Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veterans

Your relationship with government is simple: government knows everything about you, and you know nothing about government. In practice this means government can do whatever it wants to you before you know it's going to happen. Government policy makers think this is a good way of ensuring citizen compliance. Thus, all of these investigations are retrospective -- they look back at the squirrely shit that government has pulled, and occasionally wring their hands about trying to avoid it happening in the future. Not inspiring reading, but necessary if you are to face the cold reality that Big Brother is more than watching.

Re: Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veter

Postby admin » Mon Jun 06, 2016 3:56 am

7. RACISM PANEL

MODERATOR. All right, now, we're going to discuss with you the topic of racism, and we're going to try very hard to parallel different racisms with that in Vietnam. On my right is James Duffy from the 1st Air Cav. Division, Army. The first gentleman to my left is Scott Shimabukuro, and to his left is Evan Haney. As you know, Evan is Indian, Scott is Oriental, I am black, and James is white. Racism is really a kind of a heavy thing to get into. But then we've been really getting into heavy things tonight. So, let me start off by relating some things that happened in Vietnam that were outright racism. When I arrived in Vietnam during the first tour, which is back in 1968, I never, because I'm an Army brat, expected to find that the Oriental people would reject a black man for two reasons--for two main reasons. One, because he is of the minority group. We are not of the Anglo-Saxon heritage, and a lot of our plights are approximately the same, as far as living conditions, as far as the future, which holds nothing for the Vietnamese and holds nothing for blacks. But I was very shocked. It seems that the American government has established the class role in Vietnam also. They're not satisfied with starting it here with the upper class, the middle class, and the lower class, but they have to go out to Vietnam and do it too. The classes of which I'm speaking are the French Vietnamese, who are considered as the aristocratic Oriental. The straight-heritaged Vietnamese is the middle class, and of course, the Indian, better known as the Montagnard, is the lower class. Now to bring something really home, you go out and you look for a girl to shack up with, and you figure, if you're going to pay the money, who cares. But you run into the whole thing. A certain girl here will go with only white guys; a certain girl will go with only black brothers, and this girl will go with the American Orientals. But never, and I do mean never, would they ever go with their own men. If you can understand the parallel that I'm trying to draw, this is direct racism, and it's discrimination, however you want to put it. It not only took place in Vietnam, but in Bangkok, Thailand. It's supposed to be a haven for R & R, and the racism that exists there is very blunt; like it smacks you in the face like a brick wall. But let's get on to other people so you can understand what's really happening. Scott?

SHIMABUKURO. All of you have been here most of the day listening to how the Americans treat the Asian people, which are the South Vietnamese in this instance. I don't want to go into the rhetoric of Vietnam essentially because it goes deeper than that. It goes into American society, which is all of you people out here. You see, the military doesn't propagate, necessarily, the racism. The racism starts right back here in the United States and it is magnified when you enter the service. It has a great effect on the Asian community in the United States. It's obvious that military men have the attitude that a gook is a gook, and in the United States, before men go into the military, there's a great deal of this racism directed toward the Asians in the United States. But some men manage to make it into the service with an indifferent attitude. But once they get into the military, they go through this brainwashing about the Asian people being subhuman--all the Asian people--I don't just mean the South Vietnamese. All Asian people. I want to relate this as a personal experience that I encountered with I was in the service. Before I went into the Marine Corps, I grew up in an all-white and Chicano neighborhood and I encountered a moderate amount of racism; it didn't bother me much. When I went into the Marine Corps, I thought was going to serve my country and be brave, a Marine and a good American. As I stepped off the bus at UCMD, San Diego, the first words that greeted me were, the DI came up to me and said, "Oh, we have a gook here today in our platoon." This kind of blew my mind because I thought I was a pretty cool guy myself. But, ever since then, all the during boot camp, I was used as an example of a gook. You go to a class, and they say you'll be fighting the VC or the NVA. But then the person who is giving the class will see me and he'll say, "He looks just like that, right there." Which goes to show that the service draws no lines, you know, in their racism. It's not just against South Vietnamese or the North Vietnamese. It's against the Asian, as a people, all over the world. This is proved anywhere the Americans have gone in Asia. There's been a great deal of friction between the people--the Asian people and the military as an establishment. They have subjugated the people, under this guise of the people being less than human. This causes a great deal of problems for all Asians, all over the world, not just in Vietnam on in the United States. The problems that cause this blatant racism, when they come out of the service, is this attitude they have toward Asians which they carry over to all Asian people wherever they go. Therefore, this creates a great problem within the Asian community.

There was an incident in Georgia two or three months ago. It was in all the newspapers. Two visitors from Japan were beat up because they were believed to be gooks. Well, they were. But they were thought to be Vietnamese, and they were put in a hospital. Last summer a personal friend, whom I work with in Los Angeles, was traveling through Ohio, hitchhiking with a friend. They were taken as Vietnamese and they were badly beaten up. They stumbled into the police station and were laughed at. They went back on the street and somebody gave them a ride to some town away from where they were beat up. They were in the hospital for six months. This type of thing creates a great amount of animosity, not only in the Asian community, but in the black and Chicano communities because they can relate to this type of racism that exists in our society. In Vietnam the people will tell Americans when they see them, the white GIs, "All you guys are really cool, you know, we really think you're great." But I had many chances to come in contact, close contact, with the Vietnamese on person-to-person level and they did not think very much of the white Americans. They don't think much of Americans at all. But an incident of racism is the aspect of racism against Asian women, in particular. They are only a sexual object. You hear about how the girl can really, you know, do a good thing over in Japan or in Okinawa, or Korea, or Thailand. Wherever they go on R & R, they go to these countries where they're all Asians. This causes a great amount of distress among Asian women, because they are thought of as objects. An instance of racism that I encountered was when, in Vietnam, I desired to marry a Vietnamese citizen, a National. She said it would be no problem on her part, but that I would have to find out what I would have to go through to gain permission to marry her. There's a chain of command in the military when you start on your sergeant, the next step up above you. I went to my sergeant and told him what I wanted to do. He said I shouldn't marry this girl because she was a gook, which struck me as kind of funny because I was a gook also. But, besides this, he said, "She's not civilized, you know. You'll be so embarrassed with her when you get her to the United States that you'll want to get rid of her because she's a savage. She doesn't know how to live like a human." Well, you know, I just told the dude where to go and went to my gunnery sergeant; and I got the same from my gunnery sergeant, except he told me to come back in a week. I came back in a week and the same thing happened.

Finally when I got to my CO, he told me that there was a waiting period. And I said, "Well, how long is the waiting period?" He had my record book in front of him, and on it was my rotation date which was in approximately two months. Well, he set my waiting period for three months, so that by the time I got permission to marry this girl, I would be in Los Angeles. Now, it's instances like this that point out the insensitivity of the service as a system, which reflects their ideas of the society. Servicemen don't just have these ideas. They have to come from someplace. They come from the people in the society and they bring these ideas with them. These ideas come all the way from Agnew; he's very famous for some quotes that he's made. It's accepted all the way through American society that racism is a normal thing. A friend of mine went to boot camp, and the DI told him he wanted to see his wallet. He took out the wallet and he found pictures of these Japanese girls. He kept four of them; I guess he thought they were the best-looking four. He saw the picture of my friend's sister and he asked my friend, "What's your sister's name?" He gave the name and the DI says, "Oh, well, I had a whore in Japan with the same name. Is that her?" Now, it's things like this that cause a great deal of animosity. People wonder why some of the minority groups get loud. I'm surprised that the minority groups just don't go wild. It's things like this that people have to live with, all the minority people in the United States have had to live with since they're born. In particular the Japanese community has a problem with this because the Nisei, which is a second-generation who went through the war camp experience, tell us, "Well, don't worry about it. There's no racism. You know, we've worked hard; we're middle class now. We served in the 442nd Army Battalion; they were the most decorated. So we won the right to be Americans." Well, my father was in this unit, and he told me the same thing. He said, "You're an American now. I fought for you to be an American. All these Japanese men fought for you to be an American, so there's not that much racism." Like I said before, as I stepped off the bus, I was a gook, not an American. So this causes a great deal of problems.

HANEY. I would like to say that I was born in Oklahoma, and I went to school there all my life. While I was going to school I was taught the white man's ways, how he thought. I'm an Indian, but I'm not really an Indian right now. Back in World War II, the Indians were known as great fighters, and even to this day, all the Indians in Oklahoma either join the Marines, the Army, or Airborne because they have to be a man; and that's the position I was in. I went over to Vietnam and when I got there I didn't know what I was doing there, but I was there. I went tripping around the streets and I see my brothers there. I didn't know what was happening; it took me a long time to realize. But the thing that I finally realized was that the thing that is happening in Vietnam now is not new. Approximately a century ago it was General Sheridan, I believe, who said that the more you kill this year the less you'll have to kill next year. He wanted to find a person to do this, and the person he got was Custer. Custer went out into the countryside. It was during the winter when the people were holed up in the tents and wigwams. He may not have known it, but he was on a search and destroy mission. And he may not have known of body counts, but if he'd heard it, he'd have known what it was. That happened many years ago and it's still happening today, and I can see it; and a lot of the other people see it. I don't really have an explanation for this, why it's happened, but I do have an idea. It started in 1492 when Columbus was on his way to the West Indies for gold, silks, wealth, power. He just ran into the Americas, and it took him hundreds of years to pass through America. Now he's passed through America and he's going to Vietnam. That's where they are now. And they're still doing the same thing. I don't know how you people feel, but I was reading a story the other day about this rich landowner. He has a lot of land and this one poor man comes up because he doesn't have a place to live. He's gonna live on this land. The rich landowner comes up to him with a gun and he says, "Get off, you're trespassing on my land." This guy says, "Well, where'd you get it?" He said, "Well, I got it from my father." "Where did your father get it?" He said, "I got it from my grandfather, and he got it from his grandfather." The poor guy says, "How did he get it?" The reply was, "He fought for it." This other poor dude said, "Well, I'll just fight you for it right now." And that's where I'm at, man.

AUDIENCE. Right on.

HANEY. By the way, right now I live on Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay.

HUNTER. The next speaker is James Duffy.

DUFFY. I'm going to try and deal with white racism from maybe a little different point of view. When they were building this country, some folks got the idea that they would get all hung up on patriotism to the flag and not to the people. Because this country's predominantly made up of white people, white people started getting the idea that non-white people were the minority. You see that every day in the press. But if you get down to nitty-gritty, and start getting your mind out of the concept of America, and dealing with people all around the world, whites are the minority. Now in this country, the white people move on some kind of fantasy that if you don't look like them and act like them, there's got to be something wrong with you. This fantasy stems from the concept of them being the majority and, therefore, everybody should fall into place and follow them.

I'm of the opinion that racism, white racism, is a form of sexual deviation. The white people in this country are the only people I know of who are uptight about the most beautiful things in life--the human body and how people relate. They've lost track of reality; and by losing this track, they've violated the laws of nature, which has perverted our minds. We've been forced to seek some other form of release for this natural drive. Probably the easiest way to go about that is to build up your own ego and go on this super-ego trip which is called White Power play. You find that non-white people on this planet the most humane people on this planet Earth. I never hear about you know, people from Africa running over to America to rip off Rockefeller's oil wells. I don't hear about people from Asia running over to America to rip off Fort Knox. It's just that this sexual deviation--this not being able to deal with the reality that we're human beings--has manifested itself into this ego trip, where these white people have got to go out and prove themselves. And the way they do that is through oppression of other peoples. They've developed this sense of--what the _____ is the word--it's greed, man. It's greed.

It's a fantastic desire for material wealth, which you don't find in countries that are made up of non-white people, that haven't been subjected to white people that we haven't had a chance to pervert as yet. I think once you start to understand the concept of a world of people, and not just a United States, you start to look around the world and see what's going down. If the white people of America would start looking at reality from a different perspective, they'd find out that they are the minority and the way they've been living is perverted.

