POW/MIA Report

The U.S. Government Has Lied to Me for 42 Years About What Happened to My Husband, Col. David L. Hrdlicka

By Carol Hrdlicka

As the wife of a U.S. Air Force officer, Col. David L. Hrdlicka, I was aware that my husband could be killed or captured in the event he had to go to war. However, I was not prepared for him being abandoned by the very country he had sworn to serve and that sent him into harm’s way.

On May 18, 1965, Col. David L. Hrdlicka was an Air Force pilot, flying an F-105 jet aircraft as lead pilot on a mission over northern Laos. His jet was hit by ground fire, and David was forced to eject, parachuting into a valley near a village. As his parachute deployed, his wingman watched him descend, and saw him captured as he landed. Native villagers gathered up his parachute, and led him away captive. He was taken to the Pathet Lao headquarters at Sam Neua. A short while later, a reserve helicopter pilot landed in a neighboring village and learned that David had been turned over to Pathet Lao soldiers.

David’s capture in Laos was published in a North Vietnamese newspaper, Quan Nahn Dan. Then a Vietnamese broadcast the contents of a letter purportedly authored by David, and the broadcast was transmitted by Radio Peking
as well. Pravda, a Russian newspaper, published a photograph of David. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) included this report in its agency’s “Post-Capture Photograph” album, positively identifying Hrdlicka as the captured pilot.
Ivan Shchedrov, correspondent for Pravda, interviewed David on several occasions. Also, David was present when the Prince of Laos visited the caves at Sam Neua.

In the early years of David’s capture, the casualty office informed me that there were rescue attempts being made, so I assumed that the USG (United States Government) would continue to do everything possible to get David released. As the years went by, the USG told me there were reports that indicated David had died. I trusted what they told me was the truth, and thought they had intelligence to back up what they were telling me. For years I believed the government, but to my horror, I discovered in 1990 that they were not doing any investigation on David’s case – only trying to write him off.

I received my first live-sighting report in 1990, reporting that David had tried to escape. The next report I received states, “I am talking to General Chaeng, suspected of holding D. Hrdlicka and friends.” That report was dated 1990, and is present tense. At that point I became enraged that the U.S. government had betrayed David and me by not been telling me the whole truth all these years.
I decided that I must try to find the truth for myself about what happened to David. Then I started doing my own investigation and research. As I was doing the research I became painfully aware that the government’s story “that all the POWs were dead” was not the truth. I began to collect documents, worked to change legislation to protect our servicemen, testified before several congressional committees, and collected information on David’s case through Freedom of Information Requests.

One of the committees I testified before was the 1992 Senate Select Committee Hearings on POW/MIA. John Kerry and John McCain did everything to keep the truth from coming out and ignored all the evidence. Three former Secretaries of Defense testified that men had been left behind, but Kerry and McCain chose to turn the blind eye to that testimony.

The documents I was finding were not backing up the government’s statements that the POWs had died, but that they had knowingly abandoned them, and had set about purposely misinforming the public as well as the families.

I found a document in the Library of Congress showing the USG had been tracking as many as 23 POWs in the early 1980s. In 1993, I made a trip to Russia to meet with Mrs. Shchedrov, the Russian correspondent’s wife who had interviewed David several times in the caves at Sam Neua. Ivan had died in the late 1980s, never having been interviewed by the USG. In the fall of 1993, we had a small delegation, (George Carver, Barry Toll, and myself) who took our information on live POWs to the Clinton White House.

In 1994, I went with a “good will tour” formed by Arnold Beizer, an attorney at law, to Vietnam, requesting the Vietnamese help with finding our men. In 1996, Arnold Beizer made a trip to Israel on my behalf, to interview another former Russian correspondent, Ivan Loboda, who had been present at a press conference in the caves at Sam Neua in 1969, at which David was present. The USG had made no attempts to interview Mr. Loboda all these years.

It became evident the USG was not doing the investigation on David’s case.
There has been a voluminous amount of credible evidence such as, live sighting reports, intelligence reports, and satellite imagery over the years showing that men survived in captivity. However, the USG has chosen to ignore all the
evidence and bury the truth.

I am still, to this day, trying to get the truth out of the government, and get them to do the honorable thing, by bringing the live men home that remain in Southeast Asia.

It is 42 years that David Hrdlicka has waited for someone to come rescue him and bring him back to his family. My husband and the other men deserve to come home. The abandonment of my husband and these men is a disgrace
to our great country.

David was never told that if he got captured his country would abandon him. He was prepared to possibly be killed or captured, but not be abandoned. The U.S. government does not tell their military that they will abandon them.

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