Guards at War-era POW camps
From: mattsteinglass <mattsteinglass@yahoo.com>
Date: Feb 13, 2006 12:01 AM
Subject: [Vsg] Guards at War-era POW camps
Dear all,
I'm preparing to possibly interview Col. Ta Hung of the Vietnam Veterans'
Association, who was a guard at Hoa Lo Prison during the war. I'm told that
he met with Pete Peterson when Peterson was ambassador here in the '90s.
I'm interested in finding out, before speaking with Col. Hung, whether
anyone on the list has interviewed him or other Vietnamese POW-camp guards,
what sorts of issues he is likely to be willing to talk about, and what
issues are likely to remain off-limits. What is the official Vietnamese line
on whether American POWs were tortured? Does anyone have any suggestions for
how to approach this issue without shutting down the discussion?
Best,
Matt Steinglass
From: Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
Date: Feb 14, 2006 5:54 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Guards at War-era POW camps
Well, two things that I would love to talk to a VN prison guard about
are: what we are now calling "stress positions"; and the difference
between US enlisted and commissioned prisoners.
If I was going to interrogate a VC about his use of torture in Hoa Lo, I
would avoid the word torture and talk about specific techniques. Most
guards everywhere think of some practices as torture, and others as just
a reasonable way to proceed. Anyone not in their grasp of course sees
them all as torture.
So you have to know something about ways to hurt people, to talk about
it specifically. Fortunately, there are a lot of books on it.
If you go to the personal histories our Navy commissioned from POWs like
Stockdale, to document torture techniques for use in the training cycles
we developed for pilots after VN, you will find pictures from the POWs'
experience that are a great deal like what we are now training our
guards to use as interrogation techniques in Iraq: squatting on the
knees with the arms lifted behind the back, etc.
It's a great topic if you have the stomach for it. I would love to know
what a VN guard thinks about this cultural transmission. I would also
like to know where the VC got the techniques.
On the one hand, they are attested in the old Chinese "detective"
stories, about the magistrate. On the other hand, they are also
attested in French Foreign Legion memoirs, about the traditional
punishments for Legionnaires for forgivable offenses. The basic
principle is widely attested in the VC prison memoirs, in case of the
stocks and the canque.
I don't find them attested as used by the US in Viet Nam - our infantry
field interrogations involved beating and cutting and drowning, while
Army prison interrogations were a matter of interviewing and building
relationships, the civilzed and effective way to actually get good
information. CIA in VN were already doing sleep-deprivation and drugs
in their secret prisons, but I haven't heard of stress positions as such
in use by our secret army.
You might ask the man whether the VC thought of stress positions as
their own special thing, or as part of the French tradition, or Chinese,
or what, and how they feel to know that Americans now are teaching them.
That may be more than you want to get into. Many of the people in my
life are those who actually beat and get beaten. It makes it hard to go
out and be middle-class sometimes.
A less touchy topic, one that is under-studied, is the difference in
relations between VN captors and US enlisted men, on the one hand, and
US officers on the other. We hear a lot about the officers - they put
up heroic resistance, they came home, got medals and were paid to write
books and retire with pensions to political and business careers.
My impression is that the enlisted men did what they were told and had a
lower-key experience. They came home and have largely kept their mouths
shut. I would like to talk to a guard about them.
By the way, in the Nguyen Chi Thien autobiography at www.vietnamlit.org
we have a wonderful account of Hoa Lo prison in its years as a political
prison after the war.
From: Stephen Denney <sdenney@ocf.berkeley.edu>
Date: Feb 14, 2006 8:18 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Guards at War-era POW camps
I have not interviewed any former Vietnamese prison guards, but regarding
your question, as to what is the official Vietnamese line on whether
American POWs were tortured, my guess is that the official line would
either be that there was no torture or that there were isolated cases of
violence against prisoners, in violation of official policy. This in any
case was the official position regarding the mistreatment of re-education
camp prisoners of the post-75 era. Common forms of punishment of prisoners
in these camps included being tied up in various contorted positions,
shackled in connex boxes or dark cells, sometimes for several days,
beatings, forced to work extra hours or reduced food rations.
