Former POW's Confirmation as Ambassador to Vietnam Will Place U.S. at "Extreme Disadvantage"

Former POW's Confirmation as Ambassador to Vietnam Will Place U.S. at "Extreme Disadvantage"

August/September 1996 Issue
By Ted Sampley
U.S. Veteran Dispatch

Retiring U.S. Rep. Pete Peterson, (D-Fl), says problems with his appointment as Ambassador to Vietnam haven't dashed his hopes of returning to the country where he spent 6-1/2 years being tortured as a prisoner of war.
The former Air Force fighter pilot, who was shot down in 1966 over North Vietnam, was nominated in May by President Bill Clinton to be the first U.S. Ambassador to communist Vietnam since the war ended 21 years ago.
Peterson's confirmation hearing, which was first scheduled for July 23 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been delayed until Congress returns from its current recess. "It's clearly got a political side," he said, adding that he hopes for a hearing in the second week of September. The issue spilled into presidential politics in May, when Clinton told Congress that Vietnam was cooperating "in full faith" in accounting for U.S. servicemen still missing in action as a result of the Vietnam War. Republican Presidential candidate Bob Dole accused Clinton of placing a desire for normal relations with Vietnam before Clinton's "repeated promises to achieve the fullest accounting of POW/MIAs." Others, like Senator Bob Smith, (R-NH), the former co-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, say Vietnam has "flatly refused" to account for hundreds of American servicemen known to have been alive in captivity, but never released. Peterson, who has no diplomatic experience, defended Clinton's decision and added that he has forgiven the Vietnamese for what they did to him and put the war behind him, suggesting all Americans do the same. "I've gotten over that a long time ago. I've never been into any kind of vendetta or anything like that. I really don't have time for hate or recrimination," Peterson said about his 6-1/2 years of torture. Many veterans, including a former POW, are openly questioning whether or not Peterson can really forgive and forget. They ask whether or not anyone who has been subject to such brutal and bloody manipulation can go back to the country responsible for their torture and deal with its leaders unemotionally and objectively.
Many of Vietnam's current government officials, who the new Ambassador will have to deal with on a daily basis, are the same ones responsible for the torture and deaths of hundreds of U.S. prisoners. Some are former interrogators and prison guards who actually administered the torture. Vietnam's Prime Minister, Vo Van Kiet, is responsible for the torture and deaths of dozens of U.S. POWs who were held in the jungles of South Vietnam. U.S. government records show that during the war Kiet was one of a handful who made decisions which affected the life or death treatment of U.S. prisoners held in Viet Cong prison camps. Nearly 40 percent of the U.S. prisoners held in those camps either died of deprivation and torture, were executed or never released. Kiet is widely believed to have been present at the 1965 Viet Cong ordered execution of U.S. Army Captain "Rocky" Versace.
Mike Benge, a former POW who was held in the same camp as Peterson does not believe that Peterson can forget or effectively represent the best interests of the United States government. "The hell he can," Benge said, when told that Peterson stated he has been able to put the torture behind him. "Given the long term repressive conditions, the torture and degradation under which U.S. POWs suffered, not only can Pete never forget, but his confirmation as Ambassador will place the United States at an extreme disadvantage in the delicate intricacies of diplomatic dealings with the Vietnamese."
Ironically, even though returned prisoners of war are generally treated as war heros whose patriotism is beyond question, most information known publicly about their behavior while prisoner of the communists is what the former POWs have themselves revealed. All returned POWs admit that very few, if any, U.S. prisoners of Hanoi were able to successfully resist the torture without cooperating to some degree with their captors. The prisoners who did stand firmly by the Military Code of Conduct did not come home from Vietnam. Brave men like Capt. Versace, who the communists labeled as "uncooperative" and "reactionary," were murdered. Vietnam's leaders were extremely bloody in their handling of American prisoners of war. Time Magazine reported April 9, 1973, soon after all the "known surviving" prisoners had been released, the following accounts of torture which Peterson and his fellow POW's had to endure: "The favorite props of the North Vietnamese captors were lengths of rope, iron manacles that could be screwed down to the bone and fan belts for administering beatings. Prisoners claimed that they were tied up for interminable periods into positions that yogis could not assume. Ropes tied to a man's ankles, wrists and neck were tightened until he was bent over backward in a doughnut shape. Men were also bent forward into a position of a baby sucking its big toe. The ropes cut off circulation, and in several cases paralyzed limbs for months, even years. "Handcuffs on the wrists of one prisoner were tightened so much that blood came through the pores. Hands and feet often swelled to unimaginable proportions and turned black. Jaws, noses, ribs, teeth and limbs, the prisoners charged, were deliberately