Bill Hendon

William Martin Hendon (born November 9, 1944) is an author, POW/MIA activist, and two-term Republican U.S. Congressman from North Carolina's 11th District.

Hendon is an alumnus of the University of Tennessee, where he also taught from 1968 to 1970. In 1980, he ousted two-term incumbent Democrat V. Lamar Gudger to become the first Republican to represent what is now the 11th since 1929. For the rest of the decade, Hendon's rivalry with Democrat Jamie Clarke gained national attention. 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--likely helped by Ronald Reagan's landslide victory. 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.

Hendon inspecting a Vietnam War-era prison, 30 miles (48 km) south of Hanoi, 1993.

His 2007 New York Times bestseller,^[1] An Enormous Crime, co-written with attorney Elizabeth Stewart, argues that American soldiers were abandoned in Indochina following the Vietnam War. In its review, Publishers Weekly stated, "controversial former North Carolina congressman Hendon and attorney Stewart make the case that the U.S. knowingly left hundreds of POWs in Vietnam and Laos in 1973, and that every presidential administration since then has covered it up.”^[2] Kirkus Reviews called it “a sprawling indictment of eight U.S. Administrations.… A convincing, urgent argument.”^[3]

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 President Ronald 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.^[4] Bush’s feelings aside, after Hendon was narrowly defeated (50.7% to 49.3%) in the 1986 mid-term elections,^[5] Reagan appointed him to the board of directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Hendon withdrew his name from consideration for the post in the face of stiff Senate Democratic opposition to his environmental record, and instead accepted a position with the pro-defense American Defense Institute.^[6] He resides in Washington, D.C. and remains active in the POW/MIA issue.

Tenure in the United States Congress

• 97th United States Congress (1981–1983)
• 99th United States Congress (1985–1987)

References

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