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Embattled Last Firebase POW/MIA Vigil Braces For Another Assault

By Ted Sampley

U.S. Veteran Dispatch - October 2000 Issue

Two reports appearing in the Washington Post on the same day, this month, signaled for the Vietnam vets who man the 24-hour Last Firebase POW/MIA vigil to hunker down and brace for another assault.

In a guest column for the Post, David G. Young fumed about how ugly the POW/MIA vigil demonstration sites located near the Lincoln Memorial are with their "bearded, tattooed societal discontents" who sell Vietnam War related "books, pins, patches and any other paraphernalia."

"Self-described Vietnam veterans" and "extreme zealots," he editorialized, who "continue to hold the belief, yet a quarter-century after Saigon's fall, that Vietnam or other Communist countries still held American soldiers against their will."

Washington's "serene environment is being spoiled" by the presence of these "defiant squatters," and time is long overdue for the Park Service to cancel their "free-speech" permits, Young concluded.

If Mr. Young had bothered to pick up the phone, he could have called our office in Kinston, N.C. and learned that our vigil is operated by the Last Firebase Veterans Archives Project, a non-profit group. Its board of directors and membership include POW/MIA family members and "real" Vietnam veterans. And yes, we do sell veteran related items. That's how we raise money to pay for the vigil.

The Last Firebase exists because in 1986, we pledged to "stand vigil near the Wall until all U.S. prisoners of war known to have been held by the communist are returned or accounted for honestly." That accounting has never happened.

We POW activists have gotten used to being verbally abused. Such attacks appear periodically in the Washington papers, so ordinarily, we shrug them off as babbling from pencil pushers desperate for somebody to bash.

But this time was different.

Post staff writer Steve Vogel, reported the same day that Jan Scruggs, chairman of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund had unveiled plans "to build an education center at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on The Mall."

The Memorial Fund, according to Vogel, already has the support of Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), both Vietnam combat veterans who introduced legislation to establish the center.

"Many of the 4.4 million annual visitors to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial are students too young to fully comprehend the meaning of the memorial," Hagel told the Post. "The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Education Center will help to teach these individuals about the human side of war and the impact that the Vietnam War continues to have on the United States."

The problem is that Scruggs is planning to build the so-called "education center" within a few feet of the Last Firebase vigil. There is no way the vengeful Scruggs is going to allow POW/MIA groups to exist anywhere near his "education center," especially those with opinions that might contradict his interpretation of what the Vietnam War was all about.

He has been seething over the POW/MIA movement since 1991 when the Last Firebase started refusing to pay the Memorial Fund royalties on POW/MIA t-shirts the activists sold near the Wall.

Alleging "copyright infringement," the Memorial Fund sued the Last Firebase organizations in federal court for over $400,000 in "royalties."

When the Last Firebase activists did not fold and run, Scruggs began a long, bitter campaign against them, taking shots at their movement whenever an opportunity was presented.

Scruggs wasted no time jabbing deeply into the heart of the MIA issue when, he as chairman of the Memorial Fund, went public saying time has come for the United States to stop spending money on the POW/MIA issue. He said it was a "lost cause" and that continued "unfounded" accusations about Vietnam still holding U.S. POWs was hindering the "reconciliation and healing" between the peoples of Vietnam and America.

He let the pro-Vietnam trade lobbyist know he was on their side when the Associated Press reported him saying the Vietnamese were acting in good faith accounting for U.S. missing in action and that the U.S. should "reciprocate" with normalized trade relations.

Then Scruggs set out with malice to destroy the credibility of the POW/MIA activists and our fund-raising capabilities at the Last Firebase vigil. He wrote editorials describing us as "vendors" and "hawkers," who were destroying the "integrity" and "heritage" of the Vietnam Veteran and Lincoln Memorials. He wrote that our 24-hour POW/MIA vigil sites were "an ugly presence" and that the "courts or Congress must end this travesty" by "evicting" us from federal land.

In a July 13, 1993 USA Today guest editorial, Scruggs actually compared himself to Jesus Christ and his campaign against the Last Firebase to that of the Messiah overturning the tables of moneychangers and chasing them out of the temple. He rationalized that activists should not be allowed to sell t-shirts and POW/MIA bracelets near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial because "moneychangers" do not belong in a "place of worship."

Like Mr. Young, most of Washington's press bought into his spin giving us no opportunity to defend ourselves.

For the record, the Last Firebase vigil operates with permits, issued by the National Park Service, in areas where the Park Service has for years allowed private contractors to sell beer, hotdogs, ice cream, posters, pens, film, hats, trinkets, etc. Activists maintain the vigil 24-hours-a-day through the heat and rain of summer and the cold, sleet and snow of winter.

In 1995, the National Park Service joined Scruggs' crusade to eradicate the POW/MIA activists from the Mall and passed regulations outlawing t-shirt sales in Washington's federal parks. Prior to the new regulations, the Park Service had recognized the constitutional right of groups to raise funds to support their demonstrations by selling t-shirts imprinted with advocacy messages. The activists banned together and appealed the regulations.

Scruggs won a crucial battle June 6, 1997, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia affirmed the Park Service ban on the sale of "expressive t-shirts."

Judge Laurence H. Silberman, writing for the unanimous three-judge panel, said the court "does not deny that the sale of a t-shirt is expressive" and that demonstrators are free to give their t-shirts away, but they have no constitutional right to sell them on federal land.

Los Angeles Attorney David M. Liberman, who represented the activists, said the decision did a lot of damage to the specific type of speech at issue and the broader important issue of fund-raising.

"This is an extremely dangerous decision. Fund-raising is critical to demonstrations," he said. "Without the right to raise funds to pay for the cost of the demonstration, what value is the right to have them?"

Under the new regulations, demonstrators are restricted to sell only items which are in less demand such as bumper stickers, books, and pamphlets.

Keeper Of The "Holy Shrine"

In 1982, Scruggs became a national figure and American folk hero for pushing his dream of a National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington until it became a reality when it was dedicated on Veteran's Day of that year.

According to an agreement, signed by President Ronald Reagan, conveying ownership of the memorial to the National Park Service, Scruggs' Memorial Fund, which raised the money to build the memorial Wall, should have dissolved in1984. But, Scruggs who is chairman of the Memorial Fund refused to let it be retired.

Instead, he made the Memorial Fund a permanent organization with an "exclusive" board of directors. His excuse for hanging on was that "the Wall is a holy shrine, a place where vets come to be healed" and he, as its natural keeper needed the Memorial Fund to ensure proper care of the "shrine."