- Steve Denney
From: Bush, Dan <DBush@sccd.ctc.edu>
Date: Feb 14, 2006 10:32 AM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Guards at War-era POW camps
I visited the former prison (now museum) in Hanoi last summer, and was informed by museum
staff that no torture of American prisoners took place and that American POWs were treated
humanely. Museum staff instead emphasized the torture of Vietnamese prisoners by the
French. Our guide also mentioned that on a recent visit to the museum, teachers from the
International School in Hanoi challenged the former assertion.
From: Vern Weitzel <vern.weitzel@undp.org>
Date: Feb 14, 2006 11:02 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Guards at War-era POW camps
I know from Vietnamese colleagues who also worked in that era
and were even closely connected to the Government that the official
line was that no torture took place. Yet ex-POWs assert that men
were tortured and even tha some died in Hoa Lo, particularly in the
early years of the war (as others on this list also say).
Only part of the prison remains as a museum - the rest of the block
has become the Hanoi Towers with a pleasant ground floor shopping
mall and the closest convenience store to my office.
Fortunately, things change.
Vern
From: Judith Stowe <judy@stowe43.fsnet.co.uk>
Date: Feb 14, 2006 11:28 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Guards at War-era POW camps
Hi, Anybody wishing to to know what went on
in Hoa Lo during 1967-68 should read Dem Giua Ban Ngay by Vu Thu Hien
( Van Nghe, Ca. 1997) He was a political prisoner there at that time.
Another was Lt. Col Tran Thu, who has likewise published his memoirs of
that period. Bui Tin also knows a lot about what happened in Hoa Lo. Ask
Senator McCaine.
Meanwhile there were a lot of other POW's , mainly enlisted men, kept
captured in the South. I have talked to some of their prison guards. But
their fate as well as that of all the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese
who were transported to - re-education camps post 1975, is a different
matter. Just keep all these issues separate.
From: Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
Date: Feb 15, 2006 5:42 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Guards at War-era POW camps
Hi Matt and all, sorry for my rambling first reply. I habitually
discuss such painful matters in a disassociated state, expressed in
irony that can be hard to catch.
Let me try again to reply to Matt's practical question with some
practical suggestions, hoping that I won't say too much that an
experienced reporter doesn't already know.
If I was to talk to a prison guard about torture, I would avoid the use
of the word. "Torture" is now universally illegal. This is an historic
irony, since medieval torture was a legal device that replaced far
worse, spectacle lynching.
The display of the instruments of torture, as at Joan's trial, was a
relatively humane way to compel acquiescence in a legal proceeding. It
has been replaced by such devices as, in colonial North America, the
pressing used in the Salem trials. We now have moved on to compel
acquiescence with imprisonment, as in the recent case of the New York
Times reporter.
Torture of that kind is meaningfully distinquished from interrogation
and from brutality, cruelty and terror. If you really want to get
information from someone, you send someone like me or Matt, specialists
in interviewing. Men working for the Army in Saigon did a splendid job
of this, as you can see in the sources for David Elliot's history of the
Mekong delta in the war.
Brutality, cruelty, and terror are just a matter of sending in the lads.
I see no reason to doubt the word of any prisoner that the guards at
Hoa Lo or anywhere else indulged in this. Brutality, cruelty and terror
can be distinguished in the historical record by ad-hoc improvisations,
like wiggling a man's broken leg.
There is a special intersection of terror and interrogation known to the
world by the French military intelligence program in Algiers during the
uprising, that is more routinized than bursting into the cell and
raising hell. They used electricity, and asked for just one name and
address. The victim was then released, and the man he had named was
arrested and given the same treatment. The purpose was to roll up
networks if they got lucky and at any rate to discourage the population
by discrediting "traitors."
OK, that's some background on beastliness. I suggest that Matt might
get quite a ways with his guard by realizing that he will likely talk
about activities that he did not regard as torture.
The stress positions, for instance. I think they are unconscionable but
many disagree. We in the US used them extensively for instance in my
sports training and in my father's military training and my friends'
time in USMC brig, as French Foreign Legion used them in military
dscipline. We no longer use them openly on our own people, but do use
them openly on Iraqis.