If they can start to deal with their humaneness --t heir humaneness -- they'll be able to deal with all their sisters' and brothers' humaneness no matter what they look like. If we can move on that logic, we can advance to a point where there won't be any more racism. Racism is a manifestation of the white man's mind by dividing people, just like he's divided this country from the rest of the world. We've got to first start dealing with our own humaneness and that's something we haven't been about for the past three hundred years--the humaneness--other than personal profit and greed.

HUNTER. You know, it's just one big power play and that's what Vietnam is, a power play. That's what it is in Cambodia, a power play. That's what it is right here, the racist issue right here in our own backyards, a power play. The whole thing is that money means more to man than the human body does or than his brother does. And like man, you know, nature's the most beautiful thing we have. You don't have to pay for it; you don't have to run out and plant the trees just to get it, because they'll grow. You know, they were here long before we came about. But they're going now. They're almost gone. And why? Because man is sick. He wants this thing called power, and this thing called power means money. In order to get money and power, you must step on people, and you must forget that you're human. And one of the main reasons, and the only reason, to have power is to be over someone else. The absolute power is what? It is to be over all. For me to have absolute power would mean that I would be absolute over all. That is racism. That's a form of racism. That's the form of racism that we're taking on right now in the United States. That's the form of racism we're interjecting in Vietnam and all the Asiatic states. That's the racism that's been inflicted on the blacks, the Indians, the minority whites, Spanish-speaking people. I don't know if we're getting it across to you about how this is affecting us in Vietnam, but let me say this. You know, when you have minority groups here and you kick them in the _____, I'm going to be very blunt with you now--you send them over to Vietnam, after you've been kicking them in the _____ all this time, you expect him to fight your war, right? Well, let's say the Man expects them to fight the war. And he goes on over there, he fights this _____ up war, and he gets kicked right smack-dab in the _____. Right while he's over there fighting the war. Then the Man turns up. And the guy says, "Well, look, I'm not going to get kicked in the _____ anymore. You leave me the hell alone."

And what happens? He's not left alone. He's thrown in the stockade because he's creating racial disorder. And what you heard about in LBJ (U.S. Army Stockade in Long Binh, Vietnam), let me tell you something. A third of the people that were in LBJ were blacks and [PIECE MISSING]

QUESTION. How can an American soldier get lost in Vietnam?

HUNTER. How do you get lost in Vietnam? Wow. You know, something sister. I'll call you sister because we're all like brothers and sisters. You might think it's a hard thing but, you know, first of all you're leaving what little bit you love back here.

QUESTION. No, I mean getting lost physically.

HUNTER. It's relatively easy. You have what is known over there as the Communist government, you know. I retract it. It's not a government. You have agents from the Communistic government there. You have them in all your R & R centers. Matter of fact, you even have them in Hawaii. Now you want me to tell you something? It might be shocking and I didn't think to put it in testimony, but there are pamphlets that are handed out in Bangkok; there are pamphlets that are handed out in downtown Saigon. Any brother, any dude, no matter who he is, when you're sick and tired of fighting, you know where to go. They will pay your ticket, give you a passport, get you to either Switzerland or to anyplace you want to go to get out of there.

SHIMABUKURO. I'd like to say that that happens also before you leave Oakland or Fort Lewis.

DUFFY. I'd like to add that anybody can get lost in Vietnam very easily because the American people keeping moving on the logic that we're right and they're wrong. Well, we better start turning our heads around and start realizing that they're the ones who are right and we're the ones who are wrong. We're moving on this war from an imperialistic point. We're over there to rip them off. So we don't give a damn about how we relate to them. Listen, the Vietnamese people are moving on an internal revolution. That means a revolution about love, not about hate, not about imperialism, not about ripping people off. Now, if you're moving off love and a brother who's been fighting against you comes over to you and says, "Wow, I know that this is really a bad scene. Can you stash me someplace?" They'll say, "Fine, you know, we have no problem with that." They've got a beautiful little intricate system in Saigon. The brothers can run around the streets all day long, and as soon as the first MP steps out on the street, the grapevines got the word out all over, and those brothers are inside those houses and those Vietnamese don't ever let anybody in there to take them out. It's so easy. They're moving off love.

HANEY. I would like to mention the fact that, the peoples of the world are going to win. I have that much faith because we are fighting for life. The people we are fighting against, they're for wealth and money. You could debate that all day long, but I only see the winner. That's who I see.

SHIMABUKURO. I would like to draw a parallel here. As I mentioned before, the military is just part of an extension of--the government's policies, and their policy is a policy of repressing the struggles for liberation; not only in Vietnam, but in the Mideast and in the Dominican Republic. The United States Armed Forces are used to put down people's liberation struggles all over the world and that is just a reflection of their policy from the government. Therefore, that must mean that here in the United States they try to put down the people's struggle for liberation, such as the Black Panther Party and other parties. This can be easily shown in the murders of the minority people who are trying, as I say, to liberate themselves; not to gain power, but just to liberate themselves.

They are being murdered. Some of these trials you've all heard of are just outrageous. So it goes to show that this government not only has its policy overseas used by the military, but they have that power here in the United States used by the law enforcement officers and the National Guard. They're also used to keep the people from gaining any kind of life here in the States. There is even repression against the white working class. When there is a strike, the first people to come in is the National Guard to break this up. As in New York during the mail strike, the first people to be called in were the National Guard. And this goes to show where the government's head is at. Every time something comes up that they don't like, the military steps in and takes care of it for them. Either that or the law enforcement officers. It goes to show it's just an extension of what the government's policy is. Not just the Vietnamese, but to all people trying to liberate themselves. But they will liberate themselves. It will happen. Maybe they want to ask you some questions.

QUESTION. What is R & R?

SHIMABUKURO. It's Rest and Recuperation. It ranges anywhere from four to seven days in an out-of-country resort.

QUESTION. Can you give us any kind of picture of what is happening to the children of Vietnamese mothers, fathered by GIs? What happens to those people? Are they accepted by the Vietnamese out of love or what?

HUNTER. You're asking about babies that are born between an American and an Asian. Well, it's obvious what happens in Japan when there's an Asian woman and a white serviceman. Most of these, if the babies are born as females, end up as prostitutes or entertainers. Same thing happens in Vietnam. They are not accepted. They are not accepted because the United States has created such hassles. Racism is carried wherever they go; therefore, they carry it to Japan, to Vietnam, and Korea. When these babies grow up, they have a high percentage of suicide attempts because they cannot be accepted by society. Not because they are mixed, but because of the situation that was created by the Americans. If the Americans were loved over there, then the kids would be loved over there. But the Americans are hated there; therefore, mixed babies are hated over there which is the same as in Vietnam.

DUFFY. Also, we've brought this wonderful culture of ours over there. I can remember going into villages where Americans were rarely seen, and it would be very commonplace for the women to be openly breast-feeding their children, in the open. You know, communal swimming pool, bathing pool. These people don't have any hang-ups about relating to one another. When we first go into a village, they don't have any hang-ups about relating to us until we instill our cultural hang-ups into them. Then they start running into the hootches with the babies, covering themselves up when we come around, because they know that we're not moving on the same type of logic they are. They're moving on that love logic, and we're moving on a hate logic. Now, in a town that's built around a military installation, those people have already been perverted and any type of a mixed relationship that produces a child of cross-breed, those people are going to treat that child with American logic.

QUESTION. What about Vietnamese women who actually welcome GIs? Wouldn't they also welcome any children they have?

DUFFY. Well, the mothers of the child, naturally, love their children, but to answer that I would have to say that the Vietnamese do not hate. They hate what is known as the GI, if you know what the GI is. They hate what is known as the American imperialist. This is the GI. You know, you portray a certain feeling when you're in uniform. You're superior. They are extremely inferior. Are you following what I'm saying? And for a brother, and brother--when I speak of brothers now I'm not speaking of blacks, I'm speaking of all my brothers and sisters--when a brother comes back to Vietnam, he says "Well, I'm coming back." He's loved! Because like, it's like he's thrown away this imperialistic ego trip that he was on, you know. Like this whole thing about his money bag, you know, and being superior because I'm an American and all this--he's given it up; and he's shown the Vietnamese people that they're just as equal to him as he is to them. And then naturally they're loved.

QUESTION. Well, wouldn't they transfer this same feeling to any child of a U.S. civilian?

DUFFY. I'll tell you why they can't. It's because the American government is still in Vietnam right now. And as long as they're in Vietnam, they will not, because they will always instill their culture and their nasty habits on the Vietnamese.

HUNTER. And bringing the troops home isn't going to change that totally either because as we de-escalate and withdraw troops, we increase our airpower to preserve the Bank of America in Saigon and the Chase Manhattan Bank. That means that the American influence is still in Vietnam and still able to pervert those people's minds and force the American culture on them. As long as we continue to force this culture on them, they're going to continue to relate to those children as we relate to them here. Not as they would normally relate to them if we weren't messing with their own way of life.

QUESTION. In some American communities cross-bred children are welcome.

HUNTER. Sure, and that's why you say some.

DUFFY. Where is this? In America?

HUNTER. I don't know too many enlightened communities.

DUFFY. I wish someone would enlighten me where. There may be enlightened individuals in a community, but most communities as a whole aren't too enlightened. He might be accepted by the people who know him personally, but the baby, you know, who is half-whatever, he may be accepted by the people who know him personally, but the same enlightened community, but if he leaves his personal frame of friends, or people he relates to, and goes to the other side of this enlightened community, it's not so enlightened over there.

QUESTION. Could you give some more information about how black GIs are organizing at Fort Jackson at Fort Bragg and about how black GIs in Germany, as well as in Saigon are organizing against racism? Would you care to comment on the changes in attitudes that black GIs are undergoing from the time they go in to the time they leave?

MODERATOR. I'd say that they become 90% more militant. If they're 90% militant when they go in, they're 100% militant when they come out. I'd say this: Hoover has an awful damn lot to worry about because it's not just the black brothers that come out militant. It's the Puerto Rican brothers, our Spanish-speaking brothers, our Indian brothers who were militant way the _____ before they got over there, and a lot more of our white brothers. Don't ever make the mistake and believe that you can come out, form a black racism and combat white racism with black racism; you can't do it. A lot of people have related to me by saying, "Well, it's easier to hate all whites because it's so blasted frustrating to find out which whites are your enemies and which whites are your friends. So why not hate them all?" Well, that's an easy thing to do, but you're not going to combat racism that way. The only way to combat it is, it might sound funny, but it's to love your brothers and sisters.

QUESTION. Just a point before you get away from it--the racist term, "cross-breed." Most people of the world don't even have that in their language, you know. A human being is a human being. So the whole concept that we were discussing here was a racist concept. Cross-breed, you know. I think what you were running down was a result of the attitudes of the people toward their child. Basically this is an American concept, cross-breed, which is racism. I just wonder how that got into the conversation. That concept never got challenged. Two human beings, regardless of who they are, male and female, if they're effective and fertile, they can produce a child. So many societies have no word for it, but a child. But in our society, going back to the Indians, the blacks and so forth, they got all hung-up on this cross-breeding and it's still with us. As you pointed out, it spread to other parts of the world. But I just wanted to point that out as an example of the kind of racism in our terminology.

DUFFY. I was also speaking as a white man educated in white schools and if you got your head together you'd also know that before you can build a "revolution" you've got to build a revolutionary vocabulary and a new revolutionary way of thinking. If you try to move off the same old foundation you're just building on mud, that's all, you just sink right down to the bottom.

SHIMABUKURO. It's the same way right back here in the United States. I'm going to put it to you bluntly, Okay? The female, according to the way that the males have been brought up, is inferior. Like, they are inferior, period, you know; and yet we still go to bed with them because we have certain needs that have to be satisfied. And she's a female in Vietnam, whether she's subhuman or not, she's got the body, she's got the right build, she's got the proper things to do it, you know. But to show you one thing, where our heads are, we back Women's Liberation 100%. But it just doesn't end there at all. The women in America are perhaps the strongest, and I do mean the strongest, human beings in the world. They can stop the war in Vietnam if they want to. You know something? I bet you all of my paychecks for my college that if every woman refused to cook meals and refused to shack up with their husbands, and their girl friends refused to shack up with their boy friends, I bet you, I bet you, whew.

AUDIENCE. Right on.

