By Ted Sampley
U.S. Veteran Dispatch
February 29, 2004
When Republican Senator John McCain, on February 13, 2004, distributed a press release personally attacking me and Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry (V.V.A.J.K), it was no surprise. The New York Times printed McCain's attack the following day.
McCain's smear is predicated on lies, innuendo and misinformation printed in Prisoners of Hope: Exploiting the POW/MIA Myth in America, a book written and published in 1994. McCain and his fellow senator John Kerry, a liberal Democrat, teamed up with the author and secretly helped ghost write the book as part of their post Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs campaign to discredit and shutdown the leading POW/MIA activists.
In the February 13, release, McCain instructed reporters to be "cautious" of Ted Sampley or any organization to which he belongs and to thoroughly investigate "Sampley's background and history of spreading outrageous slander and other disreputable behavior before inadvertently lending him or his allegations any credibility."
"I am well familiar with Mr. Sampley, and I know him to be one of the most despicable people I have ever had the misfortune to encounter," McCain (of Charles F. Keating fame) warned the media. "I consider him a fraud who preys on the hopes of family members of missing servicemen for his own profit. He is dishonorable, an enemy of the truth, and despite his claims, he does not speak for or represent the views of all but a few veterans. The many veterans I know would think it a disgrace to be considered a comrade or supporter of Ted Sampley."
Back in 1972, while stationed at Fort Bragg, I volunteered my off duty time to a small POW/MIA group (Americans Who Care) which helped Joe McCain when he traveled through North Carolina seeking to raise public awareness about his brother POW John McCain. Joe, like so many other citizens was concerned about Hanoi's atrocious abuse of U.S. prisoners of war and wanted to ensure that POW McCain would be released when the war was over.
Yet, McCain categorizes me as "one of the most despicable people" he "ever had the misfortune to encounter?" What does that say about his relationship with the Vietnamese prison guards whom he claims brutally tortured him daily?
Even though McCain's slanderous attack on me has been repeated in the worldwide media, no reporter, journalist, or columnist explained exactly what McCain meant and I am not sure they knew. Apparently all they needed to know was that a "John McCain, a bonafide POW war hero" said it, whatever it meant, so it must be creditable enough to publish.
McCain's press release is a cunning use of classic black propaganda defined as an attack on a person or group using bogus information that conceals or fakes its source.
Black propaganda consists of "lies, misrepresentations and innuendo fashioned to injure, impede or destroy the activity of another person or group." The lies are usually issued from contrived sources removed from the actual author. Its overall objective is to cause another person or a group to be labeled despicable, evil, frauds and non-creditable.
In this case, McCain used lies he helped create in "Prisoners of Hope" as facts to justify his personal attack on me. The removed sources for the attack were McCain, Sen. John Kerry and Army Col. Joe Schlatter of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
McCain and Kerry used such tactics very effectively against POW/MIA families and activists during the 1991-92 Senate Select Committee on POW and MIA Affairs. Kerry was co-chairman and McCain, a committee member.
Many POW/MIA families claim that Kerry to be "the person in Washington who has done more to bury the POW/MIA issue than any other elected official is none other than U.S. Senator John McCain from Arizona, himself a former POW."
The POW/MIA families will readily supply file folders inches thick of correspondence related to Kerry and McCain's betrayal.
The Select Committee, established August 1991, was tasked with the mission of resolving the lingering POW/MIA issue by either gaining the release of American prisoners of war believed to be alive under the control of Hanoi, but never released, or explaining what happened to the missing prisoners.
In hindsight, it is obvious that McCain and Kerry were more interested in using the Select Committee as a means to justify lifting the U.S. imposed trade embargo against Vietnam than resolving the issue of missing U.S. servicemen.
From the onset of the hearings, Kerry and McCain's obvious bias for Vietnam were the source of many confrontations between the Select Committee and the POW/MIA activists.
At one point during the Select Committee hearings, the Kerry/McCain team were caught coaching DIA witnesses on how to discredit satellite imagery that showed the presence of living U.S. POWs in both Vietnam and Laos. When the activists found out about the witness tampering, they confronted Kerry and demanded his resignation. Numerous letters were written to the Select Committee demanding an outside investigation of the incident.
To deflect attention from their many clearly unethical acts, Kerry and McCain teamed up again and turned on the activist, managing to divert the entire Select Committee away from investigating Vietnam focusing instead on investigating the POW/MIA families and activist for alleged fraudulent fund raising.
