(Update: Fraud) ‘Unclaimed’ Documentary Film About a U.S. Army Veteran Left Behind in Vietnam for 44 Years
April 27th, 2013‘Missing’ U.S. Soldier Story Exposed as Fraud
Via: Independent:
Had it been true, it would have been one of the most gripping war stories of all time.
But sadly it looks as if the man found living in the Vietnam jungle, who a new documentary claims is ‘long dead’ US army veteran Sgt John Hartley Robertson, is likely to be a fraud.
News of the “discovery” of Sgt Robertson swept the world yesterday, after details emerged of a soon-to-be-released documentary that claims an elderly man living in the remote Vietnam jungle is in fact a former Green Beret shot down and presumed dead 44 years ago.
Although DNA tests had not taken place, tearful “reunions” with a former colleague and the last surviving sister of Sgt Robertson appeared to confirm the man was who he claimed to be.
80-year-old Jean Robertson Holly even went as far as saying: “There’s no question. I was certain it was him in the video, but when I held his head in my hands and looked in his eyes, there was no question that was my brother”.
That emotional story was shattered today, however, when it was claimed that the found man was in fact a fraudster who the US government performed DNA tests on 20 years ago and whose story had been fully debunked as an attempt to exploit Vietnam’s Missing in Action and Prisoner of War groups and claim military back-pay.
According to a memo sent to a UK news organisation yesterday evening, the man claiming to be Sgt Robertson is in fact Dang Tan Ngoc – a 76-year-old Vietnamese citizen of French origin who has a history of pretending to be US army veterans.
The memo, taken from a Defense Prisoner of War Missing Personnel Office report in 2009, apparently says Ngoc first came to the attention of the US military in 2006 when he started telling people he was Sgt John Hartley Robertson.
He was apparently questioned about the claims but quickly admitted he had been lying and was in fact Vietnamese.
In 2008 Ngoc apparently began claiming to be Sgt Robertson once again, and he was taken to a US embassy in Cambodia to be fingerprinted. It was quickly established that the fingerprints did not match those of the missing army veteran.
In the documentary, titled ‘Unclaimed’ and made by the Emmy-award winning filmmaker Michael Jorgensen, the man claims that he is no longer able to speak English after living in the remote Vietnam jungle for the last 44 years.
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Maybe .mil will show this at all of their recruiting offices and events!
No?
Via: Toronto Star:
Special Forces Green Beret Master Sgt. John Hartley Robertson had forgotten how to speak English over the 44 years since he was left behind in the Vietnam War. But he never forgot that he was a father, husband and an American soldier, born in Alabama, shot down over Laos in a 1968 classified mission.
Had Hollywood told the story of the discovery of a long-forgotten soldier, found miraculously still alive in Vietnam after surviving a horrific helicopter attack and crash, it would have involved a dramatic and dangerous jungle rescue followed by a homecoming parade.
Instead, in Emmy-winning Edmonton filmmaker Michael Jorgensen’s documentary Unclaimed, we meet a slightly stooped, wiry 76-year-old man living in a remote village in south-central Vietnam who trembles with frustration or pounds his forehead when he is unable to remember his birthday or his American children’s names. He is only able to speak Vietnamese.
Unclaimed has its world premiere at Toronto’s 20th Hot Docs festival on April 30.
Robertson says he was confined to a bamboo cage in the jungle by North Vietnamese captors and, accused of being a CIA spy, was tortured for a year. Confused and badly injured, he was released and married the Vietnamese nurse who helped care for him. He assumed the name of her dead husband. They had children.
Jorgensen believes audiences in America, where “they don’t hold anything higher than service to the country,” will “lose their minds” when Unclaimed screens at the G.I. Film Festival in Washington, D.C., in May. “They’ll come unglued.”
But Jorgensen wanted this Canadian production to screen in his home country first.
The filmmaker came up against enough roadblocks from the military in the making of Unclaimed — especially when it came to contacting Robertson’s family — to be convinced that, as one high-placed government source told him, “It’s not that the Vietnamese won’t let him (Robertson) go; it’s that our government doesn’t want him.”
Research Credit: emulsified
I’m not even from a military family and I’m about to lose it. That’s just freaking incredible, I mean I knew the US military was inept but this is a whole new level.
There were many left behind in Viet Nam and Korea. But that’s not all: KAL flight 007 was shot down by the soviets, but actually ditched and the passengers were all hauled off to Soviet labor camps. Our state dept simply abandoned them in favor of not embarassing the Soviets. Tons of documentation, eye witnesses, even a phone call shortly after the incident. Google it and pick an article and read it. It should infuriate all Americans- and John McCain, of all people, should have gotten all of our citizens home.
To be infuriated by this article simply means you still believe in the fairy tale of an America that protects its citizens, an America that serves its citizens and an America that would act like our Daddy to come rescue us when we are away from the homeland.