QUESTION. There seems to be a discrepancy in what you said before. You said that if a GI, for instance, throws away his uniform and goes AWOL, he will be accepted by the Vietnamese people and harbored. And then you said that they won't accept a child of mixed parents because the troops are still in Vietnam. So it hardly explains why they would accept him if the troops are still there.

DUFFY. I'd like to try and answer that. It's going to be kind of mixed up, but I think I can answer it. You see, when a man gets there, let's say he is a man and he gets there, he can relate to these people because he is supposed to have brains. He can tell them how he feels, exactly what's going on inside of his head; and he is there. Now let's take, for instance, the baby from mixed parents. The reason I believe there is animosity toward this baby is because the mother has fallen in love with one of these GIs. The GIs are representative of this imperialist regime; therefore, this baby is her baby and the baby's mother had the nerve to got to bed with one of these people who's killing their people. So they direct this hatred, not only to the mother, but to the baby.

If the father is there, the hate wouldn't be there, because they would know that the father had thrown away his values of money, etc. But if the father is not there, it is taken for granted that he is a typical GI; and so they hate the mother for going to bed with this typical GI, for what the GIs do to the Vietnamese people. They direct this hatred toward the mother and, therefore, the baby also.

HUNTER. You want to know something else. Something just hit me. We were out on a recon mission and we shot a 260-pound North Vietnamese, right? Do you know the average weight of a Vietnamese? It runs around 90 pounds to maybe 105; they may get to 110. You have some exceptions to that, but 260 pounds, no; and 6'4", no; and as black as I am, no. You sure don't, and that's where their heads are. You missed it? Well, what I'm getting at is you're dealing with an awful lot of hatred, especially from these kids that are being fathered by the Americans in Vietnam. I've seen kids that are being fathered by the Americans in Vietnam. I've seen kids that have been born through Americans. They come right out and spit in your face, and they refuse to do anything that you ask them to do. Sure, they'll go to bed with you, I mean as far as the females are concerned, but they'll get your money and a lot of times you know where your money is going? Your MPCs (Military Payment Certificates) and everything. It's going right back to the North Vietnamese; it's going right back to the VC, and that's where their heads are. They hate you. I mean, they really darn right despise you.

QUESTION. Who was this man?

HUNTER. That was a North Vietnamese. He couldn't have been any more than twenty years old. We had captured him. First of all, they thought that he was a deserter. Looking at the face and the features, he was not all black, of the Negroid family. But he displayed the blackness of the skin and the nose discrepancy, the cheek bones and the large bones; and he was not Cambodian either. What I am saying, in other words, he was an offspring of a black man who was there and a Vietnamese. The Americans were in Vietnam during World War II. You might not realize that, but we were there in '54.

QUESTION. Sexual inferiority and superiority dates back to slavery. The female has the right to enjoy sex and to derive gratification. This imposes a responsibility upon the male. So going to bed with the Vietnamese or going to bed with the prostitute releases the man of that responsibility. As a GI of World War II, I had a group of men, about 40, under me. One night a weapons carrier pulled up with two women on it who worked in the PX and not one single fellow went out to have an affair with those women. We couldn't figure out why. We finally concluded that those two women, who worked in the PX, were far too close to those men, those GIs, and all those big strong he-men were really afraid to lay it on the line. I think that this is part of what we see in the black-white relationships in the United States between the white man and the black woman. He does not have to satisfy her, you know. He does not have to do it. It is not required. He does not have to satisfy the Asian woman, you know. So really what it stems from, I believe, part of the thing that we are hung up on is the inferiority feeling on the part of American males; sexually inferior with the females. I think that explains it much more than his feeling really so superior; I think he really is, I think we are, pretty sick.

SHIMABUKURO. And I think that sexual inferiority stems from the fact that the white culture of America is the only people I know who refuse to deal with their own bodies. I mean, how can you love somebody else, if you don't love yourself? Right?

HUNTER. You know something? You know what Sin City is? How many people have heard of Sin City? Well, let me tell you something, Sin City is in An Khe. An Khe was built by the 1st Air Cav. It's about 50 hootches in a complete circle with hootches around in the very center also. It is the world's biggest whore house. It was built by the American government, by the United States Army. There are MPs standing at the gate, at the barbed wire fence which surrounds Sin City. You go to the orderly room and you go to the first sergeant, and he says, "What do you want?" You tell him you want to go to Sin City. He gives you a pass to go down to the United States government's one and only whore house in Vietnam.

DUFFY. And you want to hear something else too? When they built it, they had medics standing up there. They would go by periodically and give shots, right? To the girls to make sure that they were kept clean, right? Okay. But the American public got wind of it somehow, and it came down that, no, this is an immoral thing to do. So they stopped giving shots to the girls, but they still let GIs go in there. And do you know something? Out of Sin City comes back here to the United States not just Sin City (because Americans refuse to give shots to the prostitutes) but some of the worst cases of venereal disease that you will ever lay eyes on; cases that can never be cured. Do you know that the American government, and I bet you they never told you this, they have an island to send people where they have acquired a disease that is incurable. Do you know that island? It is an island surrounded by miles and miles of water; and you can't get off it unless you fly, because ships don't come in and out.

QUESTION. Where is it?

DUFFY. It's in the South Pacific.

QUESTION. How do you know about it?

DUFFY. Because I went up to one of my head medics, and he hipped me on it. He showed me on the map exactly where it was; and then I went up and I asked a couple of the doctors about it and they said, "That's right. If you acquire it and it's an incurable disease, there's no use in keeping you here in Vietnam."

QUESTION. What do they tell the families back home about what happened to their boys?

HUNTER. Any time somebody either falls into that predicament or he's burnt so badly, beyond recognition, or blown into so many pieces that they can't even find the teeth to recognize them, they usually list it as missing in action. Sometimes the family can move on that logic for more than a year. I mean you got people back here in the States that are just waiting for their son to come home because he's missing in action; but the U.S. government, the United States Army, knows that they buried him a long time ago. They stuck him on that island. You can be missing in action up to a year. In other words, you can't claim insurance until that year is over; then you are declared as dead. But what I really want to get into is that the biggest spreader of V.D., or venereal disease, or any other type of disease that is brought about by physical contact, is spread by the American male in Vietnam; and it is spread because of the stupidity of the American culture and the American government in Vietnam. If they were to give shots to the Vietnamese, if they would tell them how to take care of themselves--These people wash after every contact, they wash. But, you know what good old GI does. He makes his contact, right? He gets it. Sometimes he finds out about it, but he really doesn't care because he's so really going on his male superiority that he's go to find someplace else to put it; and he runs out and he finds someone else. So he's spread it around for the next GI to pick up, and it goes right on down the line. It's the stupidity of the American government in Vietnam.

QUESTION. Do you have any information on how many men have been sent to this island in the South Pacific?

DUFFY. No, I have no idea, and I don't think it would be made available to me right now. They won't make it available to the American public. Just as they have not made available, you know, that such a thing exists. So, it would be kind of hard.

QUESTION. In your opinion, do you think that the average white American GI returning from Vietnam will be less racist than when he went over?

SHIMABUKURO. Well, I believe a racist is a racist. He might be more vocal about it that somebody else. The ones who voice their opinion, you don't have to worry about because you know who they are. It's the racist that says nothing that you have to watch out for because you don't know what is coming down; but as long as there is a racist policy in the United States, it's not going to change in the service. He could go over and have the best experience with the Vietnamese people; but with the constant racism that exists in our society, he still could be racist. In my opinion, most GIs come back more racist or just as racist as when he left.

DUFFY. I have to agree with him 100%.

HUNTER. So do I because I think the average white man doesn't know what racism is. I mean to the average white person, people who run this line, it's: well, I'm not a racist because you can live in my neighborhood or you can work with me. But there's this real hidden, deep, inside racism which is called the lack of understanding and love. And when you're moving on understanding of the people and loving them, that's the only way you're going to really rid yourself of that internal racism that's been drummed into your subconscious ever since you started school in this country.

DUFFY. In a conversation between two people, let's say an Asian or a black, or in a conversation with a white person, if the words "you" and "us" are used referring to "you" as black and "us" as white, then he's racist. If it's not us, us as people, then he's racist. If he makes that distinction--there's "you" and there's "us," but I'm not racist, well he is racist. If he weren't racist, there would just be you and me as people, not you as black and me as white.
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Re: Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veter

Postby admin » Mon Jun 06, 2016 3:57 am

Part 1 of 2

8. "WHAT ARE WE DOING TO OURSELVES?"

MODERATOR. Tonight, we have on our panel, "What We Are Doing to Ourselves," from Yale University, Dr. Robert J. Lifton; a Vietnamese veteran, Ron McSheffrey; and former Army psychiatrist with the 3rd Field Hospital, now practicing in Detroit, Dr. David Galicia; former Marine veteran, John Geymann; formerly with the Army 8th Field Hospital in Vietnam, psychiatrist Dr. John Bjornson; a lawyer who has dealt with the problems relating to the GIs, Ken Cloke from Los Angeles; and on the end nearest me, Dr. Sid Peck, professor of sociology at Case Western University, now visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tonight we are going to deal with the problem of the effects of the war in Vietnam upon the United States, dealing rather heavily with the problems of the veteran and how they relate in a total picture to the problems facing the United States. Dr. Lifton has spent quite a bit of time studying what is known as the post-Vietnamese syndrome and Dr. Lifton, I'd like you to begin by explaining what happens to these men after they return from Vietnam.

LIFTON. I think that I'd like to do in the few minutes I have is outline in a very broad and general way some of the things that those of us who have been working with Vietnam veterans have discovered. Personally, I've been talking to Vietnam veterans for the last 18 months or so, individually and in groups, and some of us have formed informal rap sessions, in New York, at which we've discussed in some detail and thoroughness, the emotions, feelings, difficulties, and possibilities that Vietnam veterans feel. Some of this I've discussed also before a senatorial subcommittee on veterans last year. I think the first point I'd like to make, and make very strongly, is the psychological difference of this war, for a veteran, as compared to other wars.

One way that the American public, or some of the American public, tries to slough off the depth of harm this war is doing to all of our society, is to say, well, war is _____, it happens in war, people become dehumanized, this is just the way it is with war. But I think one has to look at certain features of the experience in this war that are very special to Vietnam. I can name one or two of them and they are decisive, it seems to me.

There is no structure of fighting in this war that gives it any meaning or psychological satisfaction for the participants. In other words, in most wars, one suffers, one loses buddies, one becomes what we think of as a survivor. But then one has some means of finding the survivor's significance, which is the task of a survivor, getting over the guilt one feels about staying alive while one's buddy dies, by getting back at the enemy in some structure of warfare. Battle lines, a way of being brave, and so on. Here, as all of you know, much better than I do, there is no clear enemy; he's everywhere and nowhere. One can't find him and there are no battle lines, certainly.

There is no psychological satisfaction in any self-respecting form with which to cope with the enormous confusion and guilt that one experiences. One is under great danger in Vietnam, as an American GI, and one does undergo this guilt with the loss of buddies. Moreover, when one comes back to the society, it is quite clear that one does not return a hero, either in other's eyes or one's own eyes. It's more than just not being a hero. There's an overall sense, shared by the larger society, whatever its position about the war, and the vets themselves, that this is a dirty war.

It has no justification, no inner necessity. So the returning veteran, who has a psychological need, as he returns from any war, to make his difficult transition into civilian life by in some way giving significance to what he did in his war, has no such opportunity, because he can't, in any way, inwardly approve of what he has done in this war. Nor can the rest of society find sources of pride for him or acceptance or necessity about this war. Both the veteran and the larger society see him the taint of this filthy, unnecessary, immoral war. That aspect of the war itself has a lot to do with the way in which veterans experience their psychological difficulties just as the experiences in Vietnam leading to atrocities are directly related to the illusions of the political conduct and military conduct of the war.

Now, let me explain what I mean by that. If we think of the burdens that the Vietnam veteran brings back with him into society, inner burdens he carries, I think the most immediate and the one that everyone is aware of most, is a burden of convoluted guilt. It's been, in a sense, imposed upon the GI, the veterans who fought the war, because he cannot, in any sense, justify or give any rational or formulation for having fought the war. He comes back with a taint, that I mentioned. But beyond this burden of convoluted guilt, is the burden of atrocity. It's the sort of thing you've been hearing about all day and you'll hear about for the next couple of days.