Some cracks had been found in the Wall's black granite panels and Scruggs was asking the public for "emergency" money to buy new panels.

Memorial Fund Investigated

Periodically, the Memorial Fund has been the subject of national news reports questioning the millions of dollars it keeps raising for "maintenance of the Wall."

In 1994, Pennsylvania Attorney General Ernie Preate investigated the Memorial Fund's activities after receiving complaints. He told CBS This Morning in April of that year, "This organization raised $4.6 million over the last three years on the claims that it is going to maintain--use that money to maintain the Wall. In fact, under our conservative estimates, we can see that it--only about $230,000, or only 5 percent, has actually gone into events and maintenance of the--the Wall area."

The reports have clearly pointed out that the U.S. Department of the Interior took over all responsibilities of maintenance and security of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and all its grounds when President Reagan signed the conveyance agreement.

National Park Service spokesman Arnold Goldstein told CBS that the National Park Service and the American taxpayer spend more than $750,000 a year to take care of the Wall. He said it was a sum that "adequately covers the needs of the monument.'

Goldstein told CBS the cracks were natural geological cracks that formed in the granite and that "the cracks were in the granite when the blocks of granite were brought to the United States."

Since the original $8,000,000 the Memorial Fund raised to build the memorial, it has collected another $10,000,000 to $20,000,000 in donations. POW/MIA activists believe much of the new money came from business interests who were lobbying the U.S. government to abandon its demands for Vietnam to account for missing American prisoners of war so that normalized trade relations with Vietnam could be achieved. No one in the public sector seems to know from where Memorial Fund's money comes or how it is spent.

Scruggs Never Complained
Until Royalties Stopped

In any case, Scruggs' campaign against t-shirt sales on the Mall was never about the "desecration of Washington's memorials" by "t-shirt venders." He was quite happy with the t-shirt sales going on at the half-dozen or so vet vigils located on the sidewalks leading to the Wall.

Scruggs never complained until late 1991 after I refused to allow the Homecoming II vigil to pay the Memorial Fund royalties Scruggs was demanding. He became outraged.

He had letters sent to me threatening to sue if Homecoming II did not hand over the money he said was owed to the Wall. Scruggs claimed the Memorial Fund owned a copyright on the "Three Servicemen Statue" and that Homecoming II had violated the copyright by printing images of the memorial on POW/MIA t-shirts.

I replied to Scruggs threats in writing reasserting Homecoming II's position that we were not going to pay royalties for using the image of the statue on our printed materials because the Vietnam Veterans Memorial belonged to the public.

On behalf of Homecoming II's board of directors, I did, however, make an offer to purchase several granite replacement panels for the Wall to replace the ones with cracks. Scruggs never responded to our offer.

Other vigils were paying the Memorial Fund the "homage" demanded by Scruggs. The chairman of one nonprofit group, which sold veteran related t-shirts near the Wall, told me his organization paid Scruggs' Memorial Fund as much as 25 percent of their gross sales totaling more than $90,000 in "royalties" over a period of several years. He said he has the canceled checks to prove it.

Scruggs' Memorial Fund Sues
Over Use Of Image

Armed with a battery of $500 an hour Washington, D.C. attorneys, the Memorial Fund and Frederick Hart filed a copyright infringement suit in November 1991, listing as defendants, Homecoming II Project, Red Hawk Inc. (my construction company) and me personally. Memorial Fund attorneys were demanding more than $400,000 for royalties and attorney fees.

Homecoming II and Red Hawk Inc., the suit alleged, had sold POW/MIA t-shirts imprinted with the image of the of the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial "Three Servicemen" statue, of which Hart was the sculptor. The Memorial Fund and Hart, a Vietnam War draft dodger and protestor, jointly hold a copyright on the image of the statue.

Homecoming II's attorney argued that the "Three Servicemen" statue was a national symbol belonging to all the people and that "a national memorial maintained by taxpayers and located on public property could not be copyrighted."

The Memorial Fund agreed that the "Three Servicemen" statue was on public land and cared for with tax dollars, but argued that the statue was not a national symbol. Their attorneys said in court that the statue was "nothing more than a piece of military art" which had been lawfully copyrighted by the Memorial Fund.

Spending more than $100,000 of money solicited from the public for repairing the Wall, Scruggs' Memorial Fund thoroughly trounced our POW/MIA activist group in federal court.

To justify their demand for $400,000 in royalties, Memorial Fund attorneys told the court that I and Homecoming II had, over a three year period, sold $1, 849,683.00 worth of t-shirts bearing the Memorial Fund's copyrighted image.

Scruggs' lawyers had unscrupulously combined the not-for-profit POW/MIA organization tax records with those of my for-profit construction and screen printing corporation. Homecoming II's lawyer protested, but the judge allowed the nearly $2,000,000.00 figure to stand as evidence.

On December 10, 1992, Judge Charles R. Richey, entered a judgement of $359,442.92 against Homecoming II Project, Red Hawk Inc. and Ted Sampley.

To Set The Record Straight

From 1989 to 1991, the nonprofit Homecoming II group generated in donations and gross sales of POW/MA t-shirts, bracelets, bumper stickers, pins and etc., a total of $802,512.00.

Red Hawk Inc., for the same three years, generated $1,047,171.00 in gross sales from building contracts and the wholesale of a variety of screen printed garments including the POW/MIA t-shirts sold to Homecoming II.

Keep in mind that the $1, 849,683.00 is the combined "gross income" of two separate organizations registered with the IRS. I make the distinction because a number of organizations and individuals, Scruggs included, have grossly distorted these figures.

In a memo sent to other veteran's organizations, Scruggs wrote: "For several years a man named Ted Sampley has been making vast sums of money selling t-shirts, pins, posters, and other items to tourist at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the years between 1989 and 1991 alone, Sampley reported to the IRS $1,849,683.00 in the sale of t-shirts."

Scruggs then asked rhetorically in the memo: "How much money did he donate to the Memorial Fund, the organization that takes responsibility for maintaining the Wall . . . Not a penny."

In 1994, former Washington Times reporter Susan Katz Keating wrote in her book Prisoners of Hope, Exploiting the POW/MIA Myth in America, "Sampley's reported earnings from the cash-only t-shirt concession amounted to nearly $2 million over three years."

Keating claimed Prisoners of Hope exposed "scam artists" who exploited the families of missing servicemen. Aside from a volume of inaccuracies contained in her book, Keating's attacks on Homecoming II and me personally are contradictory because Homecoming II's leadership was made up of POW/MIA families including myself.