broken and left unset. The sick and wounded were left in their own excrement for days on end. Fan belts or lengths of rubber turned buttocks of beaten prisoners into raw flesh. Sergeant Don MacPhail said that he was hung from a tree over three fresh graves and beaten with sticks. He was told that he would be in the fourth grave . . . "For many prisoners, there were only two meals a day, six hours apart, and they might consist of nothing more than a bowl of watery soup, occasionally with a fish head in it. The bread was often wormy and the rice sandy. Lt. Commander Knutson said that he and his fellow prisoners ate with one hand on their rice and the other on their soup bowl in order to keep the cockroaches from taking over . . . "Defense Department officials believe that many of the 55 men listed as having died in captivity in North Vietnam did so at the hands of torturers. According to several P.O.W.s, Air Force Major Edwin Atterberry, one of two prisoners who escaped and were recaptured in 1969, was beaten to death . . . "One prisoner was buried up to his neck for days. Another, who was suffering from dysentery, was denied medical assistance and finally suffocated in his own excrement. For those well enough to walk, there were endless work details . . . 'It was around 7 a.m. on a Sunday. Four guards came in and put me on my knees. They began slapping me around. Soon they were using their fists, and one of them pulled out a fan belt and began beating me with it. One blow by a fist on the ear ruptured my eardrum. Blood was pouring down my head. A kick popped one of my ribs. They turned into mad dogs. They began smashing my head against the concrete floor, kicking my bad leg. It went on for three hours. I think some other guards finally had to stop them. I lay in a stupor for three days. I was in terrible pain. They had dislodged the iron pin in my leg during the beating, and it was shoved three-quarters of an inch up into my hip. My mouth was so bruised that I could not open my teeth for five days.'"
There are thousands more of such "bone chilling" accounts which are locked in the vaults of the Pentagon.
Peterson is the source of several of the reports, including an "eyewitness" description of Atterberry's May 1969 disappearance. In addition, Peterson told U.S. government debriefers that he believed POW James Connell, who disappeared Dec. 1969, was murdered by the North Vietnamese "since he resisted everything in [the] NVN prison system, and was in solo during [his] entire internment." Unfortunately, the question as to how much permanent psychological damage, if any, U.S. POWs suffered as a result of surviving long term torture and degradation has never been examined. Neither has the question as to what extent the Vietnamese, Soviet, Cuban and Chinese intelligence agencies were able to successfully "exploit" American prisoners of war.
During the Korean War, the communists were able to score a number of successes, using psychological manipulation, torture and blackmail to turn prisoners of war into tools of espionage after their release. The most infamous case was that of George Blake, a British Foreign Service official who had been captured when the North Koreans overran Seoul, South Korea. He was released after being held prisoner of war by the North Koreans for three years. According to other POWs who were held with Blake in a North Korean POW camp, Blake was a hero who defied his guards and tried to escape on at least two occasions. One fellow POW, British journalist Philip Deane, described in his book a beating they received: "George Blake, who got the worst of the ordeal, smiled throughout, his eyebrows cocked ironically at his guard, his beard aggressively thrust forward." After repatriation, Blake was welcomed home as a hero and reassigned to a British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) post in West Berlin as deputy director of Technical Operations. His job there was to look for potential defectors in the East German Army. It was in this job that Blake began betraying to the Soviet KGB British intelligence projects, sending many British agents to their deaths. After nine and a half years of feeding the Soviets a steady flow of Britain's most valued secrets, Blake was finally caught. "I must freely admit," Blake stated in a confession "that there was not an official document on any matter to which I had access which was not passed on to my Soviet contact." Blake was sentenced to 42 years in prison, but escaped to Moscow in 1966. No one seems to know what turned Blake into a communist agent. He was the son of a British diplomat and was interred by the Nazi's in Holland when the Second World War broke out in 1940. He escaped, joined the Dutch resistance and was later recruited by the British, for whom he served with "valor and distinction" until 1943 when he was able to escape back to Britain. Blake immediately joined the Royal Navy, again serving with distinction, as a Naval Intelligence Officer. After the war, he was posted as a SIS officer working under diplomatic cover as a vice counsel in Seoul.
Blake is a glaring example of why, when national security is at issue, no one should be exempt from thorough background scrutiny including returned POWs whose "patriotism is beyond question." The communists have expressed their approval of Peterson's nomination. Vietnam's foreign minister, Nguyen Manh Cam, applauded the nomination and lauded Peterson for his many "positive contributions" to Vietnam.

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