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University of Iowa anti-war protests, 1970

1970-10-07 ""Iowa City People's Peace Treaty Committee"" Page 20

(continued from page 3) 
Nixon & the Prisoners of War

a particularly high figure, in view of the fact that many of the men were seriously injured as they bailed out over North Vietnam and that 339 are now listed as alive and most of them are corresponding regularly with their relatives in this country. The figure, in fact, reveals a much lower death rate among prisoners than occured during World War II, when 27 percent of soldiers in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps died during captivity. 
The Department of Defense has classified as "confidential " the number of prisoners who have died in Saigon run POW camps. But in an article that appeared in the December 6 St Louis Post-Dispatch: Richard Dudman reported that the figure is in fact over 800, including more than 300 North Vietnamese and more than 500 Viet Cong soldiers. There have been regular reports of such deaths, some as the result of "accidental " shootings by prison guards. Americans who have returned from Vietnam also constantly report episodes of brutality toward Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers both during and after capture, in which torture of captives before they are delivered to the formal prisoner of war camps is commonplace. There is no evidence that the Viet Cong have ever attacked a Saigon run POW camp after such reports.
President Nixon and his aides decided to speak out on prisoners of war shortly after they took office, when popular enthusiasm for continuing the war in Vietnam was at a low point, Secretary of Defense Laird began the assault by charging that there was "clear evidence" that North Vietnam was not treating American prisoners humanely. He charged that the North Vietnamese refused to identify all the captured pilots, refused to permit prisoners to correspond freely, did not provide adequate medical care, and did not permit any neutral organization to inspect the damps. This declaration was followed in quick succession by statements of Secretary of State Rogers before Congress, Henry Cabot Lodge at the Paris Peace Talks, and American delegate Rita Hauser at the United Nations, all calling North Vietnam's attitude toward American pilots "inhumane" and "inexcusable."
At the same time, American military and civilian officials began travelling around the country to meet with wives and relatives of the prisoners. With encouragement from Washington these women flew to various North Vietnamese embassies throughout the world to beg North Vietnamese diplomats to release the prisoners, or at least their names. 
In August, 1969, three more prisoners were freed by North Vietnam (bringing to nine the number that have been released.) When they met with the press just after leaving North Vietnam, they said their food, housing and medical treatment had been "adequate" 1 and they "assured relatives of the Americans left behind in the North Vietnamese camps they had no cause to worry."2
A month later, however, when the government presented two of them at an elaborate press conference, they had changed their story, and made serious accusations involving torture and physical abuse, Navy Lieutenant Robert F. Frishman and Apprentice Seaman Douglas B. Hegdahl charged that the North Vietnamese had tortured certain prisoners ( not including themselves) by pulling out fingernails or tying their hands to the ceilings, and that Lieutenant Frishman was forced (for violating prison rules) to sit tied to a stool in an unbearably hot hut. Frishman also said that the North Vietnamese had neglected persons who needed medical attention and had kept many prisoners in solitary confinement. 
Following up these accusations, both houses of Congress in later 1969 and early 1970 unanimously passed a resolution accusing North Vietnam of several violations of the Geneva Convention (the lack of mail, neutral inspection, and medical attention) and calling for increased efforts "to obtain humane treatment and release of American prisoners of war." Several months later, both houses passed a resolution declaring that May 1, 1970 "be commemorated as a day fro an appeal for international justice for all the American prisoners of war and servicemen missing in action in Southeast Asia."
The Firshman Hegdahl accusations also helped to persuade H. Ross Perot, a forty year old Texan who had made over a billion dollars selling computer data processing systems to try to dramatize the plight of the Americans in Hanoi. Perot calls himself a political independent who has supported both Democrats and Republicans, but his support of President Nixon's actions in Southeast Asia has been intense and unswerving. During the fall of 11969, when demonstrations were being staged across the country to protest the continuation of the war. Perot financed a major advertising campaign calling for support of Nixon's policies and immediately thereafter found himself being invited to White House receptions. He then announced his offer to ransom all Americans captured in Southeast Asia for $100 million and began organizing a series of guerrilla theater extravaganzas to arouse public concern. 
On December 24, 1969, Perot chartered a jet liner, filled it with fifty-eight wives of missing soldiers and pilots, and ninety-four of their children, and flew them all to Paris to meet with North Vietnamese diplomats. At the same time, Perot sent another jet filled with seventy-five tons of foodstuffs and medical supplies around the world for the stated purpose of persuading the North Vietnamese to receive the plane in Hanoi and distribute the supplies to the prisoners as Christmas presents. The North Vietnamese had already announced their intention to deliver Christmas packages mailed to the prisoners, and had arranged for the families to send them through Moscow. Perot chose to ignore this channel and instead spent $600,000 on his plane flight to obtain drama and news coverage. About this time, President Nixon appointed Perot to the advisory board of the United States Naval Academy.
Perot's activities continued undiminished throughout 1970. In April, he spent $250,000 to 