The $1,849, 683.00 paid the expenses for operating the POW/MIA vigil 24 hours-a-day, materials for resale, labor to run construction crews and printing presses, building materials, vehicles, light and heating bill, taxes and etc.

The money also paid the cost of operating three POW/MIA offices, one in Kinston, N.C., one in Northern Virginia and another 10,000 miles away in Thailand.

Senate POW/MIA Committee Takes Its Shot At The Activists

At the same time Scruggs was suing Homecoming II, the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs took it upon its self to investigate the finances of the major POW/MIA groups which had been giving the U.S. government such a hard time about "leaving live American POWs behind in captivity."

Investigators from the Select Committee subpoenaed tax records from groups all over the United States including Homecoming II along with my personal financial records.

From those records, a staffer from the Select Committee wrote in the Select Committee Final Report: "Homecoming II reported to the IRS that it paid Ted Sampley, its founder and the publisher of U.S. Veteran News and Report, more than $300,000, ostensibly for t-shirts sold at Homecoming II's stand at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C."

The Select Committee statement is misleading. That money was not paid to Ted Sampley. It was paid to Red Hawk Inc. over a period of years in exchange for screen printed POW/MIA t-shirts purchased wholesale by Homecoming II.

Red Hawk Inc. proceeds from t-shirt sales was used to produce the U.S. Veteran Dispatch, of which I am publisher/writer. The vet paper, which has for years criticized the U.S. government for leaving live U.S. POWs behind after the end of the Vietnam War, is distributed free.

From 1989 to 1991, Red Hawk Inc., which owned the paper, printed and gave away 20 to 30 thousand copies per month of the 16 page U.S. Veteran News and Report (now after Scruggs' law suit, it is the U.S. Veteran Dispatch owned by Sampley Enterprises Inc.) Homecoming II activists have handed out tens of thousands of copies from the Last Firebase vigil in Washington.

The U.S. Veteran Dispatch can be found on the internet at: http://www.usvetdsp.com/main.shtml

Scruggs and Hart Tried To Foreclose

With the judgement in hand, Scruggs quickly moved to foreclose on Homecoming II and me, its non-paid chairman. Homecoming II, which could hardly afford attorney fees, was forced to dissolve. Red Hawk also had no money and had to be liquidated. Both organizations were dissolved before Scruggs attorneys could get to them.

Not to be deterred by such trivialities as bankrupt organizations, the spiteful Scruggs hired lawyers in my hometown, Kinston, North Carolina. They placed judgements on my personal property and the Sheriff set a date to auction off anything that I owned.

On the day set for the auction, a group of my veteran friends showed up on the court house steps to protest the foreclosure.

Scruggs backed down when the press started calling the Memorial Fund asking for an explanation as to why a veterans organization was foreclosing on a decorated Vietnam veteran and his wife, whose father, SFC Robert D. Owen, is still missing in action and listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.

Scruggs' Memorial Fund Refuses
To Remove The Judgement

Although the obstinate Scruggs had backed away from a public foreclosure and sale, he refused to have removed the $359,000 judgement that was against me personally. The judgement has haunted me for years and has effectively destroyed my credit and anything that I own or sell can, at anytime, be claimed by Scruggs' Memorial Fund

Last year, after Hurricane Floyd sent 14 feet of flood water across my property destroying a house I was moving into and every thing in it, I qualified for a loan from the Small Business Administration (SBA).

But when SBA representatives found the Memorial Fund's judgement, they balked at lending me the money I so badly needed to rebuild. So, I hired a lawyer to contact the Memorial Fund and request that their judgement against me be removed.

The Memorial Fund, which has raised millions of dollars pitching to potential donors, the "healing powers of the Wall," gave an emphatic "No."

Lucky for me, the SBA was more compassionate and loaned the money anyway. I am now in the process of rebuilding my house.

Homecoming II created The Last Firebase POW/MIA Vigil

Homecoming II established The Last Firebase in 1986, adjacent to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. to accommodate a Vietnam veteran on a POW/MIA hunger strike.

In 1985, Gino Casanova, a former Marine, fasted for 51 days crammed in a seven foot bamboo cage on a snow-covered cow pasture in Kent, Wa.. He lost 43 pounds and was planning to fast for 61-days.

After the national press reported that Casanova's health was quickly deteriorating, President Reagan called him on a portable phone and convinced him to end the strike. Reagan promised Casanova that he would meet with him and other activists at a later date to discuss the lingering POW/MIA issue..

Several weeks later, Casanova called the White House and asked for the promised meeting. Reagan's aides brushed him aside, denying the President had promised a meeting.

The Last Firebase

In 1986, Casanova began a second bamboo cage hunger strike, this time supported by Homecoming II at the newly created Last Firebase. Casanova again stopped his hunger strike, this time after Ross Perot called him and promised to bring the POW issue up with the White House.

Perot lived up to that promise, but he too was rebuffed by the White House. Relations between Perot and the White House quickly deteriorated, with Perot several years later forming a third party, becoming a major factor in the Bush and Clinton presidential campaigns.

After Casanova ended his hunger strike, the Homecoming II activists pledged to continue to operate their vigil until all the POWs had come home.

The Last Firebase soon became the heartbeat of the organization, providing activists with a powerful tool for educating the public on the POW/MIA issue, a resource for raising badly needed funds and a rallying point for more protest demonstrations.

Homecoming II named its vigil the Last Firebase on my recommendation. I suggested to the Nevins that such a name would be fitting because of the mission the activists were taking on.

The term "firebase" originated from a well known fire support strategy developed by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. Built on hilltops or areas of strategic importance, firebases were entrenchments on which heavy artillery pieces were brought in and secured, providing 360-degree fire support for American and South Vietnamese forces operating beneath the surrounding (often raincloud-covered) triple canopy jungle.

In many cases, the firebase, a virtual fortress of strength, was the only available support for the ground forces whose objective was to search out and destroy Viet Cong guerrillas and the North Vietnamese Army regulars who were using the thick jungle terrain to their deadly advantage.

The Last Firebase in Washington, D.C., similar to its namesake, provides strength and support for many POW/MIA family members who have repeatedly asked, to no avail, for help from U.S. government agencies in resolving the fate of their loved ones who were left behind after the shooting stopped in Vietnam.

At the Last Firebase vigil, literature on the abandonment of the POW/MIAs was made available free to the public as well as information on Agent Orange, veteran's rights and POW/MIA biographical information.

