Team!
First broadcast
English themes
Japanese themes
A Surface to Air Tag Battle Team! (Japanese: 大空と大地のタッグバトル! The Tag Battle of the Sky and the Earth!) is the 99th episode of the Best Wishes series, and the 756th episode of the Pokémon anime. It aired in Japan on October 18, 2012 and is scheduled to air in the United States on February 9, 2013.
|Spoiler warning: this article may contain major plot or ending details.
While walking in the middle of a corn field, Ash and his friends come across a Drilbur. Then, Pikachu points out to a Braviary and Cilan then suggests that the Braviary is watching them. They continue to walk, only to be interrupted by laughter.
Suddenly, two boys pop out, and challenge Ash and his friends to a Tag Battle Ash then accepts, but Cilan and Iris are reluctant. Cilan asks for the boys to introduce themselves, which they do, stating their names are Soran, and Riku and that they are brothers.
After hearing from Cilan that he is a Gym Leader and Ash is a would-be competitor of the Unova League, the brothers decide they want to battle them. Ash and Cilan respectively bring out their Unfezant and Pansage while Soran and Riku battle with their Braviary and Drilbur.
Soran and Riku amaze them with their bedazzling combination moves, and they get Ash and Cilan cornered. But Ash and Cilan manage to come up with their own unique combination moves and ultimately win. After the loss,the brothers become crestfallen. Cilan evaluates their Pokémon, and comes to the conclusion that they need to catch a Water-type to gain mastery over the third aspect of the nature that comes after land and sky. To do so, Cilan goes with them to a river to fish. First they spot out a male and a female Frillish, but fail to catch either of them because of meaningless bickerings. Then they spot a Corphish and a Buizel, and using some perfect move-combinations, they taste the fruit of success. Ash and the gang congratulate them and part ways on good terms. After parting ways, Cilan, Ash, and Iris come upon a Swanna and a Palpitoad, and Clian realizes that they would be the ultimate perfect match, one being Water and Flying, the other Water and Ground.
Major events
- For a list of all major events in the anime, please see the timeline of events.
Pokémon debuts
TV episode debuts
Who's That Pokémon?: Braviary (Japan)
- Pikachu (Ash's)
- Axew (Iris's)
- Unfezant (Ash's)
- Pansage (Cilan's)
- Braviary (Soran's)
- Drilbur (Riku's)
- Corphish (Riku's; new)
- Buizel (Soran's; new)
- Frillish (male and female)
- Eelektross (Emmet's; fantasy)
- Chandelure (Ingo's; fantasy)
- Swanna
- Palpitoad
- Professor Oak's Pokémon Live Caster: Foongus
- Cilan breaks the fourth wall twice during the episode by pushing the split screens featuring Soran and Riku apart from each other.
- Ash owns a Pokémon from both of the Water-type species which Soran and Riku caught: Buizel and Corphish.
- Iris narrates the preview for the next episode.
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|This anime-related article is a stub. You can help Bulbapedia by expanding it.
|This episode article is part of Project Anime, a Bulbapedia project that covers all aspects of the Pokémon anime.
- Details on PAL region Zygarde distribution revealed: Zygarde available until May 26
- Shiny Xerneas, Shiny Yveltal, Zygarde to be available via Nintendo Network for American region: ...