There's a quality of atrocity in this war that goes beyond that of other wars in that the war itself is fought as a series of atrocities. There is no distinction between an enemy whom one can justifiably fire at and people whom one murders in less than military situations. It's all thrown together so that every day the distinction between every day activities and atrocities is almost nil. Now if one carries this sense of atrocity with one, one carries the sense of descent into evil. This is very strong in Vietnam vets. It's also strong in the rest of society, and this is what we mean by the primitive or brutalized behavior that there has been so much talk about. I think that this brutalization and the patterns that occur in the war again have to do with the nature of the war we are fighting and the people we've chosen to make our enemies.

This has to do with the atrocities characterizing the war, as often happens in a counterinsurgency of war, we intervene in a civil war or in a revolution in a far-away alien place that you don't understand historically or psychologically, but also with the technological disparity. It's of great psychological significance that Americans go around with such enormous fire power in a technologically under-developed country and develop a kind of uneasy sense of power around their technological fire power, which they then use very loosely, and often with the spirit of a hunter, as we've again heard much about. In all this way, I would stress very strongly, the GI in Vietnam becomes both victim and executioner.

In addition to the burden of atrocity, or in keeping with it, the veteran becomes enormously sensitive to the way in which he's probed or questioned by others in the society at large. And when we talked about this in rap sessions, a lot of vets said, "Well, I just can't stand it when people ask me what I did over there, whether I killed anybody." It turned out that the reason why vets can't stand being asked this question is because they see themselves being accused of having been a monster in some way over there, of having been something less than human. The problem is so great because they inwardly tend to accuse themselves of having been this, and it's one reason why it's so important for vets in making their recovery and undergoing their process of renewal (and I see this kind of meeting as being in the service of that kind of process), that they understand how they were forced by the situation to act in a way that could have led virtually anyone to act in the same way. It has to do with military training that others will talk about; it also has to do with the extreme situation of Vietnam which itself creates the aberrant behavior, rather than with some particular trait that particular vets have in order to then lend them to do these things. They carried with them also a tremendous burden of violence, and every session we have with vets has, at its center, the issue of violence.

Many vets feel that they are ready to murder the first person who crosses them when they come back into society. This has partly to do with the course of the reflex of violence. It's a very simple and direct way to solve all problems. It renders them simple, and it's the way one is taught to solve them in Vietnam. But it also has to do with residual rage over having been victimized in the way I've described by the society in being asked to fight this immoral, tainted, and unnecessary war; therefore the sense of being betrayed. Perhaps the greatest violence, or some of the most violent impulses that vets feel, are towards those who don't respond, who won't believe what happened over there, who, as the vets say, just don't give a damn. Because those people who resist the information or the truths of American atrocities and the details of the war, who resist knowing what the war is all about, are preventing the veteran himself from reaffirming or confirming the truth that he has learned and sharing it with a larger society. In other words, they are impairing his renewal, his return, as the vets themselves put it, to becoming a human being. They carry also a burden of numbing, desensitization, sometimes called dehumanization. When we talk about the issue of numbing or desensitization, some vets resent, and quite understandably, the term "dehumanization." What they really want to convey is the idea that what they went through in Vietnam was a temporary, desensitized state, where they could then commit or witness or not stop these atrocities, and that the desensitization is reversible; that there are ways to become human again.

Of course, they're right. But the problem of numbing, or withdrawal, of not feeling, can stay with them and linger with them for a very long time and is one they must cope with in this process of recovery and renewal. Now what about this general struggle for rehumanization? I want to say a word about that and then stop. Becoming human again means, of course, forming new relationships in society here and new views of society, independent, and independent of and alternative to, those more narrow and brutal ones they knew and lived in in Vietnam. This means that they simultaneously--and I think this has to do with the whole process of the peace-minded vet--the kind that are gathered here and that I see in these rap sessions--they must simultaneously change their life style, their sense of themselves as men, on the one hand, and their sense of society or their world view on the other.

Briefly, the life style change is a very significant shift, I think, from the old-fashioned American ethos on the warrior-hero, the belligerent, intrusive, domineering John Wayne type of hero, to a person who can be equally or more courageous but in ethical and moral terms, who can be softer, gentler, can reject the idea of killing and of violence. In this change in life style and sense of what, indeed, can be termed manly behavior, I think vets are helped very much by their identification with many respects of youth culture which have been making the same important psychological shift for the last five or ten years in this country. Similarly, they've got to change their view of society because once you've questioned the war in a fundamental way, you've questioned that American society has done in creating the war, what has led to that war in deficiencies of a fundamental kind in American institutions.

You've questioned very basic issues of war and peace in a very general way and of one's own relationship to a society that imposes war-making on one. This is a very basic kind of change and not an easy one, but my point is that the change in the self and the change in the world view, including political and ethical world view, have to be simultaneous for this renewal and rehumanizing process. Well, all this has helped, I think.

Interestingly enough by positive memories, many vets call forth of having lived on a double level in Vietnam because some humanizing emotions were retained through all this dehumanizing process that I've been describing. Especially at times, for some, in relationship to Vietnamese--Vietnamese children, Vietnamese families, and it's interesting how much veterans in these rap sessions want to focus on these positive relationships, with Vietnamese people as a way of reinforcing a human aspect of themselves that, so to speak, never did die. I think that's terribly important in this process. I think finally, I want to say in closing, two things. One is that the process is difficult. The process of recovery that I'm talking about is very problematic because of resistance in society, because of psychological difficulties that one has to face in all of this, along the lines I've described. It's a very moving process to see and to help along. There are all kinds of backsliding, all kinds of impulses toward violence, understandably.

I think one has to understand them in this context that I've set forth. But the last thing I want to say is that the problem is not simply that of the vets. I mean clearly, on the one hand, there are hundreds of thousands of vets--it's going to be millions--coming back into American society so in numbers alone it's a problem for American society, and especially a problem where the vet chooses the more chauvinistic and belligerent, violence-prone posture than the one that I'm describing as a way of defending himself against these psychological problems. But it also is a problem for American society at large which is now struggling with the overall and excruciating issue of learning and recognizing, very gradually and very grudgingly that we have been, as a society, immersed in evil, that we are responsible for one long, criminal act of behavior in our project in Vietnam; so, in this sense the veteran's problem and quest for rehumanization is simply a crucible, an intensification of the problem of the whole society, and I think it should be understood as such.

MODERATOR. Dr. Bjornson, you worked with GIs in Vietnam at the 8th Field Hospital. There have been many questions raised here today on the subject of war crimes and people, especially from the press, have asked, "Why did you do it? Why didn't you refuse to do it?" In your conversations and sessions with men on active duty and with veterans, what have you found to be their justification?

BJORNSON. Well, in the first place, I was in Vietnam in 1964 to '65. This has been a rapidly changing five years in terms of my very close acquaintance with the war in Vietnam. I think that our attitudes have changed from advising to frustration to violence to atrocities, and now it's as if we are attempting to develop a conscience. I don't think we have developed enough of a conscience, I think that My Lais can still take place in Vietnam, but I think because of the My Lai exposure, it's going to be less likely. In terms of why, the whys involve a lot of things. In the first place probably the main thing is Army training, and I'm going to have John talk about this in a minute, but Army training is dehumanizing. The Army knows how to train soldiers, and so do the Marines, and so do the Navy. Most of you experienced basic training, and one of the things that happens in basic training is you don't get much sleep. When you don't get much sleep, you become an automaton. When you become an automaton, you begin to follow orders--the idea of killing and sticking bayonets into the model soldiers, the whole business of the gooks, the Vietnamese are inferior, which is constantly drummed into your heads. It's a kind of programming. Also the Army knows that a squad of nine men is probably the most cohesive group of human beings you can get in terms of numbers. The likelihood is good that this group will support each other, will fight to save each other's lives, and that this is more important than what they're fighting for or why they're fighting or why they're there. They know this. And this is why you have a nine-man group. Most GIs in combat situations, and this goes back to the Revolutionary War, don't usually fight for a cause or for patriotism or for much else. They do acquiesce to a system and the system tells you what to do. Because of the consequences of not doing it, you go into the military and do what they say. A few other things I'm sure happened. It's a tremendous change going from an affluent country to an extremely poor country like any country in Southeast Asia. I think we have some sense of guilt. There's a tremendous kind of racist unconscious that I guess we all have, and again this is programmed; it's reinforced. The Vietnamese are inferior, and this has been mentioned many times. And it's also a kind of a strange attraction.

As I'm sure you know, many Occidentals become very attracted to the Orient and stay there. I'm sure many of the vets here have been involved with Vietnamese girls. So, it was one thing one day to call a Vietnamese soldier a gook, and that night to sleep with a Vietnamese girl. We did it. That causes a lot of ambiguity, a lot of confusion in one's mind. Furthermore, and applicable to any war, the whole concept, sort of licenses what we would call psychological regression. It licenses us to act out impulses. We all have a certain sense of sadism, and this licenses violence. You've got a programmed soldier in combat with a gun and then you've got a hierarchy in the military. When I was in Vietnam, the generals and the colonels would say, "If we can only get some American soldiers here, they would react. The Vietnamese, these ARVN, they just won't fight." Well, the Vietnamese are very patient. You can't hustle the East. We got our own troops there, because the generals wanted it. But the generals were wrong, as we all know. It's beginning to look like we don't want to fight any more than the ARVN. So, I would say, probably the main thing is the training. When you say to a man, as we said in the Nuremburg trials, that the defense of obeying an order isn't good enough, I would question this. The American GI has a great deal of difficulty disobeying an order after the kind of training he goes through. I'd like to ask John to tell us a little bit about what Marine training is like.

GEYMANN. Well, Marine training starts from the first day you get into Boot Camp and doesn't end till the day you're discharged. When you're told something to do, whether to go to the bathroom or ha [PIECE MISSING]

MODERATOR. Dr. Galicia, you were at the 3rd Field Hospital in Saigon and you recently returned. Could you kind of update some of the thing that Dr. Bjornson was describing to us, as to the condition of the men, and their justification and methods of escape?

GALICIA. I think that from the time that Dr. Bjornson was there until the present day, and I guess I can speak in terms of the present day because I've been back about six to eight months, there's been a tremendous swing in the way things are there. As best I know it, and as best I can remember it, I was a senior at medical school at that time, and the idea, as it came across to me, was that we were there helping people. That we were there to help them to remain free or whatever. I don't know what it was like to return home at that time. I think perhaps I could best tell you maybe from the standpoint of my own personal experiences. I don't have a huge grudge with the Army, maybe it's because I don't have a huge grudge with anybody. But I was in training in Walter Reed in Child Psychiatry and it and I just did not agree. So I went downtown Washington, DC and I asked to be allowed to drop this program. It was not in the sense the program was terrible.

I just said I don't think it's for me, I'd like to quit. And twenty-three days later, I was in Bien Hoa, waiting for an assignment somewhere in Vietnam. I got twenty-three days and this is something which I can prove. I think that when John came back maybe he didn't get back with the feelings that I had. I've come back with a lot of the paranoid type feeling that these kids have come back with. I found today I made a special trip to go home, to bring back my discharge, and to bring back the paper that says that I was in Vietnam from 13 July 1969 to 30 June 1970, so that I could be sure to prove it to somebody, in case they asked me. I remember my plane flight when I went over there. It was a plane filled with about 140 people, typically American, the kind of America I know and the kind of America I like. People talking, carrying on conversations. Of course, being thrown together in a circumstance in which they're going to a war zone and they don't know where they are going to go, you've got to give them that much leeway for nervousness. But it wasn't really a different plane flight than I thought I would have experienced any place else at any other time, with a lot of wisecracking to the stewardesses and that kind of thing. I remember, then, getting ready to come home after I had spent a year there. I would like to preface that with the fact that my office was in Saigon and I was the only psychiatrist in Saigon not only for the Army, but for the Air Force, the Navy, the Marines, the civilians--everyone. The kicker to this is that I was also the psychiatrist for Delta, the entire Mekong Delta. I had in my mind decided that I would go to Vietnam whether I liked it or not, because I felt that my services wee probably needed there by the very people perhaps sitting to my left, and my right. And so I decided whether I like the war or whether I didn't, I would go. I could have stayed in Saigon. I had an air-conditioned office, and things were nice there. I will not try to tell you anything else but, I decided I would travel through the Delta because I felt if there was any way I could effectively help these people, it would be if I went to talk to their COs. I went to the base camps where they were. And so consequently, every month, for about a week out of the month, I would take a trip through the Delta. I saw a lot of field activity. I saw contact. I flew over battle areas and I was in places where wounded were brought in. So, I think I've got the feeling for the other side of it.