The veterans, POW/MIA family members and concerned citizens who operate the Last Firebase are POW/MIA activists. They work very hard and have to endure much controversy and harassment from some in the U.S. government and the private sector who protest the existence of the Last Firebase near the memorial.

Until 1997, when the National Park Service finally outlawed the sale of veteran related T-shirts on Park Service land, the Last Firebase raised money by offering to the public tangible items,such as POW/MIA bracelets, books or t-shirts with POW/MIA or veteran related messages. The t-shirt was in effect a walking billboard advocating support for American veterans wherever the wearer went. Today, the Last Firebase survives by offering for sale the other mentioned items.

Funds generated at The Last Firebase have been used to finance the nucleus of nationwide, and sometimes international, campaigns designed to inform the public that American prisoners of war were left behind alive and in captivity after the end of the Vietnam War.

In the 1980s and 90s, the Last Firebase led in the effort to encourage the government of Vietnam, still a hard-core communist slave state, to make public its secret files and provide the truth about what happened to our missing veterans.

Standing as a highly visible beacon of hope for the truth, the Last Firebase vigil remains today a reminder to the Washington establishment that this tragic issue is of monumental proportion and that it affects the lives of thousands of families, friends and loved ones of America's missing in action.

Operating day and night, 365 days a year, the Last Firebase has distributed, free of charge, millions of pages of literature about veterans' issues and POW/MIA biographical material.

Last Firebase activists talk to and answer the questions of hundreds of people a day who visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial site.

The POW House

Dubbed the "POW House" by USA Today, the Last Firebase's branch office is located in Annandale, Virginia, 15 minutes from Washington, D.C.

A black and white POW/MIA flag identifies the purpose of the house, a refuge for those who fight to bring America's servicemen home.

Vigil activists live at The POW House where visiting activists and POW/MIA family members stay free when they are in Washington to lobby members of Congress or attend hearings. The house quickly became a sanctuary for POW/MIA activists who travel to Washington seeking information, help and publicity in their search for missing servicemen.

There Was Once A POW House

On The Mekong

There was once another POW House. It was located near the Mekong River in Thailand and was the focal point of POW/MIA activism in Southeast Asia.

Known as the Mekong Project, it was set up to support a POW/MIA reward fund. The reward had been organized by a former congressman, Billy Hendon and a former POW, retired Navy Captain Red McDaniel.

Advertised as internationally as The Reward Fund, it was a 2.4 million dollar reward offer supported by pledges of $100,000 each from 21 U.S. Congressmen, the Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina, Hendon and McDaniel.

The purpose of the reward offer was to entice Vietnamese, Lao and Cambodian citizens who had knowledge or control of POWs to defect with or engineer the release of an American POW.

Last Firebase activists were assigned to the Mekong Project as contacts. Included in the group were doctors and nurses who set up informal medical clinics for the Thai villagers. Many of the dedicated activists paid their own travel expenses.

To compliment the Mekong Project, the volunteers also helped locals in civic and safety activities. Unfortunately, after about a year, the Last Firebase could no longer afford to finance the POW House in Thailand. This was due to the tremendous attorney fees Homecoming II incurred defending itself against Scruggs' attempts to shut down The Last Firebase.

Without money to operate, The Mekong Project died.

The Truth Litigation

Another project, the Truth Litigation, was a legal effort seeking the release of government information on evidence of live sightings of POWs, governmental negotiations and information on the capture and imprisonment of POWs.

The Last Firebase paid thousands of dollars in attorney fees supporting POW/MIA families in their search for information about their missing men.

They All Worked Together

All of the projects worked together. The Last Firebase Project disseminated information to thousands of people. With the Truth Litigation, the activists tried to find out why and how the POWs were left behind.. The Biography Project kept the public constantly aware of each individual missing serviceman's case.

In addition to their ongoing projects, the Last Firebase had been involved in or helped sponsor many national events to bring focus to the issue.

Operation Care Package

One of the earliest Last Firebase demonstrations was "Operation Care Package," an attempt at supplying live POWs with items from home. The packages were delivered to the Lao Embassy in Washington, on Jan. 27, 1987, a significant date marking the 14th anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords.

Laos did not negotiate with the U.S. government during the Peace Accords and withheld its list of U.S. prisoners of war. Of the nearly 600 American servicemen that went missing in Laos during the war, none were released.

Numerous veterans and POW/MIA groups worked hand in hand on the care packages, assembling about 2500.

The packages contained Bibles, food, clothing, toiletries and small luxuries such as stationary. They were also intended as a statement to the Laotian government, that the families and veteran's groups knew that Laos was still holding prisoners.

The groups left about 80 packages at the door of the embassy, but were prevented from leaving the rest by D.C. police and the U.S. Secret Service.

As a protest against U.S. government officials not allowing the POW/MIA activists to leave the packages on the steps of the Lao Embassy, the remaining packages were delivered to the homes of National Security Advisor Frank Carlucci and Col. Dick Childress, a White House representative.

"Marching On The White House"

In July, 1987, over 500 POW/MIA family members and activists protested with a march to the White House while Secretary of State George Shultz was speaking at the annual meeting of the National League of POW/MIA Families.

Shultz had been telling the families that the president was doing an excellent job in dealing with the POW/MIA issue. The activists had been present at the meeting, but walked out in protest, leaving Schultz largely ignored.

The Last Firebase participated in or sponsored many subsequent POW/MIA marches in Washington.

The Nakhon Phanom Balloon Release

Last Firebase activists helped sponsor a trip in September 1987 by former U.S. congressman Bill Hendon and a group of seven POW/MIA family members and activists to the Thai-Laotian border town of Nakhon Phanom, Thailand.

Hendon's group had planned to float leaflets, attached to helium balloons, across the Mekong River into communist Laos. The leaflets offered a $2.4 million reward for the return of U.S. POW/MIAs.

The balloon launch was stopped by Thai authorities who said they did not want the activists to harm Thai-Laotian relations.

Police superintendent, Col. Hemaraj Dharithia, threatened to have the balloons shot down if the activists released them but he allowed the group to continue with their alternate plan, a river launch.

The activists waded into the Mekong and released thousands of the leaflets encased in plastic bags.

Laos and the U.S. State Department criticized the event and Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam denied holding any prisoners.

POW/MIA Balloons Over
the White House

POW/MIA family members and Last Firebase activists joined Hendon on May 25, 1988 and released 2400 helium balloons near the south lawn of the White House . Many of the balloons carried biographies and pictures of POWs. They were released just before the president's helicopter took off for a Moscow summit.