The Kerry/McCain team disguised their investigation of the POW/MIA families and activists and the subpoenaing of private and organizational financial records by claiming they only wanted "to get to the truth." Kerry and McCain explained that they were looking for "professional predators" who were at work within the POW/MIA issue "feeding on the false hopes of the POW/MIA families."
In actuality, Kerry and McCain adopted the presumption that anyone or organization who raised funds based the assertion that Vietnam was still holding living American POWs was committing fraudulent fund-raising and deserved to be publicly chastised and prosecuted in court.
The Select Committee was formed because of the volumes of intelligence pointing to the existence of live POWs still in captivity.
McCain, the "former POW hero," wasted no time making headlines by alleging that most of the activist involved in POW/MIA issue were only in it for the money. He stated in front of a room full of cameras, "the people who have done these things are not zealots in a good cause. They are criminals and some of the most craven, most cynical and most despicable human beings to ever run a scam."
In two sentences McCain effectively branded nearly all the activist POW/MIA families and Vietnam veteran activists as "despicable" and "criminals."
Now you know what McCain was talking about when he referred to me as "despicable" and a "fraud who preys on the hopes of family members of missing servicemen for his own profit."
Another activist whom Kerry and McCain attempted to malign was former POW, Navy Capt. Eugene "Red" McDaniel (Ret.).
McDaniel, who journalist Monika Jensen-Stevenson characterized as "one of the most tortured Americans in the history of war" was lumped into the fraud category because he had committed the unpardonable offense, in Kerry's and McCain's eyes, of drafting a letter signed by fifty of his fellow POWs urging that the Vietnam trade embargo not be lifted until Hanoi provided a full and honest accounting of all American POW/MIAs.
Nearing the end of the Select Committee, the Kerry/McCain team announced to the press that they had turned their findings over to the Justice Department and assured them that multiple indictments would follow.
Much later, after the national media had lost interest, a Justice Department official quietly acknowledged that the investigation had been completed and they had found no illegal activities and no reason to indict anyone.
I was one of the leading activists who demanded Kerry's resignation for witness tampering and one of the first the Kerry/McCain tag team singled out for investigation. They subpoenaed my personal financial records, those of the US Veteran Dispatch ( my privately owned veteran's newspaper) and Homecoming II Project, a now defunct non-profit POW/MIA organization which I had been appointed to chair.
After dissecting all of the seized records, the best the Kerry/McCain fraud investigators could deliver was an accusation that over the period of a couple of years Homecoming II had paid Ted Sampley $300,000.00 for t-shirts. I was not aware of the accusation until after it had been printed in the Select Committee Final Report. That accusation is an unadulterated lie.
It was manufactured to impugn me personally by implying that my motive for demanding an honest accounting of U.S. POW/MIAs is greed. Kerry and McCain could not document that accusation then, or can they now. They lied.
At the time of the Select Committee, Homecoming II was the most active POW/MIA organization in the country. We had office's in Washington, Thailand and in North Carolina, where I live. The U.S. Veteran Dispatch is a newspaper that I have been publishing since 1986. We were printing up to 20,000 copies per month which were distributed free to the public unless it was received by mail. The newspaper was funded through the sale of veteran related materials.
By causing the activists to be investigated for fraud, Kerry and McCain not only drew attention away from their unethical acts, but also away from findings the Select Committee was finally being forced to acknowledge - "there is evidence, moreover that indicates the possibility of survival, at least for a small number [U.S. POW's held captive by Vietnam] after Operation Homecoming," (quoted from page 7 of the Select Committee January 13, 1993 report).
From the beginning it had been Kerry and McCain's objective to discredit all evidence pointing to the possibility of living US POW's left behind in Vietnam. Instead of giving the POW's the benefit of the doubt by trying to prove that they were still alive, the Kerry/McCain team took the position that there was no proof that POW's were still alive.
Both Kerry and McCain continued to work hard to normalize diplomatic and trade relations with communist Vietnam. Kerry and McCain knew that President Bill Clinton was being pressured to lift the embargo and that he needed their help because candidate Clinton had promised, in an April 27, 1992 campaign letter, not to normalize relations or offer any assistance to Vietnam until it had fully assisted in solving the live POW issue.
"Before I would normalize relations or provide assistance to any of the countries involved, they would be required to open their files and actively assist in solving this issue. I firmly believe that America should never leave its warriors on the battlefield. This is not a political issue; it is a moral test of those values and traits that made America great," Clinton said in the letter.
