By Ted Sampley
U.S. Veteran Dispatch
June/July/August 1997 Issue
Updated January 2006

The new U.S. Ambassador to communist Vietnam, Pete Peterson, told the press in Hanoi recently that the Vietnamese who held U.S. prisoners of war for years of torture and isolation were "men just doing their jobs." Peterson said his return to Vietnam is a personal search for reconciliation and that he wants the American public to understand how important it is to the security of the United States for the two sides to put the war behind them and be friends.

Ironically, Peterson, himself a former POW held for 6 1/2 years in North Vietnam, had reported after his release in 1973 that he had knowledge of at least two U.S. POWs who had been murdered by the Vietnamese and that interrogators brutally tortured him on a "daily basis."

Peterson's shameful embrace of the communist Vietnamese responsible for the torture and murder of hundreds of U.S. POWs is an obvious example of Washington's indifference and disrespect for the sacrifices of United States war veterans, particularly those who stood and died on the side of freedom against Vietnam's Marxist/Leninist/Ho Chi Minh war machine.

In any case, the ambassador's self serving indulgence in the "let's turn the other cheek, hug and be healed" syndrome trivializes the Geneva Convention of 1949 as it pertains to the treatment of prisoners of war.

In fact, if Peterson's statement was meant to be a declaration of the Clinton administration's position on war crimes, then the United States has committed a serious breach of the Geneva Convention. Ratified by the United States in 1955, the Convention states that prisoners of war are "victims of events," who merit "decent and humane treatment" and that the "willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment" of POWs are flagrant violations.

The Convention specifically dictates that each "High Contracting Party," the United States in this case, is obligated "to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts."

It can be easily proven that the Vietnamese communists officially, systematically and unmercifully used torture and terror against U.S. and allied prisoners of war. During the early summer of 1966, the Vietnamese communists arrogantly announced to the world that they were scheduling "war crime" trials for American POWs. To underscore their threat, 52 U.S. POWs handcuffed in pairs were paraded through the streets of Hanoi while agitated crowds stoned, beat, and berated them.

Soon after, Hanoi radio broadcast depositions from several POWs (they had been tortured) begging for Vietnamese "forgiveness" and denouncing American war operations. The communists said 60 American POWs had been picked and would soon be brought to trial.

President Lyndon Johnson, took North Vietnam's war crime trials threat seriously and began planning for retaliation. Sen. Richard B. Russell, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned that North Vietnam would be made "a desert" if the trials were held. Sen. George D. Aiken predicted "complete destruction of North Vietnam" if the POWs were killed. The communists backed down.

Communist Vietnamese policy on prisoners was brutally simple. They ignored all international laws and freehandedly used humiliation, threats, deprivation, torture and execution to manipulate any prisoners that resisted. A captured American would either violate the U.S. military Code of Conduct and collaborate or endure Hanoi's deadly torture.

The U.S. Department of Defense estimated in 1973 that the communist Vietnamese had tortured to death more than 55 U.S. prisoners. However, military archivists and POW activists claim the number is much higher.

Retired Air Force Colonel Ted Guy, a former POW held for five years, and a former Senior Ranking Officer (SRO) in the Hanoi prison camp, expressed shock at Peterson's contention that Vietnamese torturers were "only doing their jobs."

"If Mr. Peterson's statement in any way referred to the actions taken by some Vietnamese guards and officers in the prisoner of war camps and their beatings and torture of some of the POWs, I find it disgusting and an extraordinary lie," Guy told The U.S. Veteran Dispatch.

"To say that they were only doing their jobs would be like one of the tattooed survivors of Dachau, Buchenwald or Bergen-Belsen saying that the Nazis were only doing their jobs as they beat, tortured and exterminated millions of Jews during WWII. We prosecuted these men at the Nuremburg Trials. Why aren't we going after the bastards that left their "tattoo" on me in the Spring of 1972 and others earlier?

"The people of Vietnam are still ruled by the same communist government that treated the POWs as common criminals, in direct violation of the Geneva Accords concerning POW treatment. And this is the government that we are falling over backward to appease. It seems to me that this is another chapter in the book of "America is at blame," Guy said.

Guy raises a relevant question. Why is the United States not pursuing the war criminals who brutalized prisoners of war during the Vietnam War?

Congressman Walter B. Jones (R-NC), one of a handful in Congress who still cares about veterans and their issues, pushed a bill through Congress in 1996 making it legal for the U.S. government to seek out and prosecute in U.S. courts anyone who commits war crimes against U.S. military personnel. Although the Geneva Convention granted all "Contracting Parties" the authority to prosecute individuals for committing war crimes as defined by the Convention, the authority was not self-enacting in each participant's country.

