John LeBoutillier
Thursday, July 12, 2001

In May and early June, the D.C. cops and the FBI did little to investigate this case. Their excuse? "It is a missing persons case and we have literally hundreds of them per year. No crime has been committed."

The brave Levy parents – aided by a media savvy lawyer, Billy Martin – literally forced this story onto cable TV and onto the nation’s front pages.

True, this case is unlike most others: allegations against a sitting United States congressman and charges of numerous other sex partners has spiced up the story. That combination – sex and power – makes for compelling news.

Still, the underlying lesson here is that once the media gets ahold of a bone like this and refuses to let go, it can drive a story until it is completed.

That happened in Watergate, didn’t it?

The news stories goosed the investigators, probers and prosecutors into doing the what up to then had been unthinkable: remove a sitting president.

The same here. Laconic cops and too-busy feds have now been energized by the round-the-clock cable news coverage.

My heart goes out to all the thousands of other missing people and their families. Oh, if only their cases received the same treatment!

While my heart is saddened, my spirit is renewed over another similar instance: the cases of U.S. POWs captured during the Vietnam War in Vietnam and Laos and knowingly abandoned – alive – by our government in our rush to "get out of Vietnam."

For years and years I have dreamed of the national news media driving that story until our men – hundreds of whom are still alive in captivity in SE Asia at this very minute – are brought home. (Some of our POWs were also taken to the Soviet Union during the war. Some of them are still alive and held in 'psychiatric' wards deep inside Russia today. Our government has done absolutely nothing to recover these men – and done much to prevent their recovery.)

All my fellow POW activists and the families of the men have known for years that our federal government has been worse than 'laconic' or 'inept.' They have been downright criminal in their cover-up of this tragedy. And yet we have been unable to get the national news media to focus day after day after day on this issue – until, like the Iranian Hostages in 1979-1980 – our government was forced to bring our people home.

Later this summer – in this space – you will read of a new effort to prove that our POWs are still alive. It will be like no previous effort to solve this terrible problem.

It will involve aspects that brought about the birth of our nation: individual people standing up to repressive governments and revealing the truth about government abuse of the truth.

In the meantime, please note the power of the media to drive a story and force a reluctant government to address an issue.

For all our criticism of the Big Media, there are cases where it can be useful.

Let us hope it forces the solution to the Chandra case – and continues to use its awesome power to find other missing Americans.

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