The day before, activists had delivered a letter to President Reagan requesting that he seek help from Soviet leader Gorbachev in locating POWs left in Indochina. The White House did not respond.

President Reagan, while in Moscow, did agree to help find Soviet MIAs when he would be in Afghanistan, causing a POW/MIA family group to request an explanation as to why the president was willing to aid the Soviet Union in locating their MIAs, but not the Americans who were still missing after the Vietnam War.

The White House again ignored their questions and would not meet with the POW/MIA family members.

Father's Day in Jail

On Father's Day, June 19, 1988, six POW/MIA activists, some of whom were board members of the Last Firebase, chained themselves to the White House fence in order to call attention to Reagan's eight years of failure with the POW/MIA issue. The group included sons and daughters of missing servicemen and spent Father's Day in jail after being arrested.

The president's helicopter, en route to the Economic summit in Canada, was delayed twenty minutes due to the activist's actions. After being released from jail, two of the group, Michael Clark and Karen Standerwick, delivered Father's Day cards to the Lao Embassy.

These actions served to show the public and the government that there are those dedicated to finding out the truth about America's POW/MIAs, regardless of the consequences.

Dong the Cong I

Vietnamese currency, known as Dong, combined with the word Cong, meaning Vietnamese communists, provided the name for two more operations by activists to publicize the POW/MIA reward offer in Southeast Asia.

"Dong the Cong" originated when Vietnam veteran and former Army nurse Lynn Hampton, traveled to Vietnam in July 1988 and secretly distributed over 3000 Vietnamese currency bills (Dong) marked with the reward message in Vietnam.

Hampton, a Christian POW/MIA activist who wanted to take "Christian action" to help our missing servicemen, took advantage of an invitation to join a group of five on a missionary trip to Vietnam.

Prior to the trip, the leader of the group, Rev. Bill Kimball, had stated "we will not mention POWs to the Vietnamese because the Gospel comes first."

Hampton was so shocked at what she perceived as Rev. Kimball's lack of compassion for American POWs that she contacted me. Together, we fashioned a plan in which Hampton, once in Vietnam, would slip away from her group and take a cab to an old French prison in southwest Vietnam. The prison had been named in government intelligence reports as having American POWs as late as 1983. Once there, she planned to question the local villagers about the possibility of Americans being held inside the prison.

Due to the poor economy in Vietnam, Hampton had no luck in securing transportation to the prison. She quickly devised an alternate plan.

Hampton purchased Vietnamese money (Dong) on the black market for approximately 200 U.S. dollars.

Late at night in the privacy of her hotel room, Hampton meticulously hand wrote the POW/MIA reward offer on each Dong bill. She included the phone number of former POW Red McDaniel at the American Defense Institute in Washington, D.C. Money is especially cherished in Vietnam and the bills carrying the reward message would change hands all over the country.

The next day, Hampton discreetly left Dong notes scattered around Hanoi. It took a while for Vietnamese authorities to figure out the marked money was coming from the missionary group, but they never suspected Hampton.

Dong the Cong II

In October 1988, I lead another group of POW/MIA family members and activists to Khong Chiam, Thailand, where we floated thousands of leaflets containing the POW reward offer down the Mekong River into Laos

Our group rented small boats and illegally crossed into Laos, distributing ziplock bags containing U.S., Vietnamese, Thai and Russian currency stamped with the reward offer.

We floated nearly 5000 mixed currency bills down the river, which we hoped would be picked up and read by Lao fisherman and villagers.

"Every time that money passes hands, the Lao will read about the reward offer and maybe, just maybe, somebody will try to bring a live American prisoner to freedom," Doctor Bruce Adams, brother of MIA Steven Adams, told the international press when they asked why the money had been stamped with the reward offer.

Adams, Hampton, former Marine Bill Sullivan and I were arrested by the Thai Navy when we reentered the Thai side of the Mekong River. We were released four hours later on a promise not to cross the river again.

Two other activists in the group, Donna Long, a freelance journalist, and Jim Copp, a Vietnam veteran and school teacher, had already been captured several days earlier in a Lao village while distributing the currency.

We were delighted with these events, because the arrest drew the attention of the international press to the existence of the POW/MIA reward.

However, we had a serious problem . . . how would we get Long and Copp out of a communist jail?

41 Days in a Communist Jail

Donna Long and Jim Copp were arrested October 3, 1988 in Ban Mai, Laos, a small fishing village on the Mekong River. For 41 days, the Lao communists held Long and Copp in captivity.

The two were terrorized and bullied, denied food, interrogated endlessly and kept in solitary confinement. Copp lost about 25 pounds during their ordeal.

Tired of waiting for the government to negotiate for the release of their fellow activists, I, backed by over 1500 veterans who had converged on Washington, D.C. for Veteran's Day, threatened to stage an "aggressive" march on the Lao Embassy. The State Dept., obviously intimidated, suddenly found a way to get Long and Copp out of the Lao jail.

State Dept. representative Don Stader went to the Last Firebase and told us that if we would call off the march on the Lao Embassy and provide him with $1500, he would wire the money to Laos and Long and Copp would be released that very day.

Homecoming II and the veterans passed the hat and collected the money. Long and Copp were released that day. We had paid their ransom.

During their captivity, while Long and Copp were being transferred to Vientiane, Laos, they saw and spoke to a black man in Paske.

Later, one of their guards told them he was an American. When Long and Copp told the State Department about the incident, the State Department said they were wrong.

Long became convinced during her stay that Laos views POWs as war criminals and would never allow them to be released. She felt that the U.S. government's pursuit of bones in Laos, instead of live POWs, justified the activists' decision to support private reward offers.

Prayers and Banana Leaf
Boats Cross the Mekong

Vietnam vet Michael B. Caron of Kansas and three other members of the Homecoming II Project Mekong group enlisted the aid of children in Nakhom Phanom, Thailand, in November 1988 to help transport and float 600 foam boats across the Mekong River dividing Thailand and communist Laos.

Each boat, six inches in diameter, carried a message in Thai pinned by a bamboo toothpick that read: "This boat represents one of about 600 Americans who are still unaccounted for in Laos. May this effort appease the spirits of those who have died and help bring to their families those who are still living."

The launch coincided with the ancient Thai "Loy Krathong" festival. On the full moon of each November, Thais set banana leaf boats on bodies of water and offer prayers to the water spirits.

At that time, the Mekong Project group included Caron, group leader Dr. Amos Townsend, a former Air Force flight surgeon from New Hampshire; Vietnam vets Michael Bates, from California, and George Handyside, from Texas.