And as the year wore on, I began to get the feeling within myself, "What is this really all about? Why? What are we trying to accomplish?" And the culmination of it was for me, as I can best understand it or feel it in my own personal experiences, was that in getting ready for this plane to come home, I was standing there with a tech, who had traveled exclusively with me. It was against the principles of the Army that an enlisted man and an officer keep that close a relationship, but we said the _____ with it and we went together most of the time. There was a very close Vietnamese friend who came to see me off too, and I was trying to think again about what had I really done? And I finally decided that I'd really done nothing. And when I got on the plane, the thing that I noticed was that this was a group of a hundred and forty American people all thrown in together but you couldn't really cut through the atmosphere in that plane with a machete. Nobody had anything to say to anybody else. Myself, I'm the kind of traveler who does not sleep in vehicles, and I slept all the way, all eighteen hours of the flight except to get up and get off the plane during refueling. But in the waking minutes I had, I noticed that most of the people had very little to say to one another. It was my general feeling that for most of the people on that plane, if one of the stewardesses had come up and made an overt pass at this person, they would probably tell her to bug off, because we just really didn't care as a group. This is the feeling that came across. I think experiences that built this thing up within me were some of the circumstances under which I worked. The drugs in John's time were not a problem. As I best understand it, there were no drugs or very little in the way of drugs. We hear a lot of this business about marijuana and I'd like to comment only to the point to say that whatever percentages are put out by anybody, unless they range eighty percent or more, they're inaccurate. It's at least an eighty percent rate that have at least tried. It got to the place where a good deal of the commanding officers realized the futility and the absolute nonsense in pressing this subject, so the few people we got in who had smoked marijuana, we sat and rapped for about twenty minutes and then I would say to them, "Look, next time you decide to smoke it, why don't you smoke it some place where you won't get caught?" And that was the end of it. I might say that I'm not an advocate of marijuana, I'm not an advocate of anything. I'm just saying that these people felt they had the right to do this and if they wanted to do it, it's fine.

And my last sentence to them was, "Just don't get caught at it." But I think the bigger pressing problem was that we were then beginning to see, and in large amounts, the thing which bugs middle class America the most, or worries them the most, the hard drugs. The Army had given me leaflets at time to go give talks on the faults of marijuana and what evil things would come from using this particular drug. It was all nonsense. It simply was not the truth, and I quit going on these speaking tours because I felt I was betraying myself. I think the problem I had later is that we would get people in on harder drugs and I'd have a _____ of a time because I'd feel like I had two and a half strikes against me already to try to tell this individual medical facts which I knew, that barbiturates are addictive, heroin is addictive, and that these are the kind of drugs which taken in proper amounts, high enough, are very detrimental, and in the end can end up killing. We saw numerous people on barbiturates, which was called by the name Benoctil. This is a drug which all the vets are familiar with. I'm sorry to have to say that I saw four or five people, who, after six to eight months usage of this drug on a heavy basis, were sent home as pure vegetables. They were by this time organic. They had so much brain damage that they were really no longer able to function. I don't really believe that I would have been able to get across the information to them that this is really a lethal drug; this is not marijuana, this is not a game. We had the same problem within our hospital for amphetamine usage. We had people who took so much amphetamine that they really didn't even know who they were or where they were, became very paranoid and reached psychotic proportions for which we had to admit them to the hospital. You just cannot impart this kind of information to these people when they've already been told lies about something else. Insofar as getting people in the hospital for heroin addiction and opiate addiction, the best we could offer was to hospitalize them and sort of work them off their habit with thorazine, because at the time that I was there, methadone was not available to me. I asked for it and I never did get it. This is a much more effective means of taking someone off heroin or opiates than thorazine. Thorazine's a decent substitute, but it's not the answer. And one of the most very trying things for me was the fact that I felt I went there fully qualified. I had had three years of training. I was entitled to go into practice as a practicing psychiatrist. I was "board eligible" at that time.

I had all the prerequisites for being a psychiatrist; and I thought also, the prerequisites for being able to determine whether a person was seriously addicted, in the physical sense, to a drug, which in this country we treat as a diagnosable disorder which is hospitalizable. You've got to take the person away from the source. We could do that much but once I made a diagnosis in my own mind, from there on out my hands were tied because the regulations which I worked under would not permit me, even though I made the diagnosis of opiate addiction, to medically evacuate these people from the country. I considered this disease to be in the same realm as a surgical disorder, which people were sent out for all the time with no questions. And if I could prove that these people had a psychotic episode going on, then I had no problem. But I could not send a seriously ill alcoholic or a seriously addicted drug addict out of country. In essence I found myself in a real quagmire. I had no effective means of sending him on where he could get better treatment. So he ended up going back to his unit. I can distinctly remember one black boy within the hospital under my care six times. He was taking upwards and over thirty cc's of heroin a day--that's four cc's, seven times, eight times a day. He would come in. I would do the best I could with the thorazine. Bring him down off it, get him pretty well straightened around. The MPs would come and take him back. They wouldn't put him in LBJ for this offense, which is not a good way out either, and they would eventually give him back to his unit, and he would go back downtown and get another hit. Immediately, because he had been previously addicted, he would end up coming back over and over again because this is the way things happen in this country. And I was monitored in a sense. Each and every one of the papers I made out for air evacuations took two days to get through, one in preparation and the next day they went out to the flightline, or they went over to Tan Son Nhut air base for a day and then they went for flightline the next day, and finally, they went out. There was enough time for any one of my handwritten things to go up to Long Binh to the office of the Consultant for Psychiatry to the Surgeon General, to go through each and every one of these things and monitor what I had been doing. And on numerous occasions, I got called to have to defend why I was sending this man out of country. And, to say the least, it became very annoying and very disturbing to me, because personally I feel I am professionally competent in my field. I was not sending out a man who'd gone downtown and shot three cc's of opium in his arm and came up with one puncture wound in his elbow and then said to me, "Doc, I'm a heroin addict, get me out." These people were seriously ill. Some of these people had been addicts in this country before, and had had the cure and were coming over there. I had one incident with a boy from the 3rd Brigade of the 9th Infantry Division, who went AWOL out of my office many times. Each time he'd come up for his 212 discharge evaluation, he'd end up screwing it all up because he'd go off downtown and get another hit. He'd be gone for days at a time, and we'd have to go through the process all over again. I personally received letters from his family, as well as the chaplain in my hospital, concerning this lad and what an awful gummed-up mess we are making of this process. I wrote personally to these people to try and tell them what was happening. Finally there was a Congressional investigation came down on my office about this thing. I ended up writing the Congressman about this situation and about my inabilities to send these people out because of the regulations I was working under. I told this man in the letter that I stood ready at that time to get on a plane and come back to Washington, DC and explain it to him and the rest of Congress if that's what they wanted. That I would be most happy to serve those days on the end of my year so that I wasn't trying to get out of anything. I got a letter back from this man which was rather disturbing to me because it was simply a form letter which said to me, "Look, I'm not questioning your professional ability. It seems to me from what you said that you have great compassion for this boy and perhaps you ought to be able to show that for his family also." This was my answer. But it did not say anything that regulations stand this day the same way. So you'd best find another way of getting out of Vietnam because it isn't going to be on addiction, unless it's on a 212 discharge. The last thing I think I'd like to add to this is to tell you an experience that I had. I sat here all day, off and on, listening to these fellows tell on an individual basis how dehumanizing they consider this whole process is. They tell it from an individual standpoint. I can't document this because I don't know the dates. I know the places, but I don't know the dates and I don't know the names. But because of my traveling and because of my rank (I was a Major at that time) and maybe perhaps because of my personality, I got into multiple places where now, when I think about it, I had no business being. But I got invitations to just about every place. And one night I was down with the last element of the 9th Infantry Division that was left in country at that time, the 3rd Brigade, who had four battalions left. They each had their base camp areas.

The Brigade Headquarters was located at Tan An, which was about forty miles south of Saigon. I was asked if I would like to take a tour of the tactical operations center or the TOC. I said I thought that would be a real good idea. I tried to figure in my mind what I thought it would be like in there and I thought there's probably a bunch of relief maps, situational maps, banks of radios, telephones, and a lot of people. When I got in there, I found that my assessment was pretty good; that's about what it was. Except for the fact that when I started looking around, I noticed that there were four charts on this wall, on opposite walls, and each one of these charts had recorded on it for an entire year the monthly kill, one battalion against another, like it was a game. It is off these kind of things, I'm certain, that rank is made. The most upsetting thing was the way it was condoned. While I was there, they were in contact out in the field with someone, and apparently pretty good contact. In the presence of this Major, who was running it, a bell rang three times. I asked him what that was all about and he said, "We just killed three of theirs." I looked at the man, turned around, and said, "Man, what the _____ do you do when they kill one of ours?" He had no answer for me and this was the end of our conversation.

That's just one but I had multiple ones like this and I think that's what led to feel as I did when I got on the plane. And when I returned home (I consider myself to be quite a stable individual. I've never really had a suicidal thought in my life.) I was staying in Detroit by myself. I was staying in a hotel on the ninth floor. And because I was alone, a lot of this stuff kept coming back to me. I was standing by the open window one day with this stuff running through my head and I had to leave that window; because I felt that, at any moment, I would jump. I've had the same feeling a number of occasions crossing freeway bridges when I am thinking about the subject again. And this has remained an upsetting thing to me until just the other day. I read an account in the Detroit Free Press which probably many of you have. It was a very long, long article last Sunday about veterans returning. Somewhere buried in the middle of that was a paragraph that said, roughly, about 7,000 people are coming into VA hospitals, and this doesn't include only psychiatric patients, this includes the whole spectrum, everybody. Out of these 7,000 people, 54% of these people have at least suicidal feelings. And that 27% of these people have actively tried suicide, one or more times. I suspect that perhaps this is a low estimate because up until today I don't think I would have been prone to express what's happened to me.

MODERATOR. Thank you, Doctor. You mentioned the drug problem and this is something that all of us veterans are aware of and that we all realize as being a very dynamite problem. I'd like to bring it around to Ron for a minute. Ron, first let us know where you were, what your job was, how you reacted, and what your contact with the drug situation was.

MCSHEFFREY. Well, I was in the 6/31st, 9th Infantry Division and like I ain't got a general discharge, but I got a 212. I had all kinds of jobs when I was over there, but they couldn't find one to suit me. Well, anyway, after all the different jobs of truck driving (and I ground tar for a couple of weeks) I just decided to go on bed strike. The only thing that could keep me on bed strike with all the demoralizing threats I got from the lifers and stuff was a little bit of smack, you know, once in awhile. So I was shooting up six times a day and stuff like that. I went to Saigon so I could withdraw properly without a bunch of headaches and stuff.