[hand drawing (New York Review of Books)]

fly a group of wives and reporters to prison camps in South Vietnam run by the Saigon government and financed by the United States. The following month, Perot used his money to generate support for President Nixon's invasion of Cambodia in the United States Capitol of a life-sized exhibit of what purports to be a realistic depiction of a North Vietnamese prison camp. This tableau is now being erected in state capitols throughout the country.
During the summer of 1970, Perot tried to mobilize the city of Fort Worth, Texas, around the prisoner-of-war issue. He opened store-front offices, placed billboards around the city, and organized volunteers to urge every resident to write to the President of North Vietnam.
Throughout this period, government officials were continuing to meet regularly to consider ways of stirring up concern for the prisoners and to recruit allies in the private sector. In both the State Department and the Defense Department, numerous officials spent all their time on the prisoners-of-war question, traveling, speaking, responding to inquires, and thinking of ways to promote what has now become a carefully orchestrated campaign to whip up sentiment over prisoners in North Vietnam. Here are a few of the hundreds of events which have figured in this campaign:
- The American Red Cross has organized letter writing campaigns in many cities appointing local chairmen and forming youth groups for the purpose of flooding Hanoi with thousands of pleas. 
- The delegates attending with American Legion's annual convention in September passed a resolution committing the legion to embark on a "saturation" campaign to gain public support for the release of prisoners. 
- At the very time that all campuses in California were told to take politics out of the classroom, Edwin Reinecke, the state's lieutenant governor, sent letters to the student government presidents of all that state colleges and universities urging them to mount "Write Hanoi" campaigns. 
- The Veterans of Foreign Wars circulated petitions and obtained some four million signatures which they sought to present to the North Vietnamese of October. 
- The Jaycees of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, attempted to duplicate this feat on a smaller scale by out one hundred scouts, high-school students, housewives, and businessmen throughout the community to collect signatures to a letter asking North Vietnam to release the names of all US prisoners and to permit regular correspondence between the captives and their relatives. 
- Some local telephone companies, for example in Minnesota, began circulating messages about the prisoner-of-war issue with their telephone bills. Even the Steve Canyon cartoon strip began featuring prisoner-of-war relatives in its daily sagas. 
President Nixon has also done what he could to focus publicity on North Vietnam's treatment of prisoners. He named Sunday, May 3, 1970 a day that followed by three days his invasion of Cambodia and preceded by one day the killing of four students at Kent State - a national day of prayer for American prisoners in North Vietnam.
Then, on August 7, 1970, the President announced that he was sending former astronaut Frank Borman on a twenty-five nation tour to try to obtain the release of the prisoners. The following month, Borman, who is now Vice President of Electronic Data Systems, Inc. Ross Perot's computer services firm, and head of American Horizons Foundation, Perot's tax exempt foundation, reported to a half empty Congress that his mission had failed. 
On October 24, Nixon addressed the UN General Assembly and urged them to consider the prisoner-of-war issue. he named November 11, which is normally Veteran's Day, " Prisoner-of-War Day." Ten days later, on November 21, the President launched his abortive commando attack on what he thought was a North Vietnamese prison camp, killing some twenty five North Vietnamese and capturing a few others, and at the same time ordered US warplanes to bomb throughout North Vietnam.
This extensive publicity campaign has not only served to deflect attention from the issues of the war but has also submerged the facts about what is actually happening in North Vietnam's prison camps The most serious charges lodged against the North Vietnamese are the accusations of physical abuse made by Frishman and Hegdahl in 1969. These charges are serious indeed, nut the manner in which the Pentagon has handled public information about North  Vietnam's camps and the recent statements by other released prisoners make the accusations difficult to accept at face value. The other seven pilots who have been released by North Vietnam were shielded from the press after their release and have only recently been encouraged to tell of their experiences in captivity. Their stories are significantly less harrowing than those of Frishman and Hegdahl.
Air Force Captain Joe V, Carpenter was interviewed by the ABC television program "Now" on September 14, 1970, two years after his release from North Vietnam. He said that soon after he was shot down he got over fears for his life when he realized that he was being protected from hostile civilians by the militia that captured him although later some villagers did pull at his mustache He was kept alone in a bunker and found the isolation hard to get used to, but he was eventually able to establish some rapport with the local people who came to look at him, especially the children, and he thought that their attitude toward him became less hostile and more understanding. He made no charges of brutal treatment by his captors. 
In November, 1970, almost three years after his release from captivity, Air Force Colonel Norris M, Overly finally agreed to tell his story, and again it was one without the horrors described by Frishman and Hegdahl, Overly was captured during the height of the bombing of North Vietnam, in October, 1967, in an area just north of the demilitarised zone, some 300 miles south of Hanoi. His trip to Hanoi, took seven weeks; he traveled only at night, avoiding frequent aerial attacks and resting for long periods at medical centers because of an infection that developed on his back. He was beaten by villagers at several points on this journey, but apparently was treated well by the military officials when they were accompanying him. Once in the formal prisoner camp. Overly seems to have suffered only from boredom. 
Overly said his food, generally soup and bread, was bad by American standards but may

