Posted by
EWRoss on Monday, September 14, 2009 7:00:00 AM
The following post is the sidebar from my September 14, 2009, column on 9/11 conspiracy theories.
The belief that President Roosevelt knew in advance about Pearl Harbor has long been put to rest for all but the most die-hard conspiracy theorists. By late 1941 Military Intelligence officers and Roosevelt administration officials expected that Japan would ultimately attack US forces somewhere in the Pacific. They just didn't know where, and they didn't expect an attack while discussions with the Japanese were ongoing. The world has now long known that we had broken the Japanese codes and that even the last message decoded on December 7 did not reveal the target of their attack.
The Warren Commission did not have all the facts when it published its 1964 report on the Kennedy assassination. Since then, however, numerous independent groups, including CBS News, have studied them and have agreed with the commission's findings. No credible inside information has ever corroborated accusations that the US government covered up involvement of anyone else complicit in Kennedy's assassination other than Oswald.
In order for hundreds or even a few living American servicemen to have been knowingly left behind in Vietnam after 1975 by the US government hundreds, if not thousands, of US military personnel and government employees would have had to have been complicit in the cover up. That's how many people had access to the most sensitive classified information on POWs and MIAs. At the Direction of President George H.W. Bush, all information dealing with the Vietnam POWs and MIAs was declassified. Despite claims to the contrary, no credible evidence exists to prove any living American remained in captivity after the war.