Page 7 - AACL 25th anniversary

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SEN. JOHN MCCAIN graduated from the
Naval Academy in June 1958, and served as a Naval aviator for 22 years, including in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. On October 26, 1967, during Senator McCain’s 23rd bombing mission over North Vietnam, a surface-to-air missile struck his plane and he landed in Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi. He was taken as a Prisoner of War (POW) into the now-infamous “Hanoi Hilton,” where he was denied needed medical treatment and subjected to years of torture by the North Vietnamese. Aided by his faith and the strength of his fellow POWs, he regained his health, and was finally released after five and a half years, on March 14, 1973. After Vietnam, Senator McCain continued his service, attending the National War College before being assigned as commanding officer of the Navy’s largest aviation squadron at Cecil Field in Jacksonville, Florida. His last Navy duty assignment was to serve as the Navy Liaison to the U.S. Senate. He retired from the Navy in 1981. A year later, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona, and after serving two terms in the House, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986. He currently serves as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services. Senator McCain was the Republican Party’s nominee for President in the 2008 election. In 2006, the Albanian American Civic League awarded Senator McCain its Balkan Peace Award for co-sponsoring with Senator Charles Schumer S. Res. 521, commending the people of Albania for their unique role in saving all Jews who either lived in Albania or sought refuge there during the Holocaust. In addition, the Board of the Civic League recognized the senator for his historical support for the independence of Kosova (which the U.S. government recognized in February 2008), for urging the Clinton Administration to arm the Kosova Liberation Army during the 1999 Kosova war, and for his efforts in 2000 to secure the release of Kosovar Albanian prisoners of war, who had been transferred illegally at war’s end from Kosova to prisons in Serbia.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
88 Saluting Albanian Religious Tolerance in an Age of Intolerance 7