Homecoming II Mekong Group Arrested In Thailand

Several weeks following the launching of the mini-boats, three members of the Homecoming II group were arrested by the Thai police in December 1988.

Led by Townsend, the group was attempting to publicize the POW reward by passing POW/MIA reward leaflets along the banks on the Thai side of the Mekong River.

Police authorities initially charged Townsend, Bates and Handyside with placing POW/MIA reward messages on boats during a religious observance, but changed the charge after the group was arrested because no such Thai law exists.

"Their behavior indicated that they were planning to launch leaflet activities, but we have no law to charge them on that, so we had to charge them with failing to inform immigration police of a change of residence.

"This is meant as a deterrent," police official Pol.Lt. Komsan Suerin said. Suerin added that the arrests stemmed from instructions from Bangkok to stop three Americans from releasing POW/MIA reward notices into the Mekong River between Thailand and Laos. The Homecoming II group was fined $750 and released.

Another Hunger Strike
in a Bamboo Cage

Al Ziegler, a Vietnam vet and former Army Captain, had always been motivated, but desperation finally drove him to act in an astounding manner. Al, a member of Homecoming II and the Vietnam Veterans of America, staged a hunger strike in Washington, D.C., as another way to focus attention on the U.S. government's lack of action on getting a full accounting of missing POWs.

Ziegler, who received serious wounds while serving in Vietnam with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, wanted public access to government documents concerning POWs in Southeast Asia.

He began his strike September 22, 1989, at the Last Firebase vigil in a bamboo cage typical of the ones used to imprison POWs in Vietnam. Ziegler declared that he would not end his strike until the U.S. government demanded from Laos an accounting for the live American POWs still in Laos at the end of the Vietnam War.

Ziegler decided to use the hunger strike as a protest when he began hearing that the U.S. and Vietnam were moving towards normalizing relations. Ronald Reagan had promised in 1981 that no normalization would occur until all the MIAs had been accounted for.

Ziegler stayed on the hunger strike for 35 days. He ended it when Congressmen Bob Smith (R-NH) and Denny Smith (R-OR) paid him a visit to the Last Firebase and asked that he leave the bamboo cage and stop the hunger strike.

The two congressmen promised to introduce the "Truth Bill," later to be known as "The POW/MIA Accountability Bill." The bill sought to declassify information in the U.S. government files which pertained to the still missing prisoners of war from WWII, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

Last Firebase activists helped author the bill. It was eventually defeated in Congress. As a direct result of the petitions supporting the "Truth Bill," the Senate formed a Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs.

A 30 Foot High Skeleton
for the Lao

A group of Last Firebase activists constructed a 30-foot high Styrofoam reproduction of a human skeleton in front of the Lao Embassy in Washington, D.C. on POW/MIA Day in 1990.

They wanted to again call attention to the Lao government's refusal to answer questions about the live POWs in their custody during the Vietnam War. None of the nearly 600 men missing in Laos were returned alive.

500 March to the Lao Consulate

POW/MIA family members and activists began a letter campaign in September 1990, requesting that Laos explain what happened to the missing American servicemen, which the Pathet Lao had admitted they held.

Letters were sent every day to the Laotian Embassy, containing a small remembrance to represent the soul of a man missing in Laos.

This letter campaign culminated on Veteran's Day, when 500 POW/MIA activists, dressed as ghosts, marched on the Lao Consulate in Washington, D.C. and staged a roll call of the nearly 600 U.S. servicemen missing in Laos..

Last Firebase activists left 600 handcrafted dolls, each bearing the name of a missing man, at the door of the embassy. The Lao government complained two days later threatening to evict some U.S. diplomats from Laos if the U.S. government did not stop POW/MIA activists from demonstrating in front of their Washington Consulate.

POW/MIA Activists Clean Up
the Memorial

On Columbus Day 1990 POW/MIA activists from The Last Firebase and Camp Brandenburg filled hundreds of trash bags with litter from around the Lincoln Memorial when U.S. Park service personnel were laid off due to the Bush administration's refusal to sign the national budget with Congress. The dedicated activists set up a schedule for the daily clean up of the grounds.

Father Daly Goes to Laos

Dennis Daly, a private investigator and longtime advocate for POW/MIAs, became a minister for the United Evangelical Ministries International, so he would have an entree into Laos.

Daly spent two weeks in Laos in April 1991, talking to Buddhist monks in order to arrange a deal with them concerning POWs. Daly said the monks in Laos agreed to publicize a reward for any live American POW. His church group attempted to offer $100,000 to any individual who could bring an American POW to a Buddhist monastery in Laos.

The church agreed to give the monastery who cared for any American prisoner $100,000 and 1000 Buddhist robes. The Last Firebase and the American Defense Institute, Daly told the monks, would then help organize one million dollars of developmental aid to the Lao government, in exchange for each prisoner released.

Daly opened a bank account in Vientiane in order to transfer money quickly should a prisoner be produced. Daly also wrote letters to important Lao government and religious leaders, requesting that American ministers and Buddhist monks be allowed to investigate reports of POW sightings.

Unfortunately, a few hours after Daly had shared his plans with American Embassy officials in Laos, the Lao Secret Police appeared at his door and Daly was ordered to leave Laos. The plan has remained in limbo ever since.

The National Alliance of
POW/MIA Families

A POW/MIA panel discussion was sponsored by the Last Firebase and The National Alliance of POW/MIA Families in July 1991 soon after Daly's trip. It was held in Washington, D.C. and several former POWs used the forum to challenge U.S. government officials to explain the government's handling of the POW/MIA issue. That discussion, which was open to the press, evolved into an annual meeting of the National Alliance.

The Last Firebase donated the original money used to organize the National Alliance of POW/MIA Families and was instrumental in aiding its formation.

On August 16, 1993, the Last Firebase organized and help sponsor, a National Alliance of Families hunger strike in a bamboo cage near a gate to Camp Lejenue, North Carolina.

After fasting for 30 days, on September 16, the family group received word that President Clinton had ignored their "Fast For Freedom" and had begun the process of lifting trade restrictions against Vietnam

The Much Used POW/MIA Biographies

The POW/MIA bios, which Homecoming II shared freely with other groups before being forced to dissolve in 1993, remain today important tools in the effort to pry the truth from Hanoi and the U.S. government about what happened to American servicemen still missing as a result of the war in Indochina.

The bios, which have been adopted by many other organizations provide details on each missing serviceman and the incident in which the serviceman was lost.