The Convention directed each of the participating countries to enact its own implementing legislation. The United States never did, so technically until Congress made Jones' War Crimes Act a law last year, there was no legal precedent to prosecute war criminals in U.S. courts.

In its original form, Jones' bill, the War Crimes Act of 1996, was retroactive to the Vietnam War. But, before he could push the bill through the House and Senate, some of Hanoi's friends on the Hill, including Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and John Kerry (D-MA), blocked the bill, holding it hostage until it was stripped of all language making the bill retroactive to the Vietnam War.

Very few in Washington will acknowledge or talk about Vietnamese war crimes. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, refused to answer questions about Peterson's remarks. An aide to Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R-NC) told The U.S. Veteran Dispatch that Peterson's statement was obviously "Peterson's personal opinion" and that Sen. Faircloth did not feel it was important enough to bring up before the State Department.

There is no such reluctance in Washington to talk about German atrocities committed over 50 years ago and Bosnian atrocities committed five years ago. The Clinton administration has given the United Nations over $7 million to find and arrest Bosnian war criminals and supports all efforts to identify, deport and prosecute Nazis. So, why the double standard?

Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), for example, introduced the War Crimes Disclosure Act (S.2048) August 2, 1996, which provides for public disclosure of information relating to individuals who committed Nazi war crimes. Lott told the Senate when he introduced the bill that "accurate information about the Nazi regime, and those who ruthlessly carried out its barbaric policies, can only serve to deepen our understanding of history's darkest chapter, and strengthen our resolve that it never be repeated."

Does Lott care about the U.S. servicemen who were brutalized and murdered by the communist Vietnamese? Does he care about the hundreds of U.S. servicemen who were known to have been alive and under the control of Hanoi during the war but never released or accounted for after the end of the war? Probably not. He is part of the Senate leadership who manipulated Jones' war crimes law so it would not be retroactive to the Vietnam War and his War Crimes Disclosure Act does not provide for "public disclosure" of "accurate information" about communist Vietnam's barbaric treatment of U.S. prisoners of war.

Congress has never investigated the countless atrocities, torture, and mass murder ordered by top communist Vietnamese officials such as Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet and Vietnam's General Secretary, Do Muoi, during and after the Vietnam War.

Do Muoi was one of the senior communist leaders in North Vietnam during the war, who was responsible for engineering the North's "strategy of terror." Kiet was a senior Central Committee member of the North's secret National Liberation Front (the Viet Cong) that orchestrated the war in South Vietnam against the non-communist South Vietnamese. Kiet, it can be proven, was directly responsible for the "strategy of terror" used against South Vietnam.

In some prison camps in the South, over which Kiet was responsible, the death rate of U.S. prisoners was as high as 40 to 50 percent. U.S. prisoners under Kiet's deadly control suffered a higher casualty rate than the U.S. prisoners who were held in the infamous Andersonville POW camp during the Civil War. The U.S. government tried, convicted and hung the Confederate commander of Andersonville after the war.

The United States has a legal and moral responsibility to seek out and prosecute the individuals who purposely caused mistreatment of U.S. prisoners of war which resulted in the loss of life, limb and long-lasting physical and psychological problems to survivors.

Today, in the United States, where Nazi war criminals are still being hunted down and deported, it is possible to find known Vietnamese war criminals visiting, enjoying our freedoms and unconcerned with being punished for their crimes.

Peterson is a good example of how much the U.S. government knows. After his release in 1973, he reported to his superiors information about the "murder" of a number of U.S. POWs including Air Force Maj. Edwin Atterberry and Navy Lt. James Connell. Peterson was the last American to see Atterberry alive when, on May 10, 1969, he witnessed Atterberry, with his arms tied behind him and a rope around his neck, being thrown out of a jeep and dragged by his neck into a torture chamber after an escape attempt.

Peterson, who could see part of the prison camp from his cramped cell, later saw the limp and beaten body of Atterberry loaded into a truck and hauled away. The Vietnamese have steadfastly refused to admit murdering Atterberry or provide details of his death.

Connell was last seen alive by Peterson December 9, 1969 at the prison camp in Hanoi called the Zoo. A U.S. government intelligence report said, "Peterson feels that Connell was killed by the North Vietnamese, since he resisted everything in the North Vietnamese prison system and was in solo [solitary confinement] during his entire internment."