POW/MIA family organizations remained adamantly opposed to removing the embargo. They believed, rightfully so, that the embargo was the only leverage powerful enough to force Vietnam to come clean.
By 1994, the way was clear for Kerry and McCain to provide political cover for President Clinton with his efforts to lift the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam.
In a smoothly choreographed political maneuver, Clinton used the two "Vietnam War heroes" and their "no POWs are left alive conclusion" as justification to lift the trade embargo...having them stand side by side with him when he made the announcement.
At the same time, to ensure that the POW issue could be not be resurrected by the POW/MIA families and activist, Kerry and McCain consummated their deceit by spoon feeding tainted and false data to Susan Katz Keating, an ambitious Washington Times reporter with intiment ties to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). She planned writing a bestseller book - Prisoners of Hope - with information spoon fed her by DIA.
Kerry and McCain also relied heavily on a secret Pentagon collaborator, Army Col. Joe Schlatter who from 1986 to 1995, was tasked with running the Defense Intelligence Agency Special Office for POW-MIA Affairs.
Schlatter's job while heading the POW/MIA office was to correlate and interpret the hundreds of intelligence reports about living American POWs left in Southeast Asia that were pouring into the Pentagon.
Schlatter had actually early on in his assignment begun to systematically kill on paper the several hundred U.S. servicemen described as prisoners in the intelligence reports.
Later, when called upon by the Kerry/McCain team, Schlatter joined in attempting to discredit (killing the messenger) any individual or group that got in the way of plans to normalize U.S. trade relations with Vietnam.
Schlatter made sure that Keating was issued a special Pentagon identification card giving her extensive access to his office, thoughts and opinions. Schlatter (or members of his staff) often acted as a secret conduit between the Kerry/McCain team and Keating.
By November 1994, Keating had written and published Prisoners of Hope; Exploiting the POW Myth in America (Random House).
In her acknowledgments, DIA operative Keating, made mention of her indebtedness to "contacts within the Department of Defense."
In addition, she gave "special mention" to "POW hero, Senator John McCain, who graciously returned every phone call and answered every question."
It did not take the POW families long to learn that Keating's Prisoners of Hope was a foul regurgitation of Kerry and McCain's allegations against the activists who had diligently kept the POW/MIA issue before the American people for years, people Keating labeled as "phonies and unscrupulous."
Keating wrote that the POW/MIA issue was a "destructive national myth" and that President Clinton should immediately get rid of it by declaring dead all servicemen listed as missing in action. He did shortly afterward.
Prisoners of Hope is sloppy, plagued by lies, and gross errors. Using innuendos, lies and scrambled facts, along with the help of Kerry and McCain, Keating, attacked all the leading POW/MIA activists.
She hoped to convince her readers "that for more than 20 years, families of missing servicemen, veterans, and concerned citizens, faked the issue of American servicemen still missing from the Vietnam War to "scam the American public of millions of dollars" in donations.
Keating accused former Vietnam POWs "Red" McDaniel and Mark Smith, Senator Bob Smith, R-NH, former Congressman Billy Hendon, R-NC, former Congressman John LeBoutillier, R-NY, former Army Lieutenant Colonel James "Bo" Gritz, former Army Green Beret Ted Sampley and others of being "charlatans and frauds" who were helping to "further" the POW/MIA "conspiracy myth" for "profit."
Even after many victims of Keating's poison pen offered factual evidence of her misrepresentations and negligence, the establishment press still took Keating's work at face value.
Instead of recognizing Prisoners of Hope as undocumented literary garbage, pundits gave the book "rave" reviews, adding that it was time for POW families to move on and forget the "ghosts" of Vietnam.
In 1995, not long after Keating's Prisoners of Hope hit the book stores and the discount table, Col. Schlatter retired.
From the safety of his retirement, Col. Schlatter finally admitted his true colors on the Internet, "I am a retired Army colonel and my politics are somewhat to the left; I am a yellow-dog Democrat and voted for Bill Clinton twice. I favor serious gun control."
Col. Schlatter's admittance that he is a "leftist," a Clinton loyalist who favors "serious gun control," and a "Yellow Dog Democrat, (meaning he would vote for a yellow dog before he would a Republican)" might explain why he so vigorously defends the communist Vietnamese?
Forever the loyal partisan collaborator, Col. Joe Schlatter has kept the lies in Keating's failed book alive by posting it's contents on the Internet on news groups such as alt.war.vietnam.
