Why Vietnam Loves McCain

Duyet's story is disputed by one of his former colleagues. McCain was among the roughly 200 American POWs Bui Tin says he interviewed between 1964 and 1973 for Hanoi's propaganda machine, and Tin says there was plenty of cruel treatment in Hanoi's prisons. "If the pilots agreed to sign a confession that Hanoi was right and their [the pilots'] actions were wrong and criminal, then they could live together with other prisoners," Tin says. "If not, they were kept in solitary until they agreed to cooperate." McCain spent two years in solitary confinement. Tin says Navy Cmdr. James Stockdale was one of the few who didn't crack. He was held for months in a fetid latrine in which he could neither stand up nor lie down, Tin says.

Still, Tin claims the abuse stopped short of systematic torture. "The prison authorities were authorized to slap [the POWs] around if they didn't speak the truth under interrogation," Tin says. "Slapping them hard was permitted, but no punching." Someone evidently forgot to tell McCain's interrogators. His refusal to cooperate resulted in a series of beatings over several days in 1968, ending with two broken teeth, several cracked ribs and his left arm broken again. He tried to hang himself, but guards cut him down. Nevertheless, he says he was treated more leniently than other prisoners. "My captors were more careful not to permanently injure or disfigure me than they were with the other prisoners," he writes. As the son of a U.S. admiral, he was considered too valuable a propaganda asset. He was finally freed along with his fellow POWs in 1973 under the Paris Peace Accords.

McCain and his aides declined to comment on the stories told by Duyet and other Vietnamese who say they met him during the war. The senator doesn't like to talk about his experience as a POW. "It's over," he once told a reporter. But he's returned to Vietnam at least 10 times since the war ended. His aide Mark Salter recalls a dinner with Vietnamese officials where one of them approached Salter and gestured to another man seated nearby, saying the man claimed to have been one of McCain's prison guards. Unsure how his boss would react, Salter hesitated before whispering the news in McCain's ear. Salter says the senator looked over and studied the man. "Don't recognize him," McCain said, and turned back to his meal.

Most of the Hanoi Hilton was razed in 1993, and only a sliver of it has been preserved as a tourist attraction. McCain's helmet, oxygen mask and a flight suit (he denies they're his) are on display. A concrete monument stands beside the lake, depicting an American pilot, hands raised in surrender. A plaque misspells McCain's name and lists his branch of service as the Air Force. According to one Hanoi official who is not authorized to speak to the press, Vietnam's leaders are pondering what to do with it if McCain wins: destroy it, give it to him as a peace offering or replace the plaque with something more tasteful? Asked if McCain would accept the plaque as a gesture from the Vietnamese government, an aide shrugs. "It's a concrete block," he says. "What's he going to do with it?"

With Holly Bailey with the McCain Campaign

© 2008