After being tortured initially in an unsuccessful attempt to extract a war crimes confession from him, Connell suffered severe nerve damage to his wrists and hands. Because his captors thought he was faking the paralysis, for 120 successive days they sadistically applied electrical shock on his injuries and poked needles into his fingers and under his nails to see if he would respond. Despite the excruciating pain, Connell betrayed no reaction. "If your hands are useless," his interrogators threatened, "we will cut them off."

When the communists led Connell away for the last time, he told another prisoner, Donald Spoon, "they want my hands . . . they are going to cut them off." Spoon said he took Connell's last statement to mean the interrogators planned to break him even if it meant cutting off his hands. Connell was never seen alive again.

According to U.S. government reports, the following U.S. prisoners of war are just a few among hundreds who were tortured by the Vietnamese, many of whom were purposely exposed to the harsh elements of the jungle and starved to death because they dared to resist communist indoctrination.

Sgt. Harold G. Bennett, U.S. Military Assistance Command (MACV), Vietnam, from Perryville, Arkansas, was held prisoner for six months, before, according to a National Liberation Front radio broadcast, being publicly murdered June, 24, 1965. He was shot in the back of the head, execution style.

Capt. Humberto "Rocky" Versace, U.S. Army Special Forces, of Norfolk, Va., was held prisoner for two years before, according to a National Liberation Front radio broadcast, he was publicly murdered in September 1965.

Fellow prisoner Lt. Nick Rowe said Versace, who the Viet Cong had labeled a "reactionary," was being tortured by guards in an indoctrination hut a few feet from Rowe's cage when Versace defiantly told a Viet Cong guard, "I'm an officer in the United States Army. You can force me to come here, you can make me sit and listen, but I don't believe a damn word of what you say!" Rowe said those were the last words any American ever heard from Versace.

Soon after, according to a U.S. government report, Versace was marched to Central Committee headquarters and forced to kneel and apologize for his "crimes" before he was shot in the back of the head.

Rowe, who was held in one of Kiet's death camps for five years and was the only U.S. officer to escape from the Viet Cong, chronicled the brutal and inhumane treatment of himself and other U.S. prisoners in his book, Five Years to Freedom.

Sgt. Kenneth Mills Roraback, U.S. Army Special Forces, from Baldwin, N.Y., was held prisoner for two years before, according to a National Liberation Front radio broadcast, being executed. A U.S. government report says a Viet Cong guard, acting on Central Committee orders, slipped behind Roraback's bamboo cage and shot him in the head while he was eating his daily bowl of rice.

Capt. Orien Judson Walker, Jr., MACV, was held prisoner for nearly a year before, according to the Vietnamese, he became sick from starvation. He was intentionally denied medical treatment and was separated from other American prisoners so they could not care from him. According to the Vietnamese, Walker, of Boston, Mass., died Feb. 4, 1966.

Sgt. Leonard M. Tadios, MACV, was held prisoner for nearly two years. He was starved and intentionally denied medical treatment. Tadios, from Lanai, Hawaii, died March 18, 1966 after being isolated from other prisoners and left to die alone.

Sgt. 1st Class Joe Parks, MACV, from Cedar Lane, Texas, was held for two years as a prisoner of the Viet Cong. He became ill as a result of starvation. The Viet Cong, removed Parks from the care of his fellow POW's denying him food and medical treatment. Parks died a slow and painful death as a result.

Capt. Donald Cook, U.S. Marine Corps, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for jeopardizing his own health by sharing his meager supply of food and scarce medicines with other U.S. prisoners who were more sick. Cook, from Essex Junction, Vermont, became legendary for his refusal to betray the military Code of Conduct. On one occasion, Kiet's cadre put a pistol to Cook's head, demanding that he denounce the United States. Cook resisted and calmly recited the nomenclature of the parts of the pistol. The Viet Cong were so infuriated at Cook's continued resistance that they isolated him from other American prisoners and refused him food and medicine.

Hanoi claims Cook died as a result of malaria and, like all the others listed above, the Vietnamese communists claim they do not know where his remains are buried.

1Lt. Lance P. Sijan, U.S. Air Force pilot, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, crashed on a mission and evaded capture for nearly six weeks. Seriously injured, in shock and starving, Sijan was captured by the North Vietnamese while trying to reach friendly forces. He initially overpowered one of the guards in the holding camp where he was taken and crawled into the jungle, but was recaptured several hours later. He was then transferred to another prison camp where he was kept in solitary confinement and interrogated and severely tortured. He did not give any information to his captors. Sijan lapsed into delirium and was cared for by another POW. He never complained about his physical condition during his intermittent periods of consciousness and kept talking about escaping. Barely alive, Sijan continued to fight. Sijan was finally removed form the care of the POWs and they were told he was being taken to a hospital. He was never seen alive again. Sijan was awarded posthumously the Congressional Medal of Honor for his extraordinary heroism during his evasion and captivity.