1 New York Times, August 8, 1969, page 12

2 AP report, San Francisco Chronicle, August 6, 1969, page 12

20

Saving...

(continued from page 3) Nixon & the Prisoners of War a particularly high figure, in view of the fact that many of the men were seriously injured as they bailed out over North Vietnam and that 339 are now listed as alive and most of them are corresponding regularly with their relatives in this country. The figure, in fact, reveals a much lower death rate among prisoners than occured during World War II, when 27 percent of soldiers in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps died during captivity. The Department of Defense has classified as "confidential " the number of prisoners who have died in Saigon run POW camps. But in an article that appeared in the December 6 St Louis Post-Dispatch: Richard Dudman reported that the figure is in fact over 800, including more than 300 North Vietnamese and more than 500 Viet Cong soldiers. There have been regular reports of such deaths, some as the result of "accidental " shootings by prison guards. Americans who have returned from Vietnam also constantly report episodes of brutality toward Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers both during and after capture, in which torture of captives before they are delivered to the formal prisoner of war camps is commonplace. There is no evidence that the Viet Cong have ever attacked a Saigon run POW camp after such reports. President Nixon and his aides decided to speak out on prisoners of war shortly after they took office, when popular enthusiasm for continuing the war in Vietnam was at a low point, Secretary of Defense Laird began the assault by charging that there was "clear evidence" that North Vietnam was not treating American prisoners humanely. He charged that the North Vietnamese refused to identify all the captured pilots, refused to permit prisoners to correspond freely, did not provide adequate medical care, and did not permit any neutral organization to inspect the damps. This declaration was followed in quick succession by statements of Secretary of State Rogers before Congress, Henry Cabot Lodge at the Paris Peace Talks, and American delegate Rita Hauser at the United Nations, all calling North Vietnam's attitude toward American pilots "inhumane" and "inexcusable." At the same time, American military and civilian officials began travelling around the country to meet with wives and relatives of the prisoners. With encouragement from Washington these women flew to various North Vietnamese embassies throughout the world to beg North Vietnamese diplomats to release the prisoners, or at least their names. In August, 1969, three more prisoners were freed by North Vietnam (bringing to nine the number that have been released.) When they met with the press just after leaving North Vietnam, they said their food, housing and medical treatment had been "adequate" 1 and they "assured relatives of the Americans left behind in the North Vietnamese camps they had no cause to worry."2 A month later, however, when the government presented two of them at an elaborate press conference, they had changed their story, and made serious accusations involving torture and physical abuse, Navy Lieutenant Robert F. Frishman and Apprentice Seaman Douglas B. Hegdahl charged that the North Vietnamese had tortured certain prisoners ( not including themselves) by pulling out fingernails or tying their hands to the ceilings, and that Lieutenant Frishman was forced (for violating prison rules) to sit tied to a stool in an unbearably hot hut. Frishman also said that the North Vietnamese had neglected persons who needed medical attention and had kept many prisoners in solitary confinement. Following up these accusations, both houses of Congress in later 1969 and early 1970 unanimously passed a resolution accusing North Vietnam of several violations of the Geneva Convention (the lack of mail, neutral inspection, and medical attention) and calling for increased efforts "to obtain humane treatment and release of American prisoners of war." Several months later, both houses passed a resolution declaring that May 1, 1970 "be commemorated as a day fro an appeal for international justice for all the American prisoners of war