COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Supporters of Republican John McCain on Tuesday assailed a mailer sent to state newspaper editors claiming he sold out fellow POWs to get better treatment while held prisoner in Vietnam.
"Nothing could be further from the truth. I know because I was there," Orson Swindle, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and former prisoner of war, said in a statement about the mailing from Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain.
The group's organizer, Jerry Kiley, who claimed he also is a Vietnam veteran, said in a telephone phone interview that he has been trying for years to spread what he said is the truth about McCain's record.
"John McCain has created this myth that he is a hero and he is not," Kiley said from his home in Garnerville, N.Y.
Kiley's group cites as evidence a May 1973 U.S. News & World Report article by McCain in which he said he realized, on his third or fourth day of captivity after his plane was shot down in 1967, that his knee was so swollen the blood might pool in it and kill him. So he offered to give military information to his captors in exchange for medical treatment.
In the article, McCain said he told the story to make the point that the North Vietnamese only gave medical treatment to POWs if they thought they were going to get something in return. He did not say that he went through with his end of the deal.
Kiley claims information McCain gave to the North Vietnamese led to an increase in U.S. planes being shot down......
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