LETTER TO THE VVA MEMBERSHIP

Gary Jones, chair POW/MIA Committee,
Bill Duker Director of the Veterans initiative Program and the VVA POW/MIA Committee

In the VVA VETERAN (Vol. 29 No. 1, January/February 2009) an article about the POW issue by former Congressman
Bill Hendon titled “Cold Case” was the front cover story.
Nobody on the POW/MIA Committee and to my knowledge nobody on the Board of Directors or the Executive Board
were aware of this article until it arrived in the membership’s mail boxes.

We strongly feel that Mr. Hendon has serious creditability problems among many individuals, groups and organizations,
past and present, who have worked or who are directly affected by the POW/MIA issue.
We recommend that everyone research the internet on Mr. Hendon and develop your own conclusions regarding this issue.
At the very minimum, if the Editor and Publisher had decided to provide space to Mr. Hendon to publish his opinions
in VVA’s National Publication, the committee should have been given the opportunity to submit a disclaimer.
One only needs to read the National POW/MIA Resolutions to know the mandates that guide the Committee.

The problem created by this unfortunate article is serious. Our work for the past two decades has been to build our credibility, sensitivity and trustworthiness with DPMO, JPAC, and the veteran’s organization and government of Viet Nam.
By implying that the VVA supports the position advocated by Mr. Hendon and others of his belief, we have badly damaged if not destroyed all of this work.
With that work goes our ability to influence the effort to continue bringing home our own.

We would like to state that we, the VVA’s POW/MIA Committee do not support the position of this article.
We are greatly embarrassed by the implication of this article being in the National VVA Publication and we apologize to our friends and partners in the POW/MIA community for the damage this will cause.