Recommended Books, Videos, and DVD's



AN ENORMOUS CRIME; The Definitive Account of American POWs Abandoned in Southeast Asia,

by Former Congressman Bill Hendon and Beth Stewart



From the Inside Flap

The dramatic history of living American soldiers left in Vietnam, and the first full account of the circumstances that left them there

An Enormous Crime is nothing less than shocking. Based on thousands of pages of public and previously classified documents, it makes an utterly convincing case that when the American government withdrew its forces from Vietnam, it knowingly abandoned hundreds of POWs to their fate. The product of twenty-five years of research by former Congressman Bill Hendon and attorney Elizabeth A. Stewart, An Enormous Crime brilliantly exposes the reasons why these American soldiers and airmen were held back by the North Vietnamese at Operation Homecoming in 1973 and what these men have endured since.

Despite hundreds of postwar sightings and intelligence reports telling of Americans being held captive throughout Vietnam and Laos, Washington did nothing. And despite numerous secret military signals and codes sent from the desperate POWs themselves, the Pentagon did not act. Even in 1988, a U.S. spy satellite passing over Sam Neua Province, Laos, spotted the twelve-foot-tall letters “USA” and immediately beneath them a huge, highly classified Vietnam War-era USAF/USN Escape & Evasion code in a rice paddy in a narrow mountain valley. The letters “USA” appeared to have been dug out of the ground, while the code appeared to have been fashioned from rice straw (see jacket photograph).

Tragically, the brave men who constructed these codes have not yet come home. Nor have any of the other American POWs who the postwar intelligence shows have laid down similar codes, secret messages, and secret authenticators in rice paddies and fields and garden plots and along trails in both Laos and Vietnam.

An Enormous Crime is based on open-source documents and reports, and thousands of declassified intelligence reports and satellite imagery, as well as author interviews and personal experience. It is a singular work, telling a story unlike any other in our modern history: ugly, harrowing, and true.

From the Bay of Pigs, where John and Robert Kennedy struck a deal with Fidel Castro that led to freedom for the Bay of Pigs prisoners, to the Paris Peace Accords, in which the authors argue Kissinger and Nixon sold American soldiers down the river for political gain, to a continued reluctance to revisit the possibility of reclaiming any men who might still survive, we have a story untold for decades. And with An Enormous Crime we have for the first time a comprehensive history of America’s leaders in their worst hour; of life-and-death decision making based on politics, not intelligence; and of men lost to their families and the country they serve, betrayed by their own leaders.


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Missing... Presumed Dead
formerly The Eagle Cried
A Film by Bill Dumas


"This is a true story of Roger Dumas, a Korean War POW abandoned in North Korea by the U.S. Government. His brother, BOB, has spent his life searching 24/7 for Roger and uncovered a political conspiracy that abandoned over 386 POWs. His unprecedented lawsuit exposed the tragedy and forced the U.S. Army to re-classify Roger a POW....

"....Bob discovered his brother was in fact a POW interned at the infamous Camp #5 and when the war ended, Roger, along with 387 other POWs were abandoned in order to end the war...."

"This is a story of one simple man's behemoth endeavor to uncover a most tragic U.S. policy that abandoned POWs in Korea...


To order in either video or DVD format visit MissingPresumedDead.com or click here for order form

We recommed the DVD, as it contains additional material not in the final cut.





The First Marine Captured in Vietnam
A Biography of Donald G. Cook

By Donald L. Price

Colonel Donald Gilbert Cook was the first U.S. Marine captured in Vietnam; the first and only Marine in history to earn the Medal of Honor while in captivity; and the first Marine POW to have a U.S. Navy ship named in his honor, the USS Donald Cook (DDG-75). On December 31, 1964, while serving as an observer with a South Vietnamese Marine Corps battalion on a combat operation against Viet Cong forces, he was captured near the village of Binh Gia in South Vietnam. Until his death in captivity in December 1967, Cook led ten POWs in a series of primitive jungle camps. His leadership and adherence to the U.S. Military Code of Conduct earned him the nation’s highest military award, but Cook never received historical attention commensurate with his enormous accomplishments.