Last Firebase Files Used In 1994

To Identify Vietnam Unknown Soldier

With information gleaned from thousands on files stored in the Last Firebase archives, I was able to identify the Vietnam Unknown Soldier in 1994, four years before the U.S. government opened the tomb and performed DNA tests.

The following news stories are self explanatory :

Fayetteville Observer/Times

DNA tests planned on remains of soldier

By Jamie Paton

Medill News Service

WASHINGTON - Tuesday, May 12, 1998 - For the millions who visit the Tomb of the Unknowns each year to pay tribute to Americans lost in combat, the message on the mausoleum is painfully clear.

"Here in honored glory rests an American soldier, known but to God."

But in a military laboratory just outside Washington, scientists on Monday said they were confident that they could know the identity of the unknown Vietnam soldier within a couple of months.

Using relatively new DNA technology, scientists will examine the bones that have been buried beneath the Vietnam tomb for 14 years - remains that one North Carolina veteran has said belong to former pilot Lt. Michael J. Blassie.

Ted Sampley, a Kinston publisher and Vietnam veteran who served at Fort Bragg for five years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, said he repeatedly has urged the Pentagon to exhume the remains.

In the July 1994 issue of Veteran Dispatch, he reported that "in 1984, as a result of the U.S. government's eagerness to lay to rest a Vietnam Unknown Soldier, it interred the remains of a missing American serviceman that today can be identified."

After conducting his own investigation, Sampley said he found evidence that the remains buried in Arlington National Cemetery belonged to Blassie. It is evidence that Sampley said the Pentagon has deliberately overlooked.

"They ignored us. They blew us off. And those DNA scientists from Maryland were so sure that it would never happen," Sampley said in a telephone interview. "They said, 'Under no circumstances will the tomb ever be opened.' Well, never say never."

CBS News did take a closer look at Sampley's research, and in January told the story on the evening news.

Just months after the newscast and the heightened media attention, the Pentagon has reversed its position. Defense Secretary William Cohen on Thursday ordered the exhumation of the remains, and on Wednesday night, workers will remove the steel coffin from the ground.

Columbia Journalism Review

By Cooper, Gloria

DARTS & LAURELS

March/April 1998 -- LAUREL to The US. Veteran Dispatch, a sixteen-page tabloid published irregularly in Kinston, North Carolina, by reporter-editor-publisher Ted Sampley; and to the CBS Evening News, for investigative missions into unknown territory.

Months of painstaking research led Sampley, a veteran of two tours in Vietnam and a POW/MIA activist, to report -- in the July 1994 issue of Veteran Dispatch and again on its Web site in July 1996 --that "in 1984, as a result of the U.S. government's eagerness to lay to rest a Vietnam Unknown Soldier, it interred the remains of a missing American serviceman that today can be identified."

Laying out the complex reasoning, and the solid evidence on which it was based, for his conclusion that the missing American serviceman was 1st Lt. Michael J. Blassie, Sampley challenged the government to use DNA tests and find out for sure. But the challenge went unheeded until early this year.

On January 19, CBS, having pursued the earlier revelations with Sampley's blessing (though, regrettably, without publicly giving him credit), reported on The CBS Evening News not only that the "unknown soldier" was known, but also that the government had known he was known at the time he was interred. Thus legitimized by a mainstream media outlet, the story triggered a national outcry to set things right.

National Alliance of Families For the Return of America's Missing Servicemen -- 1998 - "With regard to the case of Lt. Blassie, much more needs to be said but not today. We thank CBS for their excellent reporting. We especially thank Ted Sampley, publisher and editor, of the U.S. Veteran Dispatch for his reporting of this story in July of 1994. Ted got a lead and ran with it. Almost 4 years later he was proven to be 100% correct."

Homecoming II Project Was Organized in 1984

Homecoming II was a nonprofit group organized in 1984 as a local POW/MIA awareness initiative in Shawnee Mission, Kansas. It was founded by concerned citizen Margaret Nevin and U.S. Navy Vietnam veteran Joe Halpin.

The organization set out to call attention to the unanswered questions about American servicemen still missing in action, an issue that was being ignored by the U.S. government, the news media and the American people.

Homecoming II activists met with POW/MIA families and began collecting any information the families were willing to share from their private files.

The activists began organizing petition drives, urging the U.S. government to pressure Hanoi on the POW/MIA issue. Margaret's husband, John Nevin, a Vietnam era Marine Reservist, joined the effort in May 1985.

Homecoming II activists, including the Nevins, Halpin and POW/MIA family members, traveled to New York in May 1985 to attend the city's Welcome Home parade and festivities. While in New York, they hoped to present a mile-long petition to the Vietnamese undersecretary posted there.

At first, the Vietnamese refused to accept the petition, advising the activists to give it to the U.S. government. The acting secretary to the United Nations later agreed to accept only a portion of the petition.

The group then traveled to Washington D.C. with other activists and returned POWs and met with Congressman Ben Gilman (R-NY), who was chairman of a POW/MIA Task Force in the House of Representatives.

They spoke at length with the congressman about the petition Homecoming II had attempted to give to the Vietnamese government and the compelling evidence Homecoming II was compiling on live prisoners of war still being held by Hanoi.

The Nevins said they left the meeting in shock. They realized that in their modest beginning, they had already collected and made public more data pertaining to individual MIAs than the Pentagon had made available to members of Congress.

"The Pentagon had the vault locked tight on the POW issue and it was obvious they planned to keep their secret," Margaret said. "We realized then that for the sake of our missing men, we had to join other POW/MIA activist groups and get "one hundred percent involved."

Developing contacts with other activists they met in New York, Homecoming II went national, eventually becoming the largest public source of information concerning American servicemen missing from the Vietnam War. Its newsletter, written largely by John Nevin, became well respected as an accurate and current source of information.

Not only had Homecoming II become an information clearinghouse, it also participated in vigils, marches, demonstrations and other activities to publicize the POW/MIA issue. Of these, the Bio Project was the most important and successful.

The POW/MIA
Biographic Database

In 1984, at Homecoming II's request, Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) provided the activists with their first U.S. government POW/MIA computer run.

It consisted of a list of POW/MIAs from each of the states and became the basis for the POW/MIA biographical database, which is now widely circulated in the public domain.

The first two bios written by the Homecoming II activists were about MIAs Robert L. Standerwick and Dayton W. Ragland.

Over the next two years, Margaret Nevin and Standerwick's daughter Lynn, with the help of Vietnam vets Michael Caron and Adrian Fisch, worked on expanding what became known as "The Bio Project."

