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...and now I'm finding out about a whole bunch of connections I didn't know about before. One thing early thing he doesn't mention, though, is one of Nixon's successes in "perception management": the POW/MIA issue: The "Go Public" Campaign
The Nixon administration's "go public" campaign, designed explicitly to "marshall public opinion" for "the prompt release of all American
prisoners of war," was initiated on March 1,1969, and officially
launched on May 9 in a press conference held by Defense Secretary Melvin Laird. It was immediately and enthusiastically promoted by the media, which, and the relatively restrain language of The New York Times editorial staff, denounced "the Communist side" as "inhuman," asserted that "at least half of the 1,300 Americans missing in action in Vietnam are believed to be alive," and insisted that "the prisoner-of-war question is a humanitarian, not a political issue."
By the fall, the POW/MIA campaign was already receiving media attention and exerting political influence far out of proportion to its small number of participants, especially in comparison with the millions taking part in the anti-war movement. The campaign was promoted by a medley of astute publicity schemes staged by the Nixon White House, POW family organizations, Congress, and Texas multimillionaire H. Ross Perot (a director of the Richard M. Nixon foundation).
In September and October, the national media spotlighted three small
delegations of wives and parents of missing man who flew to Paris to
demand meetings with the negotiators from the DRV and NLF. On Nov. 6,
Congress unanimously passed and President Nixon signed a bill declaring Nov. 9 a national day of prayer for U.S. prisoners of war in Vietnam. Right on schedule, United We Stand, an organization formed and chaired by H. Ross Perot, on Nov. 9 ran full-page advertisements featuring the picture of two small children praying "bring out Daddy home safe, sound and soon." Headlined The Majority Speaks: Release the Prisoners, the ads demanded that the "North Vietnamese and Viet Cong... Release the prisoners now." On Nov. 13 and 14, the House Subcommittee on National Security Policy of the Committee on Foreign Affairs held hearings to denounce "the ruthlessness and cruelty of North Vietnam" and to provide a pep rally for a congressional resolution demanding the release of American POWS; not one person to dissenting view was alive to testify. In mid-December, the resolution, which had previously received unanimous endorsement from the Senate, passed the House by a vote of 405-0 and was immediately exploited by U.S. negotiators in Paris. A few days later, Perot had 152 wives and children flown to Paris, while his chartered jetliner laden with Christmas presents for the POWs and filled with reporters aborted its mission in the capital of Laos, where it was used to stage a major media event.
During the campaigns formative first few months in 1969, Richard G.
Capen, Laird's assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, and
other officials from the State and Defense Department's had visited
forty-five sites to conduct unpublicized meetings with families of the missing man, thus shrewdly building foundations among those who could most readily win heartfelt support from the American people. "We brought them together for the first time," Capen later boasted of this whirlwind national trip to organize the families. ----From H.Bruce Franklin, MIA, or Mythmaking in America------ See also http://www.miafacts.org/index.htm |
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