and servicemen missing in action in Southeast Asia." The Firshman Hegdahl accusations also helped to persuade H. Ross Perot, a forty year old Texan who had made over a billion dollars selling computer data processing systems to try to dramatize the plight of the Americans in Hanoi. Perot calls himself a political independent who has supported both Democrats and Republicans, but his support of President Nixon's actions in Southeast Asia has been intense and unswerving. During the fall of 11969, when demonstrations were being staged across the country to protest the continuation of the war. Perot financed a major advertising campaign calling for support of Nixon's policies and immediately thereafter found himself being invited to White House receptions. He then announced his offer to ransom all Americans captured in Southeast Asia for $100 million and began organizing a series of guerrilla theater extravaganzas to arouse public concern. On December 24, 1969, Perot chartered a jet liner, filled it with fifty-eight wives of missing soldiers and pilots, and ninety-four of their children, and flew them all to Paris to meet with North Vietnamese diplomats. At the same time, Perot sent another jet filled with seventy-five tons of foodstuffs and medical supplies around the world for the stated purpose of persuading the North Vietnamese to receive the plane in Hanoi and distribute the supplies to the prisoners as Christmas presents. The North Vietnamese had already announced their intention to deliver Christmas packages mailed to the prisoners, and had arranged for the families to send them through Moscow. Perot chose to ignore this channel and instead spent $600,000 on his plane flight to obtain drama and news coverage. About this time, President Nixon appointed Perot to the advisory board of the United States Naval Academy. Perot's activities continued undiminished throughout 1970. In April, he spent $250,000 to [hand drawing (New York Review of Books)] fly a group of wives and reporters to prison camps in South Vietnam run by the Saigon government and financed by the United States. The following month, Perot used his money to generate support for President Nixon's invasion of Cambodia in the United States Capitol of a life-sized exhibit of what purports to be a realistic depiction of a North Vietnamese prison camp. This tableau is now being erected in state capitols throughout the country. During the summer of 1970, Perot tried to mobilize the city of Fort Worth, Texas, around the prisoner-of-war issue. He opened store-front offices, placed billboards around the city, and organized volunteers to urge every resident to write to the President of North Vietnam. Throughout this period, government officials were continuing to meet regularly to consider ways of stirring up concern for the prisoners and to recruit allies in the private sector. In both the State Department and the Defense Department, numerous officials spent all their time on the prisoners-of-war question, traveling, speaking, responding to inquires, and thinking of ways to promote what has now become a carefully orchestrated campaign to whip up sentiment over prisoners in North Vietnam. Here are a few of the hundreds of events which have figured in this campaign: - The American Red Cross has organized letter writing campaigns in many cities appointing local chairmen and forming youth groups for the purpose of flooding Hanoi with thousands of pleas. - The delegates attending with American Legion's annual convention in September passed a resolution committing the legion to embark on a "saturation" campaign to gain public support for the release of prisoners. - At the very time that all campuses in California were told to take politics out of the classroom, Edwin Reinecke, the state's lieutenant governor, sent letters to the student government presidents of all that state colleges and universities urging them to mount "Write Hanoi" campaigns. - The Veterans of Foreign Wars circulated petitions and obtained some four million signatures which they sought to present to the North Vietnamese of October. - The Jaycees of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, attempted to duplicate this feat on a smaller scale by out one hundred scouts, high-school students, housewives, and