 The families of the Air Force and Navy pilots shot down over North Vietnam and taken prisoner found that the Pentagon was often savagely unsympathetic to their plight, taking the view that the best thing these families could do was to be silent.Starting in May 1969, Laird did his best to publicize the POW issue, launching on 3 May a "Go Public" campaign to draw attention to the mistreatment and torture of American POWs in North Vietnam.Laird believed in drawing attention to the POW issue for humanitarian reasons, but officials such as Vice President Spiro Agnew saw the issue more as a way of mobilizing public support for Nixon's Vietnam policy.