Bill Hendon

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William Martin Hendon (born November 9, 1944 in Asheville, North Carolina) is an author, POW/MIA activist, and two-term Republican U.S. Congressman from North Carolina's 11th District. His 2007 bestseller, An Enormous Crime, chronicles the history of American soldiers abandoned in Indochina following the Vietnam War and the circumstances that left them there. [1] A companion website allows readers to examine actual intelligence reports and decide if the Defense Intelligence Agency acted properly in dismissing each case.

One day prior to the release of An Enormous Crime, The Raleigh News & Observer ran a story about a passage in Douglas Brinkley's The Reagan Diaries, wherein Reagan, following a briefing by then-Vice President George H. W. Bush, wrote that Hendon was "off his rocker" with allegations about Americans held in Vietnam. [2]

In the 1980's Hendon's congressional campaigns became nationally famous due to his rivalry with Democrat James McClure Clarke. In 1982, Clarke defeated Hendon's bid for re-election by less than 1,500 votes. In 1984 Hendon gained revenge by defeating Clarke's bid for re-election by just two percentage points. In their third consecutive meeting in 1986 Hendon lost to Clarke by one percentage point. Despite being encouraged to run against Clarke for a fourth time in 1988, Hendon declined and announced that he was leaving political life to concentrate on the POW/MIA issue. Hendon is an alumnus of the University of Tennessee, where he also taught from 1968 to 1970.

[edit] Tenure in the United States Congress

• 97th United States Congress (1981-1982)
• 99th United States Congress (1985-1986)

[edit] External links

• An Enormous Crime: The Definitive Account of American POWs Abandoned in Southeast Asia
• Biography, The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• A Finding Aid to Records Relating to American Prisoners of War and Missing in Action from the Vietnam War Era, 1960-1994, The National Archives, compiled 1996
• Hanoi and Washington Officials Reneging on Promises of Joint POW/MIA Cooperation, U.S. Veteran Dispatch, February/March 1995
• M.I.A. Hunter in Hanoi Chains Himself to Gate, The New York Times, June 5, 1995
• Vietnam Ousts American Over the P.O.W. Issue, The New York Times, June 9, 1995