He wants to make it an issue as to why he should be elected and he uses it as a shield to deflect any gaffe or question that relates to his position on any issue....but does he really want the American people to look into his time at the Hanoi Hilton? I came across this link today and I am amazed that there hasn't been more discussion on this-
EXCERPT: from 1992 Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA’s:SANTOLI: But on the Senate side, we had one person standing in the way of getting in positions that would have been very tough on government bureaucrats who didn’t tell the truth. And that one person was Sen. John McCain.
Cpl. BOB DUMAS, U.S. Army (Ret.): He didn’t want nobody to check his background because a lot of the POWs that was in the camps said he was a collaborator of the enemy. He gave the enemy the information they wanted.
Dr. JAMES LUCIER, former U.S. Senate Chief of Staff: But We do know that when he was there , he cooperated with the communist news services in giving interviews there, ah, not flattering to the United States.
USRY: Information shows that he made over 32 tapes of propaganda for the Vietnamese government. Certainly, you do what you need to do to stay alive. Nobody would fault anybody for that. But there comes a point in time when enough is enough.
REP: DORNAN: They made those transcriptions, and in the transcriptions, I heard a POW who heard them comin’ into his cell and said, “Oh, my God, is that Admiral McCain’s son? Is that the admiral’s son? Is that Johnny — telling us that our principal targets are schools, orphanages, hospitals, temples, churches?” That was Jane Fonda’s line. Where are those transcriptions? Believe me — they’re in the archives of the museum, the bragging military phony museum in Hanoi. McCain could not have wanted those turn up in the middle of a presidential race. He knows that. I know that, and a few other people know that, and that’s why he went against Bob Dole’s legislation.
DUMAS: And he didn’t want nobody looking into his background in that camp, what went on in that camp. That stuff is still classified so nobody can see it. And he just had it classified forever, so nobody’ll ever look at it.
LUCIER: That he was given special treatment and was put in a room with two other defectors who were later given special treatment. Although I will say to his credit he refused to be repatriated as a result.
REP: DORNAN: This sounds so good at first. McCain was offered the chance to come home. They called him the “Prince.” And he could have. But nobody ever takes that one step beyond that. If John … Admiral John McCain II … “Junior” … if his son, a lieutenant senior grade, had accepted this princely status and come home in 1967 while the others would sit there for five years, what would the Navy have done, with the son of an admiral who opted to get special treatment and come home? No Navy career. No House seat. No Senate seat. It would have been the end of his career. And they were offering him this chance to go home in one of three groups that came home in ‘68.