businessmen throughout the community to collect signatures to a letter asking North Vietnam to release the names of all US prisoners and to permit regular correspondence between the captives and their relatives. - Some local telephone companies, for example in Minnesota, began circulating messages about the prisoner-of-war issue with their telephone bills. Even the Steve Canyon cartoon strip began featuring prisoner-of-war relatives in its daily sagas. President Nixon has also done what he could to focus publicity on North Vietnam's treatment of prisoners. He named Sunday, May 3, 1970 a day that followed by three days his invasion of Cambodia and preceded by one day the killing of four students at Kent State - a national day of prayer for American prisoners in North Vietnam. Then, on August 7, 1970, the President announced that he was sending former astronaut Frank Borman on a twenty-five nation tour to try to obtain the release of the prisoners. The following month, Borman, who is now Vice President of Electronic Data Systems, Inc. Ross Perot's computer services firm, and head of American Horizons Foundation, Perot's tax exempt foundation, reported to a half empty Congress that his mission had failed. On October 24, Nixon addressed the UN General Assembly and urged them to consider the prisoner-of-war issue. he named November 11, which is normally Veteran's Day, " Prisoner-of-War Day." Ten days later, on November 21, the President launched his abortive commando attack on what he thought was a North Vietnamese prison camp, killing some twenty five North Vietnamese and capturing a few others, and at the same time ordered US warplanes to bomb throughout North Vietnam. This extensive publicity campaign has not only served to deflect attention from the issues of the war but has also submerged the facts about what is actually happening in North Vietnam's prison camps The most serious charges lodged against the North Vietnamese are the accusations of physical abuse made by Frishman and Hegdahl in 1969. These charges are serious indeed, nut the manner in which the Pentagon has handled public information about North Vietnam's camps and the recent statements by other released prisoners make the accusations difficult to accept at face value. The other seven pilots who have been released by North Vietnam were shielded from the press after their release and have only recently been encouraged to tell of their experiences in captivity. Their stories are significantly less harrowing than those of Frishman and Hegdahl. Air Force Captain Joe V, Carpenter was interviewed by the ABC television program "Now" on September 14, 1970, two years after his release from North Vietnam. He said that soon after he was shot down he got over fears for his life when he realized that he was being protected from hostile civilians by the militia that captured him although later some villagers did pull at his mustache He was kept alone in a bunker and found the isolation hard to get used to, but he was eventually able to establish some rapport with the local people who came to look at him, especially the children, and he thought that their attitude toward him became less hostile and more understanding. He made no charges of brutal treatment by his captors. In November, 1970, almost three years after his release from captivity, Air Force Colonel Norris M, Overly finally agreed to tell his story, and again it was one without the horrors described by Frishman and Hegdahl, Overly was captured during the height of the bombing of North Vietnam, in October, 1967, in an area just north of the demilitarised zone, some 300 miles south of Hanoi. His trip to Hanoi, took seven weeks; he traveled only at night, avoiding frequent aerial attacks and resting for long periods at medical centers because of an infection that developed on his back. He was beaten by villagers at several points on this journey, but apparently was treated well by the military officials when they were accompanying him. Once in the formal prisoner camp. Overly seems to have suffered only from boredom. Overly said his food, generally soup and bread, was bad by American standards but may 1 New York Times, August 8, 1969, page 12 2 AP report, San Francisco Chronicle, August 6, 1969, page 12 20