When I got there I showed them my trash and my scabies and everything from dirty works and he said that I wasn't physically addicted, but he gave me a bed anyways because I told him I just wasn't going to go back. So he gave me a bed. The withdrawal treatment is a shot of thorazine once in a while. You know, a light dose. You still got your headaches and everything. So the first night I was there I went out to get a fix because I was really getting some really bad headaches. I come back in and the dude told me I didn't want his medical treatment very bad so he sent me back to the base camp. I had a buddy that went there when I was there again a second time and he said like methadone was too expensive to give us and he gave us a big rap on that and what it boiled down to was that he didn't have any. So that night me and my buddy went out again. I just couldn't handle it. So we went out and my buddy shot up a little cocaine and he OD'd. I got us out going again and got him back to the hospital. When I checked the guy in they wanted to put a bust on me. Like they said I pushed him out of the hospital, I guess. I guess you just let your buddy die instead of helping him out because they really gave me some bad threats. Like I was going to jail and everything because I was smuggling dope into the hospital. And another thing I wanted to reach was, like when they don't give you nothing, when they send you back to the base camp with cold turkey. Well, the only thing I could find to do to keep the headaches away was like just about OD on BTs all the time. And, like a lot of guys, I mean I seen a couple guys really get bad on these BTs just from trying to get away from the cold turkey pains, I seen a guy OD and die on them and stuff. I haven't got the dates or anything.

MODERATOR. Would you tell the people what BTs are? I believe it was mentioned before.

MCSHEFFREY. BTs are Benoctils, downers like seconals. I'm just trying to point out that the only way you can get away from drugs over there is to go on to other drugs and like chance on Od'ing and killing yourself on them; the medical treatment is really bad there.

GALICIA. I'd like to state to you that at the time that this lad came into the hospital, I was not there. I was shifted to the 101st Airborne for a month and whoever took care of him was not myself.

BJORNSON. I wanted to know one thing. I wanted to ask Dave how many GIs started on hard drugs, heroin, speed, and so on in Vietnam who hadn't used it prior to going. Any estimate?

GALICIA. I don't have figures in that regard. All I know is that from the time I entered to the time I left, the problem was increasing. We were getting more and more people in because of drugs and more and more people because of hard drugs. There was a goodly number of these people, I would have to say at least 50% or more, probably more, probably way more. Maybe they smoked a little pot while they were in this country. But they had not used hard drugs; the hard drugs had begun there.

BJORNSON. Another question or kind of response. Having been kind of trained in military psychiatry, trained in an Army hospital, I paid them back there three years plus one, and I resigned my commission when I came back from Vietnam. I probably would have resigned anyway. I know the attitude of military psychiatry is to keep the men on the line and so on. And it sounds to me like they are kind of vaguely using this concept of keeping the men on the line in a crazy way that must reinforce a fantastic amount of drug use. Certainly drug use is epidemiological. That if you get one user you are going to get more and so on. Furthermore, it didn't do anything to stop the traffic--is that right?

GALICIA. In my original presentation, I really tried to leave things out that I just had no way of proving, but I had a correspondent from Look in my office two days running and we sort of shut down the clinic because I sat rapping with this guy all this time about all this. He took pictures of myself and the office and some of the patients we did see. I took him out. I knew the locations because, besides having a close relationship with my nearest tech, I knew probably 80 to 90 percent of all enlisted personnel in the hospital and was included in their grapevine of information. They felt not at all ill at ease about telling me things that just didn't go out to other parts of the hospital. I knew multiple places in the city of Saigon where you could get anything you wanted to. You name it. Anything you can conjure up--mescaline, LSD, speed, marijuana, heroin, it doesn't matter, it was available. And I took this fellow to places and I pointed them out to him. There is no attempt on control of these. For one reason I think it is almost impossible because they're run by profiteering Vietnamese and we, of course, have to understand that the Vietnamese are human beings like everybody else. They'll profiteer like we will and they will sell anything that they can get a profit for. I don't fault them for that. One of these places however was right outside of the entrance of Tan Son Nhut Air Force Base and it was the biggest one that I knew of. And consequently, there was really very little in the way of doing anything about this trafficking. If there are avid readers in this room, and I'm sure there are, you know that there is an Air Force Major now sitting in LBJ who has smuggled in on an Air Force plane, pounds and pounds of heroin he brought in from Thailand. This was a guy who was flying VIPs like General Westmoreland around the country. I took it that his major occupation was flying heroin.

BJORNSON. I'd like to postulate a reason for drug use in Vietnam, as I see it now as a civilian. It seems to me that we have put practically a decade, a generation of males in this country into a tremendous bind. If you're against the war, you have no exit. If you are for it, I suppose you do. It seems that at least 50% of the people in this country, if not more, are openly or statedly against the Vietnam war. They think it should be ended immediately. If you're a draftee, what do you do? You can go to jail, you can attempt to fake a medical illness; you can attempt to fake a psychiatric illness; or get a cooperative resistant psychiatrist that Hershey talks about. Or you can try to become a conscientious objector. Whatever you do, you're going to be wrong, in a certain sense, and you're going to be guilty. It's going to damage your self image. Obviously, going to jail is not a pleasant experience; why should one go to jail for beliefs? If you're drafted, you're guilty, because you're going to Vietnam and you're going to be guilty for fighting in a war that shouldn't exist in the first place. So, if you fake a psychiatric illness, then you have to live with that for the rest of your life. If you passively resist or aggressively, and you go AWOL a lot, they give you a 212 then you have that to live with.

To become a conscientious objector, first you have to believe in it. Then if you believe in it, you have to be middle class; you have to have a lawyer; you probably have to be white and it helps if you have a lot of references. It's extremely difficult to fill out conscientious objector forms. Once you do and they're accepted, you are given a list of jobs--none of which pay more than $4,000 a year and you are supposed to do this for two years to protect the morale of the troops, supposedly. So it seems that a whole generation is in a box. One out is drugs. I'm sure that is out is the reason why Americans are on hard drugs in Vietnam--what percentage, I don't know. But I know that the percentage on grass is high. It's not just grass, it's being stoned twenty-four hours a day, every day for a year.

MODERATOR. Ken, did you have something you wanted to add?

CLOKE. First I wanted to say that it is also known that General Ky is directly implicated in the heroin smuggling that goes on in Vietnam. The CIA plans fly opium into Vietnam. The Meo tribesmen in Laos earn a great deal of their living from, not only CIA funds, but also from the opium trade. The remnants of the Chinese Nationalist Army that is still left in Burma also cultivate the opium trade extensively. I don't think that the question of drugs in Vietnam can been seen in isolation from these things. It is also, I think, a fact, that enormous amounts of graft exist openly in Vietnam and that the war is profitable to a large number of different people, not only at high levels, but at low levels as well. This forms part of the social psychology of drugs.

MODERATOR. Thanks for talking about the CIA, that is a point I feel needs clarification.

GALICIA. I heard this rumor of Ky. One thing I know for a fact is that in each and every base camp area we set up in Vietnam we pay rent to somebody for the right to use their land so that we can defend their freedom or whatever the _____ it means, I don't know. I've lost the concept. But I do know that we pay rent to absentee landlords, most of whom live in Cholon, at least in the area in which I was. But the rumor that I was going to make reference to was that somebody told me that all the property on which Long Binh is situated is owned by Mrs. Thieu.

MODERATOR. I have no information on that.

GALICIA. Well, the only thing is that people with any knowledge of Vietnam know that Long Binh is the biggest Army post in the world. It used to house something like 50,000 troops. I don't know what the number is now, but it is a huge space of land.

MODERATOR. Ron, I'd like to ask you a question on the drug situation again. What was the attitude in your unit on drugs? Were the senior NCOs and officers aware that you and other men might be using hard drugs and, if so, could you relate some incidents as to how they reacted?

MCSHEFFREY. Well, they knew all about it. Like one day my first sergeant walked in on our bunker and there were at least seven or eight of us shooting up. He walked in the doorway and he just stood there. He had a big nothing in his eyes. He turned around and walked away and never said anything again.

MODERATOR. He never said anything. He never asked you what you were doing? He just turned around and walked out?

MCSHEFFREY. Well, I think he seen what we were doing.

LIFTON. Let me make one point about a few things we've been saying the last few minutes that I think has to be said. There's a lot of effort on the part of various people, many of them in the government, to prove things statistically about Vietnam. They've been doing it ever since the war began. The statistics now, and of course they always turn out to be false, but one of the new statistics now, is that all this talk about disturbances or dehumanization of disturbance in Vietnam GIs doesn't apply because they have statistics that show that the psychiatric cases have diminished in percentage as compared with the Korean War or World War II. I want to expose that statistic for what it is. In other words, it doesn't really tell us anything. In fact, it's another one of those sort of technician's misleading efforts to really get away from the heart of the matter. Most of the harmful behavior that occurs in Vietnam is due to the malignant environment we create there, an environment of murder. The aberrant behavior. For instance, the men who killed others at My Lai, let's say, had no discernible or diagnosable psychiatric disease.

They were, I would say, in an advanced state of numbing and brutalization and under enormous pressures. The kind of thing that could happen to any one of us, were we put under similar training and that kind of situation. But they don't have any nameable psychiatric impairment; they'll never be diagnosed. The same is true for many who have various forms of drug addiction. As you know, many people with drug addiction don't come into medical facilities even in this country and don't fit into any statistics. So when one begins to examine the extraordinary impairment and destructiveness of the Vietnam War on all levels of American society, one shouldn't be led by these narrow statistics about psychiatric cases.

MODERATOR. Dr. Peck, I'd like to ask you a question. We've been hearing a lot about the veterans the use of drugs, the problems. Most of the men that came here have come from working class families. How are their fathers taking all this? We're kind of like the sons of the hard-hats, and what's the American public saying about all of this? At least from your point of view.

PECK. Well, one of the things I wanted to comment on was this whole question of dehumanization, and a certain kind of presentation of the dehumanization process, as one that begins with Army training then one that proceeds further in terms of the brutalization of warfare itself. I think that what we have to come to grips with is that, fundamentally speaking, the working class youth in our society, white, black, brown, red, yellow, and so forth, serve fundamentally as the father for this kind of neo-imperialist venture in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. And being the father for that kind of military intervention, their programming doesn't begin in the Marine training camp or in the Army base or at Great Lakes, but the programming to be a bullet and a bomb, begins in that working class household. That's where the dehumanization process initiates, because if you come out of a working class background family, and that's my situation also, you come into a situation where your father, as the provider for that family, is in fact a very powerless figure.

Your family itself is a very powerless kin unit. The neighborhood that you grow up in is a neighborhood that is without power in terms affecting the very fateful decisions of life in the society. And so the one dominant characterization of that kind this seems to me like profound truth of culture that you live in, in a working class area, is a characterization of profound powerlessness. Of not being able to really determine your own future in your own way. To that extent you're constantly involved in an effort to prove otherwise. To prove that you really are something. That you really do count. That you really represent some sense of power. Often times this relates to one's own kin unit, a tremendous sense of what we might call kin chauvinism, ethnic chauvinism and fundamentally for the male working class youth, a pattern of intense male chauvinism. That male chauvinism is one that focuses primarily on penis power. That's where you become powerful, through your penis. By literally not only expressing your dehumanization in a profound way, but by brutalizing other persons, primarily women in your neighborhood. Just as your old man brutalized your mother. And so you grow up in a household, and in a neighborhood, that is oppressive, that is fundamentally oppressive. Yet you're trapped and the only way you can get out of it, in addition to this kind of penis power, is through a sort of entertainment route. You know, like you can join the Golden Gloves and get your face smashed in or smash somebody else's face so that you eventually get into a prizefighting ring. Or you become an all-star, all-city quarterback in football, which I was, and at each moment you have to prove and demonstrate your male prowess and your male power and your masculinity, which involves brutalizing other persons. That's reinforced fundamentally in the basic socializing agency in the working class area, namely the working class school. See, that's your first Marine Training Camp. That's where you do what you're told. That's where you learn to be an automaton, and it doesn't necessarily come from loss of sleep. It comes out of a very rigid custodial jail, that is termed an elementary school, and that is termed a high school. You're trying to break out at all times. Where can you break out to? You can't be a man hero; you can't be a football hero; you can't be the leading outstanding boxer; you join the service.