- Johto Classic Wi-Fi competition announced: Participants to receive special Pokémon
- Pokémon Jukebox to be discontinued: To be phased out over the next two months
- Darkrai code cards available throughout North America: Codes available now


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text: Dover AG, Lawmakers at Odds Over Dover's Education Funding Lawsuit By Jason Moon • Apr 28, 2016 Dover School District Next week, hearings begin in a lawsuit brought by the city of Dover that challenges how the state pays for public schools. It's the latest in a long line of high-profile cases that has put the branches of New Hampshire's government at odds. NHPR's Jason Moon talked with Morning Edition host Rick Ganley about the case and how it fits into that history is . N.H. City Expands Smoking Ban to Include E-Cigarettes By Associated Press • Feb 11, 2016 A New Hampshire city has voted to ban the use of electronic cigarettes where regular cigarettes are already prohibited. Foster's Daily Democrat reports the Dover City Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to ban e-cigarettes in all locations where tobacco products are banned. Tobacco products are currently banned from several places around the city including a park and on school grounds and athletic fields. Advocates of the measure say it will eliminate the "negative influence" that e-cigarettes have on children. Dover May Ban Vaping in Non-Smoking Areas By Associated Press • Jan 29, 2016 Electronic cigarettes could soon be banned in all places where regular cigarettes are already prohibited in a New Hampshire city. Foster's Daily Democrat reports the Dover City Council has moved an ordinance along to a public hearing that would ban e-cigarettes in all locations that current tobacco products are already prohibited from. Dover To Hold Public Forum On Planned Medical Marijuana Dispensary By Brady Carlson • Oct 26, 2015 DD via Flickr Creative Commons State officials will hold a public forum tonight in Dover about plans to open a medical marijuana dispensary. Dover Proposed As Site For Medical Marijuana Dispensary By Associated Press • Oct 19, 2015 Dank Depot via Flickr CC / https://flic.kr/p/9c93J6 The New Hampshire Health Department has scheduled a public forum in Dover to discuss setting up a medical marijuana dispensary. Temescal Wellness, a nonprofit, was selected by the department to operate the alternative treatment center, serving patients in Strafford, Rockingham and Belknap counties. The Strangest Museum in N.H.? The Woodman Inches Its Way Into The Future By Hannah McCarthy • Sep 11, 2015 NHPR/Hannah McCarthy Coiled in jars of half-evaporated alcohol, hundred year-old snake specimens glow under soft lights. Nearby, the last cougar killed in New Hampshire sneers with lifeless eyes, early taxidermy technique making it look more like a stuffed toy than a once-live animal. But these attractions are nothing compared to the man-eating clam and four-legged chick, staple oddities at the Woodman Museum. Federal Gov't Asked To Restore N.H. River's Name To Historic Spelling By Associated Press • Sep 11, 2015 A New Hampshire city is urging the U.S. Board of Geographic Names to restore the Cocheco River's historic spelling. The river's name used to end in e-c-h-o instead of e-c-o, but officials say the New Hampshire Secretary of State's office removed the "h'' by mistake in 1828. Foster's Daily Democrat reports Dover city councilors unanimously approved a recommendation Wednesday to go back to the original spelling. Tuttle's Farm Sold, Ending Nearly Four Centuries Of Family Ownership By Associated Press • Nov 5, 2013 catchesthelight via Flickr Creative Commons Three years after it was put up for sale, an 11-generation family farm in New Hampshire has been sold. Members of the Tuttle family owned the 135-acre farm in Dover since 1632, one of America's oldest continuously operated family farms. They put the fruit-and-vegetable farm up for sale in the summer of 2010 as they dealt with competition from supermarkets, pick-it-yourself farms and debt. The original price was $3.35 million. Foster's Daily Democrat reports it sold last month for a little over $1 million to Matt Kozazcki, who owns a farm in Newbury, Massachusetts. Occupy NH Stages May Day Protest in Dover By Sam Evans-Brown • May 1, 2012 The Occupy Movement held May-Day rallies all over the across the country yesterday. In New Hampshire the protest was focused on immigration reform. Around ninety protesters in Dover were entertained by music from the "Leftist Marching Band", as they rallied to support immigrants in the Granite state Immigration activist Eva Castillo MC'ed the Event. "We have to press our congress-people and our senators to pass immigration reform," Castillo called from Dover's city hall steps,"Every day that goes on without immigration reform families get split apart." Cain Gets the Benefit of the Doubt -- For Now By Jon Greenberg • Nov 10, 2011 Boston University College of Communication Questions continue about Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain and allegations of sexual harassment. Just as those reports first surfaced about two weeks ago, NHPR sat down with a group of Republican voters in Dover. The focus was on the candidates and the primary. The issue of Cain's relations with women was not on the table and three of the participants spoke highly of Herman Cain. We got back in touch to see what they think now. On October 31st, Brian Albertelli was ready to say, if the election were held today, Cain would be his pick.


