News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Bob Necci & Carol Hrdlicka, Andi Wolos
(POW-MIA FaxNetwork)

Re: Hearings Update

Date: July 25, 1997

Between the bickering and back-stabbing for national consumption, Committee/Hearing members and Just-Us have ground the Finance Hearings to a virtual halt. Subpoenaes are unresponded to as potential witnesses wait out the storm off-shore; others wheel and deal for immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony; and our tax-paid public serpents posture, pomp and point fingers before the microphones and cameras.

We have heard so much, yet we know less and less everyday as the facts are buried in rhetoric and bi-partisan bickering. At this rate we can expect pretty much the same as we got with the Ron Brown-Commerce-Vietnam investigation... zip.

And that is the problem we have historically experienced with the POW-MIA issue, and anything touching it. Washington has made it a political football, something to be tossed back and forth and brought before the masses in a seasonal, cyclical pattern. September rolls around and every politician with wind left is pounding a podium about our 'highest national priority.' And then they go home and forget about it until the next holiay or photo-op. They fail to sign-on to critical legislation, they ignore constituent calls and letters, yet when that magical day in September rolls around they become the activist's activist.

What started as, hopefully, a serious investigation into what may be a capstone period in US - Foreign Policy/Politics, has degraded into nothing short of a street brawl between the neighborhood kids, snapping and pushing over who did what first and how many times. It's disgraceful... and we are paying for this privilege.

Perhaps it's time to turn off the cameras. If our elected, appointed and disappointing representatives do not have to worry about making a major speech for Live At Five, just maybe they can concentrate their efforts and energy to establishing something that has been in very short supply... the truth.

Someone once said the most dangerous place to be in this country was between a politician and a microphone. From what we are seeing on C-SPAN lately, you better believe it.