‘Fidel’ tortured POWs in Vietnam (Bomar, Hubbard, Cobeil)

Jack Bomar still has nightmares about the beatings administered by ”Fidel,” a Cuban government agent in North Vietnam who tortured him and 17 other U.S. prisoners of war some three decades ago.

”I wake up at night and I am in a situation back there,” the retired Air Force colonel said. ”Sometimes I am trying to bail out of my airplane, or sometimes it might be Fidel there, waiting to hammer me.”

Recently declassified Defense Department documents say three Cubans were sent to North Vietnam by Fidel Castro’s government to deal with U.S. POWs in what became known as the Cuba Program.

Now, some of those former POWs are thinking of suing the Cuban government for reparations, according to a Miami Herald report Sunday.

Other Publications You Might Be Interested In

POWs and Politics: How Much does Hanoi Really Know A Paper Presented on 19 April 1996 at the Center for the Study of the Vietnam Conflict Symposium “After the Cold War: Reassessing Vietnam,” at Texas Tech University

The recent diplomatic recognition of Vietnam, along with the lifting of the economic embargo, offers an opportunity to re-examine one of the most pernicious legacies of the Vietnam War, the POW/MIA dilemma. Two decades after the war ended, the POW/MIA issue continues to divide Americans in a manner reminiscent of

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To Capt. Butcher ‘From A Grateful City’

Air Force Capt. Jack M. Butcher who a few years ago was playing “Hail To The Victors” as a member of the University of Michigan Marching Band, heard that fight song played in his honor Saturday afternoon. Ann Arbor’s first prisoner of war to return from Vietnam was welcomed home

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Mad Dog McDow (Rick McDow)

Meet Colonel (Retired) “Mad Dog” Rick McDow, United States Air Force. This southern gentleman and Tuscaloosa grad (ROLL TIDE!) had dreams of becoming a military aviator, having heard stories from his uncle who flew jets during the Korean War.    Amidst the backdrop of Vietnam, Rick joined the Air Force

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Former POW returns for Lemoore visit (Theodore Kopfman)

Fifty-six years after being designated a naval aviator, a former prisoner of war once again landed on the deck of an aircraft carrier — at one of Naval Air Station Lemoore’s F/A-18 Super Hornet flight simulators. “I got it, I got it,” exclaimed Capt. (Ret.) Theodore Kopfman as he sat

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