Capt. William "Ike" Eisenbraun, U.S. Army Special Forces, from Los Angeles, California, fought in Korea and received a Purple Heart. He volunteered for duty in Vietnam in 1961 and was one of the earliest to go to Southeast Asia as an advisor to the Royal Lao and South Vietnamese armies. On his fourth tour of duty, Eisenbraun was captured while serving as Senior Advisor, Headquarters, MACV, on jungle outpost Ba Gia near Quang Ngai, when it was overrun in one of the "bloodiest battles" of the war to date. Eisenbraun was later reported to be in good health by two captured Vietnamese who later escaped.
It was eventually learned that Eisenbraun died while a POW. The Vietnamese said he died as a result of a fall, but a fellow POW said that Eisenbraun had died as a result of beatings after an escape attempt in 1967.

Ike had provided leadership for the prisoners and was an obstacle to the Viet Cong in interrogating the other prisoners. POW Bobby Garwood said that Eisenbraun had taught him survival skills for the jungle such as which insects to eat. Garwood said that Eisenbraun had been severely beaten following the escape attempt and one night soon after was taken from his cage and not returned. The next morning, Garwood was told that Eisenbraun had fallen from his hammock and died (around September 8, 1967). He was buried at the camp in Quang Nam Province along with other POWs who died of torture and starvation. His remains have never been returned.

LCpl. Edwin R. Grissett, Jr., U.S. Marine Corps, from San Juan, Texas, was on a search mission for a missing Marine Corps officer when he became separated from his unit in January, 1966 and was captured by the Viet Cong. Normally weighing about 190 pounds, after two years in captivity he weighed only 125 pounds. He suffered particularly from dysentery and malaria, and in his weakened condition, begged his fellow POWs not to tell him any secrets because he found it difficult to resist the tortures of the Viet Cong. Near starvation in late November, 1969, Grissett caught and killed the camp's kitchen cat. Fellow POWs watched helplessly as guards beat Grissett for the crime. He never recovered. A returned POW reported that Grissett died on December 2, 1969.

Former prisoner of war Ret. U.S. Navy Capt. Eugene B. McDaniel wrote in his book Scars & Stripes about his own mental state after being tortured for several days: "I felt myself sliding then. I was being beaten, whipped, falling to the point of nothingness. Death would be welcome. I wanted the pain to stop . . . I was bleeding, wracked with fever, my mind numbed by the electric shock, in and out of nightmarish hallucinations. Suddenly I was not a Navy flyer at all; I was not a patriot at this point, and being an American meant nothing in the reality of the moment. I was simply a human being sliding further and further toward death, and there was nothing at all to reach out for anymore, within or without."

The Vietnamese officer who ordered that torture session with McDaniel and many other POWs was nicknamed "Rabbit." McDaniel said Rabbit, now identified as Col. Nguyen Minh Y and working in Hanoi for Vietnam's General Political Department, was a master psychologist who often boasted that the Vietnamese would always control the POWs "even if they returned to the United States."

According to reports, Kiet, ordered executed at least three of the American heroes listed above
-- Capt. Rocky Versace, Sgts. Kenneth Roraback and Harold Bennett.

Ambassador Peterson deals with Kiet on a daily basis and nearly every high ranking U.S. government official who travels to Vietnam meets with and shakes the hand of Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet.
 
UPDATE: Not long after taking his post as U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, Peterson met and married Vi Le, a former North Vietnamese who had previously served as the senior trade representative in Vietnam for the government of Australia.

In 2001, Peterson resigned from his post as ambassador to Vietnam to make the run in 2002 for governor of Florida. He withdrew from the Democratic field shortly after Sept. 11. and signed on as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the pro-Hanoi U.S.-Vietnam Trade Council.

The Trade Council is the powerful international corporative lobby the most responsible for influencing the United States Government to abandon missing American servicemen in favor of trade with communist Vietnam.

DO YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?

Call or write your congressmen and senators. Demand that the U.S. government make public the identities of all known Vietnamese war criminals responsible for the torture and murder of American POWs. Demand that U.S. government officials do what is necessary to identify Vietnamese war criminals who are officials of the Vietnamese government and that once identified, they be banned from all dealings with the United States.

Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-312
To write, use the appropriate address:
To a Senator:
The Honorable (full name)
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
To a Representative:
The Honorable (full name)
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20510