Robert Dornan: “I started, believe it or not, when I was 19 years old, when I joined the Air Force. And while I was waiting to go to…”

“I started, believe it or not, when I was 19 years old, when I joined the Air Force. And while I was waiting to go to pilot training in July 1953, I had just turned 20 by then, I joined when I was 19 in October 1952. I served basic, waiting at Williams Air Force Base to go. And an Army psychiatrist who had interviewed all the men coming back from Korea, the first waves who had been brainwashed, tortured is the proper word, and broken, and given confessions, 21 were still sitting in China, young high school dropout enlisted kids. One committed suicide. All 20 saw the error of their ways, came home, our country forgave them. But I started then. But legislatively I have spent 31 years, since my best friend David Hurdlica was shot down. His wife Carol testified yesterday, my wife's best friend. We were neighbors, bridge partners. I checked him out in the F-100 HUN, the Super Sabre. For 31 years my interest has been intense. If I may say so, I won the Mendel Rivers award by testifying in that committee room today. I thought about it and thought, well, do not mention it. That was the summer of 1971. Pete Peterson, who was sitting in the room, was still in prison, and I was testifying, do not end Vietnam the way we ended Korea. And we did. More controversy, more conspiracy theories, more men left behind, certainly in Laos for sure.…”