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This course is about how the brain creates our sense of spatial location from a variety of sensory and motor sources, and how this spatial sense in turn shapes our cognitive abilities. ***April 2016 Update: The course materials can be accessed by selecting the "September 1 2015" session from the "Sessions" menu.***
Knowing where things are is effortless. But "under the hood," your brain must figure out even the simplest of details about the world around you and your position in it. Recognizing your mother, finding your phone, going to the grocery store, playing the banjo – these require careful sleuthing and coordination across different sensory and motor domains. This course traces the brain's detective work to create this sense of space and argues that the brain's spatial focus permeates our cognitive abilities, affecting the way we think and remember.
The material in this course is based on a book I've written for a general audience. The book is called "Making Space: How the Brain Knows Where Things Are", and is available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or directly from Harvard University Press.
The course material overlaps with classes on perception or systems neuroscience, and can be taken either before or after such classes.
There are 9 units spread over 6 weeks (with a 1 week grace period). Each unit corresponds to a chapter or two of the book Making Space: How the Brain Knows Where Things Are.
1. Vision (Week 1-2) The Ways of Light
Vision is one of the most spatial of our senses.This unit explains what light is, and how it is detected by photoreceptors in the eye. It includes a history of vision research dating back to ancient Greece, and describes the role of the astronomer Kepler in deducing how the image of the visual scene is formed on the eye. How the two-dimensional projection of the visual scene onto the surface of the retina is interpreted by the brain as a three-dimensional world is explored through examples from various artists such as Magritte and Escher. ("Making Space" Chapters 1-2).2. Somatosensory (Week 2) Sensing Our Own Shape
This unit introduces the brain mechanisms responsible for sensory processing of vision and touch, with an emphasis on the formation of sensory maps in the visual and somatosensory pathways of the brain. The implications of these maps and other neural response properties for perception of spatial location are explored, with an emphasis on object motion and contours. Experiments using electrical stimulation in sensory maps to probe their connection to perception are discussed. ("Making Space" Chapter 4).
4. Auditory (Week 4) Sherlock Ears: How Your Brain Finds Sounds
This unit turns to a sensory system for which spatial location must be inferred from indirect measurements. For vision and touch, the sensory receptors are able to measure spatial location in kind: objects at different locations activated different sensory receptors. For hearing, the brain must compare and contrast the sounds arriving at each ear to make inferences about the location of origin. This unit discusses the how this works, from the nature of sound itself to the interpretation of location-dependent sound attributes by the brain. ("Making Space" Chapter 5).
5. Brain meters for space (Week 4) Moving with Maps and Meters
This unit focuses on the concept of representation. We review maps as a form of representation, and introduce another kind of spatial representation, the "meter". More commonly but somewhat obscurely referred to as rate coding, this kind of representation involves neural response rates that scale in proportion to spatial location – a meter whose level indicates position. This kind of code is used in movements, the sense of body position, and in the early stages of the auditory pathway. ("Making Space" Chapter 6).
6. Reference Frames (Week 5) Your Sunglasses Are In the Milky Way
Spatial locations are measured with respect to reference positions, but these reference positions differ depending on the type of sensory input. The eyes measure locations with respect to the eyes, and the ears measure locations with respect to the ears. This unit discusses some illusions related to this issue and describes brain mechanisms for translating between different reference frames. Synthesizing a sense of space across time as the body and its sense organs move through the environment requires integrating memories of the sensory input at different times and positions. ("Making Space" Chapter 7).
7. Navigation (Week 5) Going Places
This unit shifts focus in two ways: (a) it involves space on a larger scale such as traveling from one place to another, and (b) it involves a sense of one's own position in the environment as opposed to the position of objects or events in that scene. The role of the sense of balance and one's own movements are incorporated. Animal species that navigate long distances and how they do this are described. ("Making Space" Chapter 8).
8. Remembering (Week 6) Space and Memory
No background is required; all are welcome!