By 1997, he had created a "MIA Facts" web domain www.miafacts.org/
Any time information or comments pertaining to the POW/MIA issue or information critical of McCain and Kerry appear on the Internet, Col. Schlatter will jump in suggesting that the poster should visit his web pages to read "the real truth" about what he calls the "POW/MIA myth." Miafacts.org is peppered with twisted facts, lies, and distortions, pure black propaganda.
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A Keating Lie - Prisoners of Hope, Chapter 12 - The Merry Prankster, page 193 -- Navy Lieutenant Robert Wetzel was an A-6 Intruder pilot shot down on the first day of the war. At the time of Sampley's call, the airman was listed as missing in action. According to Sampley, that designation was just a cover for the grisly truth: Wetzel had survived his shoot-down, only to parachute directly into a mob of angry Iraqis. Sampley said the anti-Semitic crowd had assumed from his name tag that Wetzel was Jewish. They had all happened to be carrying knives, so they had carved him up on the spot. Bits of Wetzel's body had been doled out as souvenirs.
"The Pentagon doesn't want anybody to know this," Sampley confided. "But it's all right. I have already told his family."
Wetzel eventually came home, alive and intact. Sampley later admitted he had never entirely believed the story but had told it anyway to publicize the plight of POWs.
Fortunately for Sampley, he did not wake up one morning to find himself surrounded by a crowd of angry Wetzels.
Here is the Truth: During the Gulf War, I was searching news wires looking for documentation pertaining to American servicemen and women who were turning up captured or missing in action.
At the time I was sharing my research with Susan Katz Keating, a Washington Times reporter, who over previous years had used my information as a source for numerous POW/MIA related stories. Keating called me and asked if I had anything on Gulf War captured and missing. I had just found a Scripps Howard News Service article on the wire about a U.S. pilot shot down over Baghdad that I thought unusual, so I faxed it to her.
Keating apparently took the legitimate news story I sent her in good faith spinning it into a lie for her book. Today, over a decade later, the lie is still being repeated as the "appalling truth" in an effort to discredit me by publicly labeling me as "unscrupulous."
If Lt. Wetzel's family was told such a cold and horrible story (which I doubt), it was not by me. The Wetzel's are not angry with me because they probably have never heard of Ted Sampley. I have never spoken to them about Navy Lieutenant Robert Wetzel.
The Scripps Howard report from which Keating created her lies follows:
Refugee Claims U.S. Pilot Attacked, Butchered by Iraqis
Scripps Howard news Service
Release date: 01-21-91
By Jonathan Broder
San Francisco Examiner
RUWEISHED, Jordan _ An Arab refugee from Iraq said he watched an enraged mob of Iraqis attack and butcher an American pilot after he was shot down over Baghdad.
Yahia Al Nathari, a Baghdad University student interviewed at a Red Cross center here, said he was in the Iraqi capital on Friday when the pilot landed by parachute during an allied bombing raid. He says the police tried to stop the murder but were too late. . . . "The Iraqi people ran over to him and beat him and cut him to pieces with knives, Al Nathari claimed.
"The police came and stopped them, but they came too late. The American was dead." Asked how he knew the dead pilot was American, Al Nathari said he saw an American flag on his flight suit . . ."
A Keating Lie - Prisoners of Hope, Chapter 12 - The Merry Prankster, page 194 - "In 1986, for example, when Sampley was in Washington, D.C., attending one of his many POW functions, he set up a publicity stunt that could have killed or seriously injured someone.
"Shortly before 2:00 am, bar closing time, Sampley and a few confederates erected a barrier at the top of a freeway on-ramp that handles traffic coming from Capitol Hill. They coated the ramp with oil, so that unsuspecting motorists would slither wildly before crashing into the barrier. The car's headlights would illuminate a sign on the barrier that read 'Free the POW's.'
"The next day I learned about the on-ramp trap from Sampley, who called to announce what he had done. He was proud of his effort but disappointed that the trick had not come off. While Sampley and friends had watched from a nearby hiding place, police officers had found and dismantled the arrangement before any cars ran into it.
"When I told Sampley he had risked people's lives with the stunt, he accused me of being a spoilsport. He also said he was dismayed at missing the chance for newspaper coverage."
Here is the Truth: The day after the oil incident, The Washington Post ran a picture of a U.S. Park policeman removing a small sandwich board size barricade painted with the words "Ask Reagan to Rescue Live POWs in S.E. Asia" from the inbound lane of the Key Bridge.
