There are very few instances of Stolen Valor that bother me more than a fake claim to POW status. People making such claims are, in my opinion, among the absolute lowest of the low.
DoD goes to great lengths to account for its personnel. It also goes to great lengths to recover personnel taken captive – or to confirm their death and recover their remains. People sometimes die in those rescue, recovery, and confirmatory efforts.
And what some former POWs went through . . . well, it can only be described as hell on earth.
There is a new DoD Agency – the the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) – tasked with the POW/MIA accounting mission. It inherited the mission and assets of the former Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office, or DPMO, which is no more. (If you were familiar with the old DPMO website – well, bad news. The new agency’s website is rather different than its predecessor, and finding things there may take some re-learning.)
Unfortunately, DoD doesn’t appear to maintain and post official DoD POW lists from all of our nation’s wars. Don’t ask me why. It would seem to me that that data should be readily available in DoD’s archives for every war since at least Korea – if not from World War I or the Spanish-American War forward.
As you’ve guessed (or already knew), that means we have a problem. There are plenty of low-lifes out there “rockin’ the lie” when it comes to fake POW claims. We feature some of them every so often here at TAH.
Moreover, Federal law itself IMO contributes to the problem. Federal law allows the VA – not DoD – to determine whether or not an individual is an “official former POW” for the purposes of VA benefits. We all know just how “oh-so-thoroughly and accurately” the VA verifies each and every claim they get.
Indeed, current Federal law does not technically even require that a person be held prisoner by our nation’s enemies for the VA to determine them to be an “official former POW” for VA benefits purposes. Here’s the text of 38 USC 101(32), where the term “former prisoner of war” for VA purposes is defined. I’ve added emphasis where I felt it was needed.
(32) The term “former prisoner of war” means a person who, while serving in the active military, naval or air service, was forcibly detained or interned in line of duty—
(A) by an enemy government or its agents, or a hostile force, during a period of war; or
(B) by a foreign government or its agents, or a hostile force, under circumstances which the Secretary finds to have been comparable to the circumstances under which persons have generally been forcibly detained or interned by enemy governments during periods of war.
The “Secretary” referenced above is the VA Secretary – not the SECDEF. And a liberal interpretation of the law could mean that a GI who got erroneously thrown into a nasty local jail run by one of our ALLIES during a period hostilities might qualify under that criteria. Last time I checked, Middle Eastern and Oriental jails are reputedly pretty damned harsh.
Sound like a huge loophole? You betcha. The VA can – and often does – declare people to be “former POWs” who were never held prisoner by our nation’s enemies.
The VA very obviously does not bother to consult DoD lists of persons held by the enemy to verify claims of former-POW status. As Jonn has documented here: in 2009 only approximately 570 individuals actually taken captive by our enemies during Vietnam and the Gulf War were still living; the VA at the time was granting benefits as “former POWs” of those two conflicts to over 1,200 people. That means that in 2009 well over half of the VA’s “offical former POWs” were never actually held prisoner by our nation’s enemies.
Or, in simpler terms: that means that using the commonly-understood definition of POW, over half of them weren’t really POWs at all as the term is commonly understood. They managed to get declared POWs due to another reason – one that the VA bought.
Because of the above, the fact that an individual has been granted a “former POW status” by the VA doesn’t really mean squat regarding the validity of a claim of being a POW as the term is commonly understood. Further, most if not all states accept a letter from the VA declaring an individual to be a “former POW” as “proof” that the individual is indeed a “former POW”. Convince the VA you qualify as a “official former POW” and you can get “Former POW” license plates for your car in most states with just a piece of paper from the VA. So those “former POW” license plates don’t necessarily prove squat, either.
Why do people lie through their teeth do stuff like this? Hey, car tags are damned expensive in some states. So is medical care – which former POWs receive from the VA with most or all co-payments waived (they’re in Priority Group 3). There’s also a list of presumptive conditions for former POWs that are automatically held to be “service connected” – many of which are also conditions routinely associated with normal aging. When those conditions appear or worsen with age, poof! Instant disability rating – and compensation.
You do the math.
Unfortunately, there aren’t any good, comprehensive, published DoD lists of POWs from World War II or Korea. Figuring out if a “former POW” claim for vets of those wars is legit can be problematic.
However, for the war in Southeast Asia (AKA the “Vietnam War”) the situation is different. DPAA does have and post a list of former SEA POWs – as well as a list of those who are and are not formally accounted for. Specifically, it maintains four lists.
• The first list contains the names of those POWs who returned alive at the end of the Vietnam War. That list may be found here.
• The second list contains the names of those POWs who escaped enemy captivity in Southeast Asia. That list may be found here.
• The third list contains the names of those who have been formally accounted for. This list includes the names on the previous two lists, plus the names of those whose remains have been recovered and positively identified. That list may be found here.
• The fourth list contains the names of personnel who have not yet been formally accounted for. These are individuals’ whose remains have never been recovered. That list may be found here.
DPAA also maintains other lists sorted by home state at their website. But the four lists above – which are sorted alphabetically – are generally IMO the most useful.
Verifying Vietnam War POW claims is thus actually fairly easy. All you need to do is check the first two lists above. If someone isn’t on the first two lists above, according to DoD they were never held as a POW by enemy forces in Southeast Asia. I personally wouldn’t buy anyone’s claim of being a “former ‘Nam POW” if they’re not on one of those first two lists.
A future update – or perhaps a second article – will discuss US POWs taken captive in the Gulf War and later conflicts. Short version: there aren’t many.
Author’s Note: For ease of future reference, this article is linked to the Site Banner’s “Military Records” article.