The course is organized around my book, Making Space: How the Brain Knows Where Things Are, which is intended for a general audience and can serve as a useful adjunct to the video lectures. Although the course is designed to be self-contained, students wanting to expand their knowledge and reinforce their understanding are strongly encouraged to complete this recommended reading, 1-2 chapters per week of the course. The book is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell's, and directly from the publisher, Harvard University Press.
The class will consist of lecture videos, which are between 5 and 12 minutes in length. Integrated questions are contained in some videos. The assignments consist of 6 weekly quizzes, weighted equally in the course grade. There is no final exam.
Schedule details: The Brain and Space consists of 6 weeks' worth of material. The material will be posted no later than every Tuesday and quizzes will be due the following week on Tuesday.
What do you mean by "space?" Sounds like rocket science.
No - I mean spatial locations - spatial locations of all kinds of things and all kinds of scales, ranging from how your brain can detect the shape of these letters on the screen to how you know the position of your limbs to how you remember how to get to the grocery store.
What cool stuff will I learn?
Just an internet connection! If you'd like to know more, the class is organized around a book that I wrote, which is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell's, and directly from the publisher, Harvard University Press.
Tell me more about the book
The book is called "Making Space: How the Brain Knows Where Things Are", and it is for a general audience. You should be able to read and understand it without any background in neuroscience. It is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell's, and directly from the publisher, Harvard University Press. You can also hear me talking about it on BBC radio's the Forum, Ideas Roadshow, and NPR's The State of Things.
Where did you get that great image for the course logo?
The image was created by Flickr user digitalbob8, and is licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution License.


text:
All posts tagged "Housefull"
Sunday Read: How Akshay Kumar Has Survived The Khan Onslaught and Why He's Still A Force To Reckon With
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The leggy lass is on the top of Bollywood with her jaw dropping looks and eye popping figure. She comes under...Bollywood CelebsSeptember 10, 2013
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" I didn't think there was anything more or less obscene about any part of the body. Now, I recognize that there are certain postures and angles that make people see red, which are evidence of original sin or something, and I avoid that."
Jock Sturges
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text:
U.S. Postal Service:
Physical Security Measures Have Increased at Some Core Facilities, but Security Problems Continue
GAO-05-48: Published: Nov 16, 2004. Publicly Released: Nov 16, 2004.
Additional Materials:
- Highlights Page:
- Full Report:
- Accessible Text:
(202) 512-6570
Office of Public Affairs
(202) 512-4800
Mail and postal facilities are tempting targets for theft and other criminal acts. Approximately 800,000 U.S. Postal Service (USPS) employees process about 700 million pieces of mail daily at almost 38,000 facilities nationwide. Criminals attack letter carriers to get mail containing valuables and burglarize postal facilities to get cash and money orders. These activities at USPS facilities can put at risk the integrity of the mail and the safety of employees, customers, and assets. We looked at physical security measures at large facilities that perform automated mail-sorting functions, which on the basis of discussions with USPS, we defined as "core" facilities. Specifically, our objectives were to provide information on (1) what USPS has determined to be the physical security requirements at core facilities, (2) what security measures have been implemented and what security problems exist at USPS core facilities, and (3) what are USPS's plans to respond to identified security problems.
USPS has determined physical security requirements, such as access control and exterior lighting, for its facilities and specified them in a handbook and a manual. The security requirements are mandatory for new facilities and any renovations made to existing facilities. Further guidance outlines how physical security requirements are to be implemented at all facilities. Additionally, USPS uses policy memorandums to increase managers' awareness of specific security issues and reinforce physical security requirements, such as locking doors and wearing identification badges. Available information showed that implementation of security measures had increased at some core facilities, although security problems still existed at some facilities. However, incomplete and inaccurate USPS data precluded us from making an assessment of changes in the implementation of security measures at all core facilities. Specifically, the USPS Facility Security Database, which records security conditions, has a number of problems, such as missing and incomplete data, duplicate responses, and miscoded facilities. Nevertheless, available information on one-third of the 373 core facilities showed some additional security measures have been implemented at each of these facilities since fiscal year 2001. However, our analysis of Inspection Service reports and our site visits to 13 core facilities revealed a number of security problems, such as facility and vehicle keys unaccounted for, doors and gates left unlocked or alarms deactivated, mail and stamp inventory left unsecured, and employees not wearing identification badges as required. According to USPS officials, a number of plans and processes to improve physical security are being developed. For example, through a formal review and follow-up process, the Inspection Service is working with local and headquarters management officials to improve facility security. The Inspection Service has filled almost all of its 47 new Physical Security Specialist positions. USPS has also created an Emergency Preparedness group to ensure consistent application of and increased compliance with security standards and is in the process of updating and improving its Facility Security Database. This database has the potential for identifying and tracking facility security issues nationwide.