This is the first book-length biography of Colonel Donald G. Cook. With background information on Cook’s life and prewar career, the book concentrates especially on his three years in captivity, and is the first book exclusively about a Marine POW held in South Vietnam. It covers the ten other POWs under his command, including Sgt. Harold George Bennett (the first American POW executed in Vietnam) and Sgt. Isaac Camacho (the first American POW to escape in Vietnam). The author outlines the circumstances surrounding Cook’s Medal of Honor citation and death. Throughout, Cook’s adherence to the Corps’ traditional leadership principles and knowledge of the Code of Conduct are highlighted, and his biography is a unique case study of exemplary leadership under extremely difficult conditions. Nearly 70 photographs are included.

About the Author
Retired Marine Colonel Donald L. Price earned the Silver Star, three Bronze Stars and the Purple Heart for service in Vietnam. He lives in Sierra Vista, Arizona.
ISBN 978-0-7864-2804-5

To order visit Amazon.com



Thick Luck

by David Combs


"Thick Luck provides an insiders view of U.S. Government and military efforts to recover POWs and MIAs from the war in Southeast Asia. It is a compelling story laced with adventure. It also describes the incredible sacrifices that members of Joint Task Force Full Accounting (now the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command) and the Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii endure to find our missing heroes. I led my Investigation Team on fourteen expeditions to the remote and dangerous jungles of Laos and Cambodia. This was the location of the secret war of Vietnam. The shadow filled jungles where Green Berets led Prairie Fire Teams, and Navy, Air Force, and Marine pilots fought behind the scenes. Over 600 of the these heroes never came home. My Investigation Team of military experts searched these forgotten battlefields for our missing comrades - we found them - and we brought them home." David Combs www.rangercombs.com

A word from Ann Holland, wife of T/Sgt. Melvin Holland POW/MIA Lima Site 85 -- "Dave Combs, the team leader who went to Phou Pha Thi, has written a book about his time in JTFFA, searching for our POW/MIA's. It has been a long time since anything has affected me but him talking about his time on the mountain has. I would recommend it to be mentioned Bits and Pieces. I think that other family members might like to read it."


To Order "Thick Luck" visit: http://www.booklocker.com/books/2593.html






Is Anybody Listening
by Barbara Birchim, wife of POW/MIA Jim Birchim with Sue Clark


From AuthorHouse.com – " Thirty-five long years and I was still seeking answers. If I could make someone in the government listen to the facts, I knew they'd want to act on them. After all, who wouldn't want to find one of our POW/MIAs from the Vietnam War?"

"IS ANYBODY LISTENING? tells of dignitaries, presidents and those involved with the POW/MIA issue as I've known it since November 1968 when my husband, a Special Forces officer, became missing-in-action."

"The pages reveal my feelings and torment during my many trips to Southeast Asia in search of answers, and my frustrations while wandering the halls of Washington D.C. for help."

"The book was written to show the issue's insidious cover-up and my commitment to the truth

To order visit Amazon.Com

or

Author House



The Flag: My Story : Kidnapped by Red China
by Steven E. Kiba


THE FLAG is the true story about Steve Kiba, Radio Operator on an unarmed B-29 during the Korean War. He graphically details the horrors that began with his being shot down over North Korea and being captured and ended almost 32 months later with his release from a political prison in Peking, Red China.

Steve vividly takes us from prison to prison on a "virtual reality" journey through the Red Chinese gulag system. He shares his feelings of fear, anxiety, frustration, despair, abandonment, and hopelessness. His story allows us to endure vicariously the POW/MIA experience: unending hours of solitary, excruciating pain of seemingly endless interrogation and re-education sessions, the constant pain of hunger and unquenched thirst, and the devastating effects of prolonged sleep deprivation.

Coupled with the pain of deprivation, we share his physical, emotional, and mental distress of living in utter filth, being denied even the most basic sanitary and hygienic needs, being daily threatened never to be released, and suffering the continuous barrage of false accusations: violating Red Chinese airspace, working for the CIA, and engaging in germ warfare.