Similarly, it seems to me that Hoa Lo guards thought of these as routine
matters, as probably those of rural origins thought of routine cuffing
and kicking, even of injured men, as simply an extension of the way life
treated them. They would have had a concept of "torture" in the sense
of extreme cruelty, but it would have involved dismemberment or
disembowelment or permanent maiming. For a discussion of this in a
relevant Western context, see Eugen Weber's "Peasants into Frenchmen."
So, really, I think if you talk about stress positions, you've got a
chance. Or ask the man what he thinks "torture" is.
Now, if you really want to punch the man's buttons and get some quotes,
ask him about the diet at Hoa Lo. Prisoners generally regard that
starvation diet as part of their abuse at the hands of the Vietnamese.
Indeed, deficiencies caused lesions as painful as direct torture, and
threatened life itself.
From the VC perspective, they were giving these layabout air pirates as
much or more than their men in the field and their population at home.
They can quote you figures on this, grams of fat, protein and rice.
Your man will likely know the allowance for Vietnamese prisoners,
Vietnamese soldiers, Vietnamese civilians, and American prisoners.
Let him sound off about that and you'll learn quite a bit about torture
in Hoa Lo, and his attitudes towards it.
I must say that I myself never question anyone for the record about
criminal activity, but I am grateful to the journalists who do.
Yours in interrogation,
Dan
Bruce Swander wrote:
Here's a couple of interesting comments about this type of interview - one
by a US-POW that was there. In either case, I suggest you verify his
credentials that this "Colonel" was really a guard there back then.
From: "Mike McGrath" <mmcgrath62@adelphia.net>
To: "P.O.W. Network - Chuck and Mary Schantag" <info@POWNETWORK.ORG>
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 13:09:53 -0700
Subject: Hoa Lo Guard
Mary...Here's my response. It's probably all for naught for Mr.
Steinglass. I don't know of any of us who have ever made any friendly
contact with any guard, either during the war or after. Dozens upon
dozens of us, including me, have visited Hanoi in recent years, revisted
Hoa Lo (the Hanoi Hilton), the Zoo, the Plantation, etc. Most camps are
leveled. Only a portion of the Hilton remains. The guards are all out of
the military and long gone. Retired to the their rice paddies. English
speaking interrogators would be the only ones who would have
something of interest to say to Mr. Steinglass, and they have long ago
disappeared as they were the ones who ordered us beaten and
tortured. They were the supervisors of the torture. The enlisted guards
administered the torture. Only one English speaking interrogator has
ever testified before an American. The Rabbit was ordered to speak to
Bob Destatte and other DPMO officers in Hanoi. The Rabbit was difiant
and uncooperative. He was not at all helpful in the MIA Office search
for POW remains which have never been located or released. Rabbit
was ordered by his ministry of defense to meet with the DPMO team.
He was thoroughly miffed. But he did it. We have a picure of him
defiantly staring at the DPMO team.
The guards were absolutely of the lowest rank and intelligence. I highly
doubt that this fellow met with Peterson. You'd have to ask Peterson if
such a meeting ever occurred. It certainly could have.
The V have never openly acknowledged that torture ever occurred. In
fact, they will outright deny it ever occurred. If Mr. Steinglass even
brings up the subject, the subject will be brought to an icy halt with a
cold denial. His warm and fuzzy interview will go no where until he
brings it back on track about how wonderful the Vietnamese are. How
their culture is so beautiful, and all the other BS that the V want to hear.
They will never admit to how barbaric their treatment was of American
POWs, officers and enlisted, healthy as well as serverly wounded.
Myself, I had a broken back, a broken leg, a dislocated knee, a broken
arm, a dislocated shoulder (from the ejection). They tortured me for two
straight weeks without sleep or medical treatment....and left me with
both my arms dislocated and my elbow dislocated. They stuffed rags
down my throat with an iron rod to muffle my screams. Do you think
any one of those barbaric bastards would seek out an American and tell
the truth 38 years later. No way. They are Communists and Mr.