Recommendation for Executive Action
Status: Closed - Implemented
Comments: In January 2005, USPS developed a project plan to correct and update its security database. The plan detailed tasks, milestones, as well as actual start and completion dates. However, the plan did not include information on project costs or resources needed to complete the tasks. Nevertheless, USPS has completed the vast majority of the tasks identified in the plan and has initiated action on the remainder. The actions USPS has taken included correcting facility designations to address duplicative data issues, simplifying user logon capability to resolve missing data problems due to incomplete security surveys, and establishing a user certification that updated security data are accurate. These USPS actions were designed to address GAO's concerns, which lead to its recommendation.
Recommendation: In order to support the Inspection Service's efforts to improve physical security at USPS core facilities, the Postmaster General should develop a plan, with objectives, time frames, and resources needed, for correcting and updating USPS' security database so that USPS can accurately assess the status of physical security at core facilities, identify needed improvements, and assess progress that facilities have made.
Agency Affected: United States Postal Service: Office of the Postmaster General
Explore the full database of GAO's Open Recommendations »
Apr 29, 2016
U.S. Postal Service:Post Office Changes Suggest Cost Savings, but Improved Guidance, Data, and Analysis Can Inform Future Savings EffortsGAO-16-385: Published: Apr 29, 2016. Publicly Released: Apr 29, 2016.
Apr 27, 2016
Government Efficiency and Effectiveness:Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Other Financial BenefitsGAO-16-580T: Published: Apr 27, 2016. Publicly Released: Apr 27, 2016.
Apr 14, 2016
USDA Administrative Services:Streamlining Efforts Ongoing, but Actions Needed to Monitor Progress, Identify Benefits, and Share Lessons LearnedGAO-16-168: Published: Mar 15, 2016. Publicly Released: Apr 14, 2016.
Apr 13, 2016
2016 Annual Report:Additional Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Other Financial BenefitsGAO-16-375SP: Published: Apr 13, 2016. Publicly Released: Apr 13, 2016.
Government Efficiency and Effectiveness:Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Other Financial BenefitsGAO-16-579T: Published: Apr 13, 2016. Publicly Released: Apr 13, 2016.
Apr 12, 2016
Federal Real Property:Improving Data Transparency and Expanding the National Strategy Could Help Address Long-standing ChallengesGAO-16-275: Published: Mar 31, 2016. Publicly Released: Apr 12, 2016.
Apr 7, 2016
Architect of the Capitol:Contracting Function Generally Follows Key Practices, but Certain Improvements Are NeededGAO-16-348: Published: Apr 7, 2016. Publicly Released: Apr 7, 2016.
Mar 24, 2016
2015 Lobbying Disclosure:Observations on Lobbyists' Compliance with Disclosure RequirementsGAO-16-320: Published: Mar 24, 2016. Publicly Released: Mar 24, 2016.
Mar 23, 2016
Administrative Leave:Evaluation of DHS's New Policy Can Help Identify Progress toward Reducing Leave UseGAO-16-342: Published: Mar 23, 2016. Publicly Released: Mar 23, 2016.
Mar 17, 2016
Federal Real Property:GSA Could Better Identify Risks of Unforeseen Conditions in Repair and Alteration ProjectsGAO-16-273: Published: Mar 17, 2016. Publicly Released: Mar 17, 2016.
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