In a showcase kangaroo trial on October 10, 1954, Steve and the other crew members of B-29 Stardust Four Zero were judged guilty of war crimes; on November 23rd., they were sentenced to prison terms ranging from four years for the enlisted airmen to ten years for Colonel Arnold. The other officers' terms ranged from five to eight years. From http://www.kibasflag.info/THE_FLAG.htm

To order visit Amazon.com


Soldier Dead

by Michael Sledge


From Columbia University Press -- "Skillfully incoroprating excerpts from interviews, personal correspondence and diaries, military records, and journalistic accounts -- as well as never-before published photographs and his own reflections -- Michael Sledge presents a clear concise, and compassionate story about what the dead mean to the living.

Thoughtout Soldier Dead, the voices of the fallen are heard, as are those of the family members and military personnel responsible for the dead before dinal dispositon. At times distrubing and at other times encouraging, they are always powerful as they speak of danger, duty, courage, commitment and care."

To order visit Amazon.Com




Rescue 007: The Untold Story of KAL 007 and Its Survivors
by Bert Schlossberg


One of the greatest and most poignant mysteries surrounding the downing of KAL 007 is summed up in the question, "Where are the bodies?"

This question haunted friends and family members from the very first day. We believe, of course, that there were no bodies because the passengers were taken before the plane was destroyed. There is no other answer. The following excerpt from Rescue 007: The Untold Story of KAL 007 and Its Survivors compares this air disaster with others that followed it through the years, including the space shuttle Challenger and TWA Flight 800. In all cases bodies, luggage and wreckage were recovered in great quantities. With both the Challenger and TWA 800, all bodies were recovered. To the list included in this excerpt, we may now add the recent tragic destruction of the space shuttle Columbia at the great altitude of over 200,000 feet. From this accident, debris scattered over hundreds of square miles, including body parts and a video tape recorded minutes before the tragedy, have been recovered.

Why nothing from KAL 007?

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The Men We Left Behind
By Mark Sauter, and James Sanders


:...reveals the tragic saga of America's fighting men who were condemned to life sentences in enemy captivity in Southeast Asia. While U.S. leaders knew their fate, the Pentagon chose to deceive the familis, and the American public, by declaring all their sons and husbands dead. The Men We Left Behind is the book Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, the Pentagon and even the U.S. Senate don't want you to read -- The horrifying, true story of American heroes abandoned by their own government. You many ot want to beleive it, but thosuands of never-before-revealed documents and exclusive interviews will convince you that it is true beyond any shadow of a doubt."

"[The authors] found letters and memos that show repeated efforts to limit or block the circulation of information on U.S. servicemen." -- Barbara Crossette, New York Times

To order The Men We Left Behind visit Amazon.com


Soldiers of Misfortune
By Mark Sauter, James Sanders, and R. Cort Kirkwood


"A fascinating and illuminating tome. This is a gold mine of information on past Soviet behaviour, or better, misbehavior."

Malcolm Toon,
former Chairman of the U.S. Russian Joint Commission on POW/MIAs and former Ambassador to the Soviet Union

"This book should be read not only by the American poeople but by every government official. Much of the information on World War II and Koera has never ben published.... it is voluminous and astounding"

John Miller,
former Congressmen and Member of the U.S./Russian Joint Commission on POW/MIAs


"Soldiers of Misfortune is the outrageous and compelling story of thousands of American POW's held captive by the Soviet Union and of the U.S. government officials, who lied on the most disgraceful cover-up in American history." Note: On Feb. 11, 2005 the American investigative arm of the U.S./Russian Joint Commission on POW/MIAs issued their 5th Edition of the Gulag Study and concluded; "Americans, including American servicemen, were imprisoned in the former Soviet Union . . . "

To view the Gulag Study 5th Edition click here

To order Soldiers of Misfortune visit Amazon.com



Betrayed
By Dr. Joseph Douglass Jr., PhD,


"Over 30,000 American POW/MIAs were left behind following WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War. American officials abandoned the men rather than confront the Communists who held them captive. This was done as a matter of policy. As one White House staff officer testified, "We couldn’t put pressure on the Soviet Union -- they had our prisoners and we couldn’t put pressure on them-- Our policy forbid us from doing it."

