George E. Smith
In an act which it said was being done as a "response to the friendly sentiments of the American people against the war in South Vietnam", the VC released U.S. Army Sergeant George E. Smith and Specialist E-5 Claude E. McClure, who had both been captured on 24 November 1963. Vietnam Communist Party official Le Duc Tho escorted Smith and McClure across the border from North Vietnam into Cambodia, freeing both men after two years as prisoners of war. Smith and McClure would travel across neutral Cambodia on their own and would address a press conference in Phnom Penh on 30 November, praising their captors and American antiwar protesters, and criticizing the war effort. On 27 December the U.S. military announced that Smith and McClure would face court martial for aiding the enemy.