The bio of Air Force Lt. Col. Earl Hopper, missing in North Vietnam since January 10, 1968, was written from information provided from his mother, Betty Hopper.

Soon Homecoming II researchers began reaching out to others. The MIA families of Adams, Donahue, Gourley, Nash, Matejov, Shelton, Christian, Hoskins, Fanning, Fallon, Marker, Hart, Cressman, Bennett, Gauley, Strong, Humphrey, Mullen and Townley all had compelling and frustrating stories to tell about their missing loved ones.

Homecoming II volunteers began begging for more information and started printing bios in the Homecoming II newsletter. Other POW/MIA groups began sharing information - Russ and Jan Schilling of Task Force Omega, Wilma and Jack Laeufer of the Lima Area POW/MIA, Vietnam vet Michael Van Atta, publisher of The Insider, longtime POW/MIA activist Donna Long, Kathy Schemeley of the Connecticut Forget-Me-Nots and many others began printing the bios in their newsletters.

In early 1986, Task Force Omega's Jan Schilling sent Homecoming II copies of everything the Schillings had pertaining to the POW/MIA issue, including several old copies of VIVA (Voices in Vital America) newspapers. VIVA, in the early 1970s, attempted to bring the POW/MIA issue to public attention by publishing brochures, buttons and bumper stickers. It ceased operations in 1976. The Bio Project took off, having about 100 bios written.

That same year, Kathy Neal Parsels, the wife of returned POW John Parsels who was Public Affairs coordinator for the National League of POW/MIA Families, resigned and sent Homecoming II copies of all the League's public files on POW/MIAs. She also sent a copy of Shari Aument's book containing bios and pencil drawings of several Michigan POW/MIAs.

All of this new information helped the project, but Margaret Nevin was disappointed after viewing the League's bios.

They were incomplete and in many cases contained nothing more than name, date and country of loss. She said she was especially saddened by the League's bios because the League, with its access to POW/MIA family members, could have done a much better job.

Nevin's disappointment worked to strengthen Homecoming II's resolve to research and make public as many detailed bios as possible.

News about the Bio Project spread quickly in the POW/MIA movement.

Betty Hopper sent a box full of photos, articles and lists on every man who had ever had any connection to the state of Arizona.

Elzene Gourley sent her MIA brother's old Air Force Academy yearbooks, a valuable source of photos.

The Bio Project Kept Growing

Soon Homecoming II had its first 1000 bios and was sending them out on computer discs and printouts to various groups around the country.

In 1987, Patty Skelly of Task Force Omega obtained a copy of the Joint Casualty Resolution Center's list, printed over a decade before and no longer distributed publicly, which contained a new source of POW/MIAs - some 50-60 foreign nationals.

It also included reference numbers, which enabled Homecoming II to link individual POW/MIAs involved in the same incident.

Vietnam vet and former Marine Chuck Schantag from Iowa, contacted Homecoming II in 1987. His POW Network put the bios online, allowing access to anyone with a computer and a modem.

Schantag's POW Network proved to be one of the most informative tools of the Bio Project and is now on the Internet.

In early 1988, after years of prodding and pleading, Skelly obtained from the U.S. Army Casualty Office POW/MIA data never before available to the public.

The Army information included, in most cases, unit data and narrative information from death certificates. The information was in the form of audio-taped interviews with a casualty officer. Homecoming II transcribed the tapes and added the new information into the bios.

The Marine Corps finally released a brief summary containing unit information, which Homecoming II incorporated into the bios.

The Navy followed suit and began distributing information on computer disk to anyone who requested it. This information was skimpy and often inaccurate, but Homecoming II found the unit data helpful.

Skelly then obtained information from the Air Force through the Freedom of Information Act. The Air Force's information, like that of the Navy, was of little use except for the information pertaining to units.

When President Reagan's Special POW/MIA Envoy, Ret. Gen. John Vessey, went to Vietnam, some congressmen distributed sanitized versions of the case studies given to Vessey by the Vietnamese.

POW/MIA activist Patty Aloot, daughter of USAF John F. O'Grady, missing in North Vietnam since April 1967, put together a comprehensive listing of several case and computer studies, based largely on the Vessey lists and information obtained from family and new refugee sources. Aloot shared all this with Homecoming II.

Activist Mary Howard took the list of bios on the POW Network, compared it with her files and sent Homecoming II everything she had that was not on the POW Network. This resulted in more expanded and new bios.

Other bios were extracted from newspapers, newsletters, letters, interviews, data runs, the casualty office data, etc. Books such as The Ravens, Tale of Two Bridges, Inside the Wire, Linebacker, The Survivors, Into the Mouth of the Cat, Green Berets at War, The Naval Air Wars in Vietnam, Five Years to Freedom, Order of Battle and many more contributed a wealth of information. Works by Shelby Stanton and Christopher Robbins were particularly valuable.

There were many people and organizations who contributed to the Bio Project. Their research enabled Homecoming II to complete the largest public archival collection of POW/MIA bios in existence. The project would not have been as extensive without their help.

Homecoming II invested tens of thousands of dollars, earned by selling T-shirts near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, to create and distribute the bios.

Although the bios were clearly the most important project of Homecoming II, its primary objective was the return of all living prisoners of war and an honest accounting from Hanoi and the U.S. government.

It was with that objective in mind that Homecoming II organized and participated in a wide array of projects and events, all designed to draw attention to the plight of America's missing servicemen and to educate the public on the POW/MIA issue.

When Margaret Nevin began the Bio Project, she wanted the bios to stand alone as a weapon of truth in the continuing battle for the men we left behind. And so it has.

In early 1989, after five years as head of Homecoming II, Margaret Nevin resigned "to spend more time with her family." Nevin and the board of directors asked me to take over the chairmanship of Homecoming and I accepted.

I was Homecoming II's chairman from 1989 until Scruggs' forced the group to dissolve in 1993.

For 14-years, the Last Firebase has occupied a "First Amendment"demonstration site near the Lincoln Memorial, where it has distributed millions of pieces of literature explaining the plight of American POWs and MIAs not accounted for from the Vietnam War.

Our enemies who attack are those in government and their allies in the public who seek to cover up the truth about the men America left behind alive in captivity.

It has been a lonely vigil and battle. Supported financially only by the sale of POW/MIA bracelets, pins and bumper stickers, the "defenders" of the Last Firebase have stood their ground, proudly, through all seasons, in sunshine--and in rain, sleet and snow.

Today, we prepare for another battle.