Steinglass should never forget who he is dealing with.
I wouldn't give any Vietnamese credit for "talking with a POW" during
captivity. They just didn't come around and have friendly talks that they
can now tell a newsman some 35 or more years later.
If Mr. Steinglass is looking to write a story, he will get a slick snow job
by Col. Ta Hung, but it will not be very truthful. Also, an enlisted
"guard" would never rise to the rank of Col. in the Vietnamese army.
Col. Hung is probably just seeking an American contact, perhaps some
money for the interview, anything but the truth. He might even be an
old Public Affairs Officer with a line of BS he thinks someone will
swallow.
Mike McGrath
POW 5 years 8 months...with no medical treatment or friendly talks
www.nampows.org
ALSO
Invite Matt to contact me direct. When I worked in the US MIA Office in
Hanoi in the early 1970s, I interviewed The Rabbit and a few other PAVN
veterans who were part of the POW camp system.
Its likely that Matt's point of contact with the Veterans Association of
Viet Nam (VAVN) is Mr. Ho Xuan Dich. I worked with Mr. Dich in Hanoi.
I'm not certain that I have met Colonel (Retired) Ta Hung, who I believe is
the Director of Foreign Relations for the VAVN.
If he prefers, Matt can telephone me at (951) 302-2752.
Warm regards,
Bob Destatte
From: Frank Proschan <ProschanF@folklife.si.edu>
Date: Feb 15, 2006 6:54 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Guards at War-era POW camps
Excerpted from Dan's post:
From the VC perspective, they were giving these layabout air pirates as
much or more than their men in the field and their population at home.
They can quote you figures on this, grams of fat, protein and rice.
Your man will likely know the allowance for Vietnamese prisoners,
Vietnamese soldiers, Vietnamese civilians, and American prisoners.
An acquaintance whose brother was one of those English-speaking
interrogators mentioned to me on several occasions that his brother had to
respond to severe criticism from other Vietnamese about why the U.S.
prisoners were receiving better food than the residents of Hanoi living
outside the prison walls. This suggests an elaborated discourse likely
exists around this matter (it seems Dan may have heard similar stories), and
Dan's suggestion is likely to be a fruitful line of inquiry (to use a
completely inappropriate metaphor, in the context).
Best,
Frank Proschan
Project Director
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Date: Feb 15, 2006 7:51 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Guards at War-era POW camps
What Dan and Frank refer to here - the overall context of the issue, is to
me of critical importance. To really have a sense of all the elements that
brought about certain attitudes, actions/reactions, and even justifications,
one has to understand what the VC knew of how their comrades where being
treated in the South, by the US and the SVNese security.
There exists quite a body of Vietnamese literature on this topic, written by
those who had been captured and tortured. One that was quite famous at the
time was the memoir "Bat Khuat." There were many hellhole interrogation
centers in SVN - Ngo Dinh Nhu's P42 in the Saigon zoo and Ngo Dinh Can's
"Chi'n Ha^`m" in Thua Thien-Hue province, to cite the two most notorious.
Few expected to come out of "Chin Ham" alive.
Last year I had a chance to fly to Con Dao. It was an eye-opening
experience. The entire system of French prison remained intact, supplemented
by new constructions built with US advice. There were about 20 thousand
unmarked graves - those who never made it out alive. It was hard to stand on
top of the "Tiger cage" walkway and looked down at rows and rows of the now
empty cells.
As for the techniques of torture, a Google search could easily locate a
great deal of information, including the well-known CIA manual that was used
to train South Americans and others on how to maintain security, ie.
suppress popular revolt. It was extremely sophisticated.
There were hundred thousands of Vietnamese who were captured and
interrogated during the war. The wounds are still very deep. I still
remember the picture of one in the now "War Remnants" Museum on Vo Van Tan
st. in Saigon. To get information from him, the interrogators cut off his
legs twice, without anaesthesia.
To complement Quang Pham's effort, I wonder is there, or has there been, any
project to interview those forgotten people, esp. since the ratio in terms
of the people involved is so lopsided ?
Nguyen Ba Chung