I just finished reading the book Inside Delta Force by Eric Haney. Really good book, check it out. Anyway, this is from a chapter of the book that really got me pissed. Haney says he has solid proof that at least 125 US Soldiers were being held in Laos until possibly 1983. That's 10 years after major combat ended in Vietnam! In the book he says that he believes they were probably executed around 1983 after we refused to give the North Vietnamese 11 billion in war reparations. This makes me absolutely sick.

The remainder of the post is Eric Haney speaking from the book:

1980: Spy satellites photograph what appears to be a prison camp in Laos, just across the border from Vietnam. The photos support rumors that some of the 1,800 American soldiers missing in action from the Vietnam War are still being held as POWs. While military intelligence gathers more info, Delta Force is mobilized for a rescue.

When our commander briefed us, he didn’t tell us much. But as we trained, a few things became clear: We’d insert near mountains, need to avoid satellite detection, and be flying low over the tree line. It became obvious that we were going after American POWs in Vietnam. And we knew we could get them out.

Eventually, we even made a training rescue of some Air Force pilots who were going through POW training. But one day, right after we finished our final drill, a retired lieutenant colonel named Bo Gritz appeared on television and told the world there were American POWs in Southeast Asia, and he was going to rescue them. His announcement put our mission on the shelf for 18 months. As we began training a second time, Gritz showed up again, this time at a press conference in Bangkok, saying he’d been getting ready in the jungle for the last 30 days. If you’ve been in the jungle that long, you’re yellow, bug-bitten, torn up, and sickly. Not him. He’d obviously been sitting in a bar the whole time. We were never able to bring the mission back after that. Due to the publicity, the POWs were probably executed.

I don’t think Gritz was deliberately sabotaging our mission, but I do believe he was manipulated to prevent us from going in. Someone wanted to avoid the embarrassment of having the world find out we’d left those guys behind. Years after the mission, I got to know a former high-ranking officer in the foreign service of the North Vietnamese government. He corroborated something I’d heard before: After the war we promised the North Vietnamese reconstruction funds in exchange for the return of our POWs. Only we never gave them the money. And they never gave us the POWs. When the mission was scuttled, everything changed. No one said it in public, but everyone in Delta thought, I know if I’m in an operation in Afghanistan and I get left behind, ain’t no one coming to get me.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: KKL,

It is unclear where your voice ends and Eric Haney's voice starts in that post.

There's very little about Vietnam and its aftermath that was handled well or properly by the US administrations involved.

I remember the publicity around Bo Gritz and his "mission". It's frustrating to know that his little stunt was so perfectly timed to interfere with other efforts.

That's what the second Rambo movie was all about.The POW'S we left behind to save a few buck's.What's so hard to believe it won't happen again.There are no guarantees when you enlist.I remember hearing somewhere surrender is not in our creed.Another words do what you must but don't get captured.