You join the military. And what has happened fundamentally in Vietnam, that I think relates to a certain kind of awakening and a sense of liberation, a certain kind of struggle on the part of the GI, is that they were placed in the midst of fighting a people, fighting working people like themselves, fighting people who are struggling for a certain kind of dignity of person, fighting a people who were struggling against a similar kind of oppressiveness. I was in Vietnam recently, as recently as last November, but I was North, and I visited working class families. I visited women working in textile factories. I visited workers working in the factories in the caves. I visited working class and peasant homes. I saw men in Vietnam walking down the street hand in hand. I saw then embracing one another in public. I saw them hitting one another's heads. I saw them touching one another tenderly and they were soldiers. I think what I'm trying to say is that the oppression, the dehumanization is very, very deep, extremely deep. It is not a question of becoming somehow dehumanized as though you left the States as a humanized person and somehow you become dehumanized and now we have to put you back to where you were. The fundamental normal characterization of people of our society who suffer this oppression is a form of dehumanization. That may not necessarily make you psychotic in terms of some kind of category of syndromes, but the fact of the matter is, that all of us, each in our own way, have been brutalized and dehumanized and we're already bullets before we go into the military.

MODERATOR. One of the problems that this country faces is the fact there's been 2 1/2 million men that have served in Vietnam and that's an awful lot of manpower whether it's going into factories or just dropping out of society. Some of us are coming back with physical scars and some are coming back with emotional scars. Sitting beside me is Charlie Stephens. Charlie was in the 101st Airborne, and he's brought back maybe some of those invisible scars that I think a lot of us have. Charlie, why don't you talk to us for a couple of minutes and tell us about what is _____ coming down man? Why can't you get any help?

STEPHENS. When I came back to the United States in 1967, I know that some of the things I did in Vietnam I wouldn't have done prior to going over there. At least I don't think I would have done it. But I knew something was wrong because I could still do those things now that I was back here. I had thirty minutes of debriefing, a steak dinner, and a guy patted me on the back and said, "Well, you did a good job in Vietnam. Now you're back home, forget it." It just didn't work that way because when I was on leave I would get uptight, I'd get very irritable. If someone says something to me, I get real excited sometimes.

I can't answer a person. Maybe we'll get into an argument or something, and I can't give them the answer that they want. They start to, you know, like really pressure me for an answer. I'll get uptight, and I might swing at them. I won't think twice about it 'cause I was taught it's better to give than to receive. A chaplain told me that: "Do unto others before they do unto you." I don't know 'cause like I came back here, I went to a psychiatrist. Where was the first one? Well, before I went over, I went to a psychiatrist at Fort Campbell, Kentucky because after my paratroop training I thought it was all over. When I got to my unit I was still a cherry, so they threw me out of the window twice with a poncho and told me to make my cherry blast. I went to a psychiatrist the next day because a sergeant reported that he saw me jump out of a window twice. Well, when I came back from Vietnam, I went to a psychiatrist again because of the things I did, cutting off ears, castration. I was a medic, but we did all this. They wanted to get an accurate body count so you cut the right ear off everyone you had killed. Now, I was taught in Fort Sam Houston that we just supposed to carry our weapons for our personal protection and our patients' protection and that we were supposed to treat the enemy the same way we would like, treat an American soldier. Several times I had to leave like women lying in hammocks dying, one lady suffering from a chest wound. I know the lady died and there were two babies left unconscious. The lieutenant told us to just go sit up on this hill, and the next day when they were burying the dead, they were burying these two babies too. They were alive when we left that village. We had guys up on top of the hill firing down with machine guns at these people, and at that time it didn't, you know, it really bothered me, but I was afraid to speak on it. And before I realized it, I was doing the same thing. When I came back here, well, now I'm out of the service, I've been going to the VA for treatment since 1968, and every time I go to a doctor, he says, "Well, you'll be all right in a couple of years, six or seven years, you'll be all right, so don't worry about it." So finally I got one psychiatrist that seemed to like really be interested like in treating the guys. But this guy he's so busy that you can never see him, and then if you go down, I have a peptic ulcer also that I got in the Army, if you go downstairs for medical treatment like for my feet or for my ulcer, if I go downstairs for medication, they say, "Well, you don't need any medication because it's all in your mind. It's all psychogenic," they tell me. And that's the ball game. You get no treatment from the VA, and the doctor that you have like he's so busy, if you're working, you can't see him when you want to.
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Re: Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veter

Postby admin » Mon Jun 06, 2016 3:58 am

Part 2 of 2

MODERATOR. I want to ask a question of the panel in general. Where are we going nationally? Men like Charlie and lots of others can't get help. Guys are coming back as drug addicts. They're coming back and finding unemployment, inflation. They can't adjust and relate to the life they had before, and I think every vet here can swear up and down that he could never go back to being the way he was before. Are we going to go through a national guilt complex? Is this country ever going to wake up and realize what the _____ we've done? And if it does, what are the effects going to be? Not just on the 2 1/2 million vets that have already realized this, but I mean on the whole nation and that's open for anybody that thinks they can answer it.

MCSHEFFREY. I think there's another thing which guilt has something to do with. That's when you get out and try to get a job 'cause like we see what our system is doing. You know how they survive with this system by mass genocide and stuff like that. How can a guy come back here and really want to make a lot of money?

BJORNSON. I'm sure none of us can answer your question. The war isn't the only conflict, but the war has a lot of secondary conflicts or maybe parallels. This includes certainly the ecological problem, the problem of racism, the problem of oppression and repression. Our federal government is attempting to try to control what they consider a monster they've created. It's hard to say. You know, Marx once said that this country would change without a revolution. Maybe it will.

GALICIA. I think we've all sat here, and we've pondered your question and its magnitude. I think that maybe the answer's really simple. That we're just going to have to get the _____ out of there. And that we're going to have to stop doing the things that we as veterans all know we do. And treat the ones that are among us now who are actively seeking it. I think that in time it would go away, like all other natural things, including floods and fires. It would just disappear. I feel compelled to end my part of this thing by saying just this. One of my severest critics brought up a point to me, my wife. She said, while we were out for supper, that she had some fear in her mind that because of the presentation of some of the panels, the words that were being used, the appearance of the people here, that maybe what they were trying to do would have a dampening effect upon the people who were here, who represented the people that they were trying to get to, and that person is the middle American, whatever the devil that means I think we've all got our concept of it. I'm not back long enough to not identify with these people. I identify with them tremendously, and we haven't used such terms up here as "_____" and so on. We all know they exist. And even the kids to my left and right have refrained from this. But I would like to come to these people's defense only from the standpoint that they are trying to tell you what it was really like. And for the most part, I know they are telling you the truth. And that was the language of Vietnam; that was one of the few avenues of expression open to them. You can't try to express an idea without that kind of thing coming back, I think that the thing that impresses me most is not that a man will come up here and tell you about the things he's done. I think that takes some courage. But I think the real courage is for a man to come up here with the gall he's experiencing and tell the things he's done with the definite knowledge in mind that he might not be believed.

CLOKE. I'd like to try and follow up on the question, if I could. And also try and follow up on some of the things that Sid mentioned because I think they're quite relevant. I think this discussion has been interesting so far because a large number of things have, I think, been presented to us both in terms of what has been talked about and what hasn't been talked about. I'd like to try and find a way of tying those things together because I think they tie together. I think the framework that we have to work from is expressed in a very famous statement by the Baron von Clauswitz, who everybody knows is a master strategist of war, who said that "war is a continuation of politics by other means." And I think that that's a fundamental fact that has to be appreciated about war. You cannot separate the problems of individual psychology and the individual psychological problems of people in a wartime situation, or the individual problems whatever they are, that are faced in that wartime situation from the problems of the society as a whole. So, what has not been talked about, except there was one mention of it, are the thousands of different forms of chauvinism and bias and prejudice which we manifest in every aspect of our daily life. The thousand different forms of self-doubt, of self-hatred, of social schizophrenia, which take place not just individually among individual Vietnam GIs, but among everybody in the population. There's not a single person in the United States today who feels like a whole human being. Not a single individual who feels creative, or loved, or worthwhile; or all of those things. And I think that that's a terribly fundamental fact, and it's not just the individual who's involved in that understanding. It's the total society that we live in. So I think that what has to be gotten to is a kind of social psychology of imperialism. A social psychology of the relationship between colonizer and colonized; between racist and the subjects of racism, and in terms of sexism. Another fact that was not mentioned is just the mere simple fact that GIs are in a totally male environment, which encourages and increases all of the natural forms of male dominance and male chauvinism that exists in the society as a whole. The other thing that I think has to be gotten to is some attempt at definition to understand what we're talking about; to begin to put it in some kind of a context so that chauvinism doesn't just appear like an abstract word coming down from the mouths of professionals, but has a reality to it. The same thing is true of the question of atrocities.

What attempts have been made to define the question of atrocity. And I think that that's an important thing that has to be done. The reason it's important is because of the fact that all of those things have subjective meanings, if you will. Subjective, not in terms of the individuals involved, but also in terms of the social classes involved, also in terms of where people are coming from in terms of their attitudes. One does not trust the white colonizer, in Algeria, to make decisions as to what is a colonialist type of behavior. One does not trust a white American to be able to understand all of the different forms of racism within the society, or a male to be able to talk about the question of chauvinism in terms of really defining the ways in which it works, the ways in which it has to be understood. The reason for that is because the facts are just not available to them. We've been raised in an environment which is oppressive in a thousand different ways. And I think that we have to begin to understand the ways in which we have been affected, the ways in which all of our thinking has been affected by that. For example, and this is a problem throughout this whole discussion, I think, is to begin to try and differentiate between form and content, between phenomenon and essence, between the structure of things and the reality, the essence of things. And, on the superficial level, the violence between the United States and the Vietnamese is identical; they both kill one another. They both shoot one another. They deprive each other of human life. But, in fact, the violence between Vietnam and America, on the part of the National Liberation Front and on the part of the American forces in Vietnam, is not at all identical. It's totally different. And the reason it's totally different is the reason behind the violence. The same thing is true with respect to atrocities. That is, that atrocities are subjective; each side defines atrocities in a different way. And it's not just a question of balancing out the atrocities on one side against the atrocities on the other side. It's a question of understanding why they occur; what caused them to occur in the first place. For example, the wiping out of water buffalo in Vietnam which is considered by the Vietnamese to be an atrocity. Americans don't consider it to be an atrocity because they don't particularly care for water buffalo in the first place. The same thing is true with defoliation.

The same thing is true on a number of different levels. While the sides are at different points in time able to come together and engage in agreements as to what constitutes an atrocity, nonetheless, the major atrocity in the war in Vietnam is the war itself; is the fact of imperialism. Is the fact of exploitation and oppression in Vietnam. One of the reasons why people feel guilt about the use of violence is not just because of the fact that they've used violence, but because they used meaningless violence, violence without any sense, without any direction, without any purpose or cause. So, therefore, for example, the poll that was taken by the Harvard Crimson, I believe, among black veterans in Vietnam, found that 53% of the veterans in Vietnam, while opposing the war, believed that they would use the techniques that they learned in the Unites States military to fight against racism and for Black Liberation in the United States. I think that the question of why My Lai happened is a very important question, and, again, everyone here knows that My Lai was not an isolated incident, that it didn't just happen at some single point in time, but has happened throughout the war. But the reason that My Lai happened is not because we're winning the war, but because of the fact that we're losing it, because of the nature of guerilla warfare, because of the inability to resolve the basic conflict that the United States military and, through the form of basic training, prepares people for. The same source of dissatisfaction, you know, "can't get no satisfaction" and all of that, is true for everyone in this society, and we've got to begin to understand the ways in which the problems that the Vietnam veterans face in Vietnam are relevant to us here at home. We aren't just going to learn at this conference of Winter Soldier Investigation from Vietnam veterans about what happened in Vietnam, I hope. I hope that we will also learn about our own lives, about our own problems, about our own sources of oppression within this society as a whole. And that's the thing that we have to begin to pick up on, to see the interrelationships between all of these different forms of oppression at home and abroad. It's impossible to think about, or to look at, a situation where someone commits an atrocity without attempting to examine the reason that that atrocity was committed in the first place. There's a law which says that internal contradictions are reflected externally. I think the same is true in reverse.