"Many of the men, the lucky ones, ended up in slave labor camps. The rest were tortured to death or used as human guinea pigs in ghastly medical experiments involving radiation and chemical and biological warfare agents. When there was nothing left of their bodies or minds worth testing, they were killed and their remains, cremated so that no one would ever learn what happened."

"Betrayed is the story of these war crimes and atrocities as told by a top Communist official who monitored much of the operation. Betrayed presents an inside view of the plans behind their capture and use as guinea pigs. Betrayed also examines what our leaders knew, the people who made the decision to abandoned the American captives, and the extensive efforts that were later taken to hide what had been done."

"For over eighty years there has been a conspiracy of silence to hide the crimes of the Communists. Betrayed is a unique effort to begin penetrating the Communist secrets that were never supposed to see the light of day."

To Order visit www.1stbooks.com/bookview/9840



Leave No Man Behind
By Garnett "Bill" Bell and George J. Veith


"The Vietnam War's POW/MIA issue has haunted America since the early stages of the war. Shrouded in controversy, a subject of great emotion amid charges of governmental conspiracy and Communist deceit, the possibility of American servicemen being held in secret captivity after the war's end has influenced U.S. policy toward Southeast Asia for three decades. Now, the first chief of the U.S. POW/MIA office in postwar Vietnam provides an insider's account of that effort. In an illuminating and deeply personal memoir, the government's top POW/MIA field investigator discusses the history of the search for missing Americans, reveals how the Communist Vietnamese stonewalled U.S. efforts to discover the truth, and how the standards for MIA case investigations were gradually lowered while pressure for expanded commercial and economic ties with communist Vietnam increased. Leave No Man Behind is the compelling story of one man's quest, at great individual cost, to find the truth about America's missing in action from the Vietnam War."

To order visit: http://www.goblinfernpress.com/bookpage_lnmb.html



One Day too Long
By Dr. Timothy Castle


"One legacy to the Vietnam War is a painful lesson in how not to wage war. The incident at the heart of One Day Too Long reveals in microcosm what went wrong in Vietnam, from the highest policy-making levels down the chain of command to what actually transpired on the field."

"On March 10, 1968, at the height of the war, eleven U.S. servicemen disappeared from a top-secret radar base in Laos, their loss never fully explained by the American government. What happened that fateful night, and why were American airmen stationed at "Lima Site 85"? Now, thirty years later, One Day Too Long recounts the harrowing story -- of government cover-ups, military miscalculations, and crucial policy errors -- and offers some measure of closure on this decades old mystery." "Because of the covert nature of the mission at Lima Site 85 - providing bombing instructions to U.S. Air Force tactical aircraft from the "safe harbor" of a nation that was supposedly neutral - the wives of the eleven servicemen were warned in no uncertain terms never to discuss the truth about their husbands' assignment. But one, Ann Holland, refused to remains silent. Timothy Castle draws on her personal records and recollections and upon a wealth of interviews with surviving servicemen and recently declassified information to tell the full story."


To Order Visit Amazon.com



Moscow Bound
 by John M.G. Brown


"Moscow BNound is the most thorougly documented and compreshesive book ever written on the subject of American and Allied prisoners of war who sidappeared in Soviet captivity fromt he time of the 1918 Allied intervention in Russia to the Veitnam War."

"It is the result ot a tem-year investigation that extended from CIA, White HOuse, State Department, and Pentagon offices, to military and intelligence files in the National Archives, and the hearing rooms o the U.S. Congress...."

"Moscow Bound documents how, following World war I and World War II, the secret withholding of U.S. prisoner of war by Lenin and Stalin was not revealed to the American poeple, to avoid prolonged warefare that would have resulted in may more casualties. The classified information about the missing American and Allied prisoners of two world wars constituted a hidden history fo U.S. - Soviet relations..."


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