In a short article headlined "Oil, Barricade Slow Key Bridge" The Washington Post described the incident: "Some motorist crossing Key Bridge from Virginia into Washington during yesterday's morning rush hour were greeted with a slippery mess after oil and a barricade were placed in their path, apparently as part of a protest effort.
"The incident occurred around 8 a.m. in the far right inbound lane of the bridge and slowed traffic for about 20 minutes while crews for National Park Service, which has jurisdiction over the Virginia side of the bridge, removed the barricade and threw sand on an estimated four quarts of motor oil, according to park policeman Lt. Carl Clipper.
"A banner and letter to President Reagan found at the barricade indicated that it had been placed on behalf of American prisoners of war and soldiers missing in action in Southeast Asia, Clipper said. No one was at the barricade by the time U.S. Park Police arrived."
I was first made aware of "barricade incident" by U.S. Park Police Detective Kenny Green after he called me at home in Kinston, N.C. Because I had led so many POW/MIA protests in Washington that sometimes involved non-violent civil disobedience, I think he suspected I might have been involved and he was calling to find out if I was in D.C. When I answered the phone, he was satisfied that I could not have been involved.
In a later conversation with Keating, I mentioned that Detective Green had questioned me about the incident. She asked me if I had anything to do with it. I told her no and pointed out that I was 300 miles away in North Carolina when it happened.
I found out about The Washington Post picture of the barricade about two weeks later after an unsigned letter containing the picture was mailed to me suggesting that I reprint the it in the U.S. Veteran Dispatch, the veteran's newspaper of which I am publisher.
A Keating Lie - Prisoners of Hope, Chapter 12 - The Merry Prankster, page 195 -- In 1988 Sampley-who at the time had no personal stake in the MIA issue-tried to turn one family's somber moment into a scandal that would help perpetuate the POW movement. Instead, Sampley's effort came across as a vulgar grab for center stage. The episode revolved around the case of a Navy pilot, Commander Edwin B. Tucker.
Tucker had been shot down over North Vietnam eleven years earlier. He was thought to have been captured and was listed as a POW. He was later listed as killed in action. His remains were returned to the United States and were buried with full military honors in 1988 at Arlington National Cemetery.
Shortly after the funeral, Sampley called a press conference in Norfolk, Virginia, where Tucker's former aircraft carrier is based. Sampley announced that Tucker's body had been on display for fifteen years inside a glass case in Vietnam. Sampley said Tucker's family had been forced to pledge secrecy on the matter before being allowed to receive the remains.
In a scenario similar to the one he had created about Wetzel, Sampley said that Tucker had parachuted alive into a crowd of angry villagers, who had hacked at him with a hoe.
Here is the Truth: Commander Edwin B. Tucker was buried, with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery, March 4, 1988.
On March 16, at a press conference in Norfolk, Virginia, I made public a U.S. Department of Defense "Joint Casualty Resolution Center" document. The government document, a "narrative" of the Tucker case stated: ". . . We have received accounts which state that an American pilot was captured near Hon Gay City, [Quang Ninh Province, Vietnam] and taken to the city hospital where he subsequently died of his wounds. The accounts further state that after his death, his skeleton was prepared and used as a teaching aid in the medical school of Quang Ninh Province in Hon Gay City."
Four days after I issued the press release, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution printed a news report written by journalist Ron Martz headlined "Secrecy cloaks Hanoi's research on Navy POW's body in hospital."
Martz wrote, "Intelligence reports and sources familiar with the case say Tucker's remains were used at a teaching hospital. The remains were withheld from his family, despite repeated requests for their return, long after the Vietnamese agreed to cooperate with U.S. officials to determine the fate of more than 1,700 U.S. servicemen missing in that country.
"Tucker's remains were repatriated Nov. 25 after family members and U.S. government officials agreed not to disclose details about the case that might embarrass Vietnam.
"His case infuriated activists in the POW/MIA movement. . ."
The same Atlanta Journal and Constitution report appeared in The Washington Times (where Keating was employed) five days later on March 25.
A Keating Lie - Prisoners of Hope, Chapter 12 - The Merry Prankster, page 200 - Sampley titled his article "Sen. John McCain: The Manchurian Candidate?" Sampley used the story as a lead piece in the December 18, 1992 issue of his broadsheet. He placed a photo of McCain on the cover facing a large queen of diamonds.
To make sure his target personally saw the story, Sampley personally delivered several copies to McCain's Washington, D.C. office. Of course, the senator's staff had already seen the article.
