I remember the POW/MIA movement in the 1980s that even went so far as to make and attend movies on that theme.
Videos are still being shown on military sites.
Wikipedia has an article on the topic.
Considerable speculation and investigation has contributed to a hypothesis that a significant number of missing U.S. soldiers from the Vietnam Conflict were captured as prisoners of war by Communist forces and kept as live prisoners after U.S. involvement in the war concluded in 1973. A vocal group of POW/MIA activists maintains that there has been a concerted conspiracy by the Vietnamese and American governments since then to hide the existence of these prisoners. The U.S. government has steadfastly denied that prisoners were left behind or that any effort has been made to cover up their existence. Popular culture has reflected the “live prisoners” theory, most notably in the 1985 film Rambo: First Blood Part II. Several congressional investigations have looked into the issue, culminating with the largest and most thorough, the United States Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs of 1991–1993 led by Senators John Kerry, Bob Smith, and John McCain. It found “no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia.
Is there “no compelling evidence ?”
This is an interesting, although lengthy, discussion of the matter.
That article was written in 2008 when John McCain was the candidate for President.
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 Washington—and even sworn testimony by two Defense secretaries that “men were left behind.” This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number—the documents indicate probably hundreds—of the U.S. 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.
Is this true ?
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 Lt. 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.
What about Tighe ? General Tighe died in 1994.
In 1986 he headed a five-month Pentagon review on whether American prisoners of war might still be held captive in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia – the panel concluded this might be the case.[3]
Where is that review ? Here is a NY Times obituary of General Tighe.
He headed a Pentagon panel that concluded in 1986, after a five-month review of intelligence files, that American prisoners of war were still alive in Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia. That was the first time in years that a Defense Department investigation had found that Vietnam might indeed still hold American prisoners of war. The report prompted dissent from many in the military, especially among those who felt that General Tighe was a zealot about the issue. Career in Intelligence
He said at the time that his panel could not say how many of the missing Americans were alive. The panel also concluded that there had been no effort by the military to conceal evidence that Americans were still being held.
Hmmmm.
Here is a dissenting opinion by someone who says he was on the commission.
In June 1985, I was reassigned to DIA as Chief of the Chinese Ground Forces analytic branch. At that time, USAF LTG Leonard Perroots was the newly-assigned DIA Director. Congressman Billy Hendon (R, NC) had been active in the MIA issue, accusing the Pentagon of covering up the “fact” of live US POWs. LTG Perroots responded in two ways. First, he formed a team from within DIA to review analytic and managerial processes in the DIA Special Office for POW-MIA Affairs. Second, he asked LTG Tighe and several other general officers to come in and do the same.
We on the internal team made some suggestions to LTG Perroots for process improvements in the Special Office and he re-assigned every one of us to the MIA Office — I became the chief of the analytic branch (Apr 1986 – December 1987) and later chief of the entire office (December 1987 – July 1990).
I don’t see this individual’s name on the piece.
Here is a Chicago Tribune article written at the time of the report.
The head of the group, Lt. Gen. Eugene Tighe Jr., a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in an interview that ”a large volume of evidence points” to the likelihood that Americans are being held by the Vietnamese government.
He said he doubted that the evidence was strong enough to give the United States added leverage to win the release of any prisoners. He suggested Vietnam might accept war reparations in return for the Americans.
The group’s report found that there was no cover-up of evidence that there are still prisoners, according to Tighe.
If there were prisoners left behind but no coverup, what does that mean ?
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.
Interesting that both sources suggest war reparations. Ransom.
Here is more, complete with scare quotes, from the anti-MIA site.
According to the figures known by the French Government, North Vietnam, at the end of 1954, had returned to the French authorities 12,900 prisoners from the French Expeditionary Corps in Indochina . . . We consider that the last French prisoners have been returned by the North Vietnamese less than three months after the conclusion of the Geneva agreements in 1954. We therefore consider this question is definitely settled. To the best of our knowledge, there does not exist any member of the French Expeditionary Corps in the Far East unwillingly kept in North Vietnam. (Testimony of Anita Lauve, Americans Missing in Southeast Asia: Hearings before the House Select Committee on Missing Persons in Southeast Asia, 94th Congress, 2nd Session, April 7, 1976.)
Was any ransom paid ?
News reports of the return of these French dead pointed out that in the years since 1954, the French had paid a total of several million dollars for maintenance of the cemeteries. Also, the French paid for the exhumation operation, another few million dollars. The MIA “activist” cult misrepresents and distorts the facts of this matter by claiming that the French paid millions of dollars for the return of thousands of French POWs from Vietnam years after the end of the French Indochina War.
The “Activist cult” beings me to doubt the objectivity of whoever wrote that piece,
Here is another piece on the topic of French POWs in Vietnam
In october 1954, France freed 65,000 Vietnamese prisoners. Vietnam only freed 11,000 out of an estimated 37,000 kept in more than 100 camps, often in mountainous regions. The prisoners were routinely subjected to hard labor and political reeducation.
After a thorough review by an ad hoc half-French half-Vietnamese UN committee it was estimated most prisoners kept by the Vietnamese died (the French association of former POWs in Indochina estimates an average of 60% of French POWs died in the camps). The number of French POWs still under custody of the Vietnamese army was revised to 6,450.
I think the issue was whether the French paid ransom to recover their POWs and that is not addressed. I don’t think the issue is whether POWs were kept for years before being ransomed.
Here is yet another piece about Schanberg and his article on McCain.
Former defense secretaries Melvin Laird and James Schlesinger testified under oath to the Select Committee that the POWs were left behind, Schanberg wrote, and “said they based their conclusions on strong intelligence data — letters, eyewitness reports, even direct radio contacts.” And Schanberg wrote, 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 12 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.
Schanberg’s article ran in “The Nation,” a left wing magazine during the 2008 election campaign, but he had a good reputation for reporting on Cambodia.