I thought John McCain was on that committee.

Supposedly, all the POWs were resolved. I also know that political enemies of McCain's tried to swiftboat him on this issue, accusing him of being a Manchurian Candidate (1962 movie reference, nothing to do with the 2004 film of the same name) and attempting to sabotage his campaign against Bush for the GOP nomination..

Could any of this be connected? I know that extorting cash from POW/MIA families has become a cottage industry among certain "vet groups" and McCain wound up on their shit list when he exposed them as frauds.

It only stands to reason, if any POWs survived from that era, the Vietnamese would have liquidated them a long time ago to avoid the embarassment of having them surface alive sometime in the future. They would not be worth anything to them alive today, and could really be a propaganda disaster if such a scheme ever came to light. If those Laotian POWs ever existed, and if they were being held for some aborted Nixon/Kissinger trade, they would certainly have been killed by now.