Mark Salter, the senator's aide for POW/MIA affairs, was appalled that Sampley would come to the office. He ordered the activist to leave. Sampley said he had something to tell Salter, so the two went into the hall. Salter followed as Sampley led him toward a stairwell. Salter asked what was going on.
Sampley wheeled and punched the aide. Salter fought back. The scuffle was broken up by security guards.
When the dust had settled, Salter asked Sampley to sign a document agreeing to stay away from McCain and his staff. Sampley refused, so Salter took the activist to court for assault. Sampley was sentenced to two days in jail and was placed on probation for 180 days. He was also served with a restraining order prohibiting him from going near McCain or the people who worked for him.
Here is the Truth: In December 1992, as the Senate hearings were winding down, I was walking the halls of Congress, handing out copies of the U.S. Veteran Dispatch (I did this for every issue) which featured McCain and the Queen of Diamonds on the cover with the headline: "Sen. John McCain: The Manchurian Candidate.
The story was about McCain and his brutal attacks on POW/MIA families and activists. It cited a 1973 U.S. News and World Report article that McCain wrote as evidence that McCain had collaborated with the enemy.
The U.S. Veteran article summarized McCain's political career, relying on reports from daily newspapers and wire services. It touched on McCain's role in the Keating Five scam and his close friendship with former Arizona Republic publisher Duke Tully, who had fabricated a military career for himself, only to be exposed in the mid-eighties.
I actually had planned to skip McCain's office, but I was in a hurry and was not paying close enough attention to the names on the senators doors. When I realized that I had popped into McCain's office, I handed a copy to the receptionist, requesting that it be delivered to the senator's veterans affairs assistant and turned to leave.
Mark Salter, McCain's chief of staff, apparently had heard I was making my way down the hall, was waiting by the front desk. When I saw him I turned to leave.
Salter assaulted me with a barrage of foul language saying, "Sampley you son of a bitch, I heard you were in the building passing out that garbage."
I answered him with some G.I. grammar of my own. He would not let go of it. So, I suggested that he follow me into the parking lot where we could settle the matter.
I stepped into the hall and he followed, yelling all the way down the hall.
I'm thinking, why doesn't this guy go away? I'm leaving.
I turned and entered the stairwell and he followed me. I don't know why, Maybe he misread me. Maybe he thought he was going to follow me into the stairwell and whip an over the hill Vietnam veteran.
In any case, he yelled "Sampley, I'm talking to you!" and punched me on the back of my shoulder -- not hard -- but enough.
I turned around and decked him. He scrambled to his feet and made a wild swing at me and I decked him again. At that, Salter started yelling for security.
When the security guards arrived, Salter pulled out his Senate I.D. and accused me of assault. Then he lied, telling the security guards that he was escorting me out of the building and had "just tapped" me on the shoulder to get my attention.
Even though only Salter and I were in the stairwell when the fight started - it was Salter's word against mine - the security guards tossed me in jail where I was kept for two days before being allowed to call a lawyer and post bond.
When the case finally went to court, Salter produced color pictures of his injured face and body. The judge looked at the pictures, then glared at me. He listened to both of our accounts of the fight, then ruled in Salter's favor.
The judge explained that he understood that case revolved around my word against Salter, but that he was inclined to believe Salter because "he's a senator's aid and has no reason to lie."
I was sentenced to two days in jail (time served) and was instructed to stay away from McCain, his staff and the Senate buildings for six month.
Of the incident, Salter told the press, "Mr. Sampley is about as disreputable a person as I've ever met in some 20 years of public service. . . . He's just a con artist. Nothing more, nothing less."
A Keating Lie - Prisoners of Hope, Chapter 12 - The Merry Prankster, page 205 - "Sampley enjoyed a lengthy career as an expert witness to various legislative committees and panels. He was even invited to the White House to brief President Clinton on the topic of MIAs. Sampley told the new president that prisoners were still being held in Southeast Asia but did not discuss the one subject of his true expertise: chicanery in the guise of POW activism."
Here is the Truth: The only national legislative committee I have ever appeared before was the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. I have never been in a meeting with President Bill Clinton nor have I ever been invited to or into the White House.
These are but a few of Susan Katz Keating's lies, distortions and scrambled facts contained in Prisoners of Hope. How many lies does it take for the press to realize that Prisoners of Hope is a fraudulent creation designed to destroy the reputations of innocent people?