Not only is it true in reverse in the sense that external contradictions are reflected internally, but also the resolution of those contradictions is reflected both internally and externally. And, therefore, we can through meetings of this sort, through gatherings of this sort, through protest, through struggle, through the use of every apparatus available to us, engage in an attempt to discuss these things. Maybe we can begin to see some ways in which we can begin to resolve that problem internally and externally. But you cannot nearly treat the problem of the war in Vietnam in abstract. The only solution, to answer the question that you asked is a total solution and what that total solution amounts to is not decided by us. We are aware of the problem. We're aware of the nature of the sources of oppression within the society. But it's basically up to the ruling class of the United States, including several gentlemen residing here in the city of Detroit, to attempt to give an answer to that basic problem. If we can solve the problems of this country by running people for office, then I think we ought to do that. But, all you have to think about, I think, is what would happen if Huey Newton were elected President of the United States (and how that would be accepted by various people in the United States) to understand that violence is not a problem that is only going to happen in Vietnam. The struggle in the United States, the movement against racism, against war, against repression, against sexism, against militarism, against imperialism in the United States, is a struggle which is already violent. We saw what happened already at Kent State. We have seen the numerous different forms through which violence has affected people in the military, and I think that we have to begin to turn this discussion inward and to deal with our own problems in that respect. The last thing that I want to say primarily is that the solution to the problem is people, and the phrase about "Power to the People" ought not to be just abstract rhetoric. It has a real meaning and people ought to think about the meaning and try and understand that meaning. Brecht I think summarized it very well--and I don't have a copy of the poem with me so I'll have to try and paraphrase what he said. He said, "General, your tank is a mighty vehicle. It can crash through forests and tear down buildings. It has only one defect. It needs a driver. General, your airplane is a mighty instrument. It can fly thousands of miles and drop bombs from thousands of miles above and wreak terror on whole populations. It has one defect. It needs a driver. General, your army is a mighty institution. It has conquered whole peoples and subjected whole peoples to your oppression. But your army has one defect and your soldier has one defect. He can think."

MODERATOR. Thank you, Ken.

MCSHEFFREY. I have one short thing to say. I don't know how they can call all these things atrocities because really it's nothing but an All-American with a "Kan" [?] way of living.

MODERATOR. Dr. Lifton?

LIFTON. I'd like to add something also. I agree with much of what's been said, but I guess I've got my additions and qualifications, too. I'm a little wary of the phrase "total solution." It's been used badly in the past. We do need fundamental solutions and I guess we all agree on that. We can't, it's true, we cannot separate My Lai from the rest of American society, and we've got to dig deep into American society and into ourselves about My Lai. But, if you really believe the solution is people, as I think all of us on this panel and in the audience are committed to, then we've got to really consider the people in that solution, and what they become and what they are and how they behave as human beings. In that regard clearly one has to be militant. And I think one has to, in this regard, distinguish, as has been done, between forms of violence and motivations for violence. But I think we should beware of, rather than welcome, the use of lessons in violence learned in Vietnam, in our own society, and elsewhere.

MODERATOR. Dr. Bjornson?

BJORNSON. I thoroughly agree with that. I would also like to point out that one of the major problems in the United States is obviously its economics. Two-thirds of our federal budget goes to this war or past wars. We're paying now about a 14 billion dollars per year interest debt, mostly for past wars. One of the solutions is very simple; no more wars anywhere, anytime.

MODERATOR. I would like to open this up to the people in the audience. I imagine we've stimulated their thought a little bit and I'd like to throw it open for questions. This gentleman here had a question.

EGENDORF. I asked for the microphone because although I thought I had testimony to give, for quite some time I was scared and I didn't want to give it. And I didn't come forward until today. They couldn't fit me in, but I wanted to be on this panel. My name is Arthur Egendorf. I served with the 525 MI Group in Saigon, later with a group called the Field Support Group in Washington. I got particularly interested in this discussion because they were talking about the working class, as well as part of the solution being no more war. But people began to hint about institutions, and I think I have some things to say from my own experience in intelligence as to what extent the institutions of this society are very much a part of the phenomenon that we're discussing tonight. It's not something we can deal with just by treating veterans, or by getting the government out of the war in Vietnam, or by proposing a moratorium on future wars, but by looking at all these institutions that the radicals are saying are all wrong. In fact, those of us who came from my background never suspected to be actually involved in the things that we later found out we were involved in. I went to Harvard, majored in economics, worked on a project studying multi-national corporations, did research in Europe on them before being bothered by the draft board, and I enlisted in intelligence. I was told that I would be in area studies because people with my background should be in area studies and not with the infantry. And I found out in the first day of intelligence school that area studies is spying. I was later sent to Vietnam, and because I speak French, I was set up in Saigon in a position I really wanted. I didn't want to be out in the field. I didn't want to have to be under fire. I ran French spies back and forth into Cambodia. And one of the first things that I had to do there was to arrange to get press cover for my spies.

This, some of the people in the press corps might have heard about, and they might also have heard last year the Army's denial of this fact--that press cover was need for espionage operatives. But it's been a standing policy, covert, of course, since the beginning of the war. Later I found out about Esso Standard Oil being used to provide cover for people in Cambodia; that was a proposed operation. Later when I was sent back to Washington, I found out about x-hundred different companies working through the CIA with Army Intelligence and providing cover and accommodation addresses. About how Internal Revenue Service documents were falsified in order to hide income paid to spies, as well as Treasury Department and Immigration Department documents falsified to aid operatives overseas. And, in fact, a large number of the institutions that I had studied in college, believing that these were things that were going to help toward world peace, the multi-national corporation was going to weld the world together--were in fact working for Uncle Sam; not totally, not everybody committed to Uncle Sam, but the institutions provide a cover for things that are not published in this society. Not because it would be a threat to our national security, but because the people of this country, if they found out about it would probably feel what I feel now. Which is quite a bit of desperation. The feeling that Dr. Lifton talked about--the word is rotten (It's not articulate enough), but that's what I feel. It's rotten. All these old alternatives are no longer there. They have the same taint that the Army has. They're not viable alternatives. I don't know where the new ones are to come from. People who are not only just working class or not the great middle America, but are shining elites are faced by the same problems. We're all in the same boat.

MODERATOR. One of the situations we face in this investigation is that as publicity has kind of got out about what we're doing people such as this gentleman have come forward at the last minute, we've found out we're not alone. And maybe that's the good thing about it. A lot of men at the last minute have come forth and said they'd like to testify. They have something to offer us. There are an awful lot of people who are in the same boat. I'd like to open it now to more questions.

QUESTION. The question is do the gentlemen of the panel feel that there is something about the United States which more or less predestined and preordained that the course of this war, the policies of this war, the way it was prosecuted, would go the way they have gone, or do you feel that perhaps with wiser leadership, with a different sort of policy making procedure and so forth, it might have been different? Was this an inevitable tragedy, or was it a tragedy that could have been avoided?

BJORNSON. All right, Tim, I can answer this. I would like to answer this very quickly from personal experience. When I was in Vietnam they had seven changes of government. We were on red alert twice for removal of all U.S. troops because we were in danger of possible take-over of the government by a South Vietnamese government self-appointed which we could not get along with. We were ready to pull out all American troops as early as August 1964. I'm sorry we didn't.

LIFTON. I'll say something as long as we, he asked the two of us at this end of the table, whatever his reason. I'm willing to use the word genocide for what we're doing in Vietnam. I think it's an appropriate word. Because genocide means killing of whole population groups. It also involves moving and destroying the land or as a colleague of mine used the term, ecocide, meaning destroying the entire ecology with defoliation and bombing and the various fire power that we're using in Vietnam. Even though it's true that a sizable population still exists and lives in South Vietnam and North Vietnam too. I think the word genocide, given the extent to which things have gone, is not excessive. I think it's a reasonable word and here, incidentally, I'm willing to follow Jean Paul Sartre when he says that you create a situation, that almost inevitably leads to genocide under certain conditions. These are: a country from an alien but highly developed technology, moving into the area of an alien country with a very low developed technology in a situation of revolution and counterinsurgency. Given that situation, and I must agree with my colleagues here, we must look at this historical and political situation along with the psychological issues, some kind of genocide is very, very likely to result. But, in terms of the second question, inevitably, I think one has to be careful about inevitability about anything. Whenever you study human behavior it's hard to say anything is inevitable, but you can have certain conditions where things are more likely. And given a lot that's been said about the institutions in American life, things that happen in Vietnam have been all too likely. Therefore, I think that we should not, on the one hand, take a position of absolute inevitability; then we wouldn't be able to change things. We've got to change things. Nothing is absolutely inevitable. On the other hand, the war was not a simple accident that we blundered into through some foolish leadership. But rather has to do with a lot of things. Yes, it's a kind of neo-imperialism. It's also a kind of remnant of cold war ideology that has to do with pure American virtue and absolute Communist evil, no matter where these arise. And even though this particular revolution we're ostensibly combatting happens to be over 40 years old and arises from deep national aspirations, as well as being Communist, as you know. So these illusions are a source that run deep into American foreign policy, in the fabric of American life and yes, into the American class structure. But I don't think we should take a position of absolute inevitability, rather of making fundamental changes in institutions that take a very different course and avoid that kind of outcome.

PECK. Well, I would just like to follow up that comment first of all by stating that the evidence for genocide is clearly there. Whether one looks at the use of biological and chemical means of warfare as Professor Messleman has at Harvard, in terms of the genocide that has taken place; whether we look at the indiscriminate use of napalming, the use of anti-personnel pellet bombing, or whether we take a look at the bomb tonnage that has been dropped in Vietnam during this period, greater than all the bomb tonnage in World War II, an average of bomb tonnage equivalent to nearly three Hiroshima bombs a week in Vietnam. Now I was in Hiroshima and Nagasaki last August and I talked to the survivors and victims of the atomic bomb. I saw and visited the museum at Hiroshima. And yet in Vietnam that means every 2 1/2 days a Hiroshima bomb is dropped. Now why does that take place? Why is the United States doing that? Why is the United States in Vietnam? That's just a very, very simple question. One could say that we stumbled into Vietnam; that we sort of tricked ourselves into it by a series of miscalculations, a series of errors, a series of misjudgments on the part of the State Department during the Truman Administration and from then on into now. But the fact of the matter is that the United States emerged as the dominant world power in the immediate post-World War II situation. And we emerged in that way because our whole industrial, political and social base was unscathed in this horrible international holocaust. I mean, we were not bombed, we were not destroyed here, but the fact of the matter is that the industrial base in England, in Japan, in Germany, in Italy, in the Soviet Union, in every major industrial power was destroyed, except the United States. In addition, we had attained the use of nuclear power and we proclaimed in initiating our ascendancy to a position of preeminence in the world, the introduction of the American Century, Pax Americana. Gar Alprovitz, in his very, very important work on atomic diplomacy has documents in a very definitive way, that the dropping of the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were primarily for political and diplomatic reasons and, in fact, initiated the cold war. Now you can read the evidence if you like. The point is we entered Vietnam because Vietnam is part of our whole Pacific rim strategy, our whole effort to maintain presence in the mainland of Asia and to effect control over what we consider to be an important market resource area. And when the French, in their colonial rule, a kind of graft-ridden colonial control based on the uses of a coastal elite in oppressing and exploiting the Vietnamese peasantry, when the French finally, through the continued perseverance of the Vietnamese movement for a national independence, were in the throes of defeat, we went in there with everything we could. From 1950 to 1954 we poured in nearly 3 billion dollars. Even prior to the defeat at Dien Bien Phu, our now president, Mr. Nixon, along with Admiral Radford and others, was floating the Operation Vulture program, which would have meant American expeditionary intervention at that time including possible use of a nuclear strike. Now, what we are trying to say is that there is a history to our involvement and those of us who never knew where Vietnam was in February of 1965, when LBJ, our peace candidate (of course we all wore buttons, you know, "part of the way with LBJ"), initiated unilateral bombing of North Vietnam.

We didn't know anything about Vietnam or Indochina and we had to teach ourselves right from scratch; and that's what the teach-in movement was about. And we learned plenty. We learned that the war was not a mistake, that it was not an error. But, it was a calculated expression of American neo-imperialist policies. What went wrong? What went wrong, my friend, is that we could not pull off the Dominican Republic. If we could have pulled it off in five days, there would have been no protest movement. There would have been no struggle against the war. But what we did not expect in Vietnam and what the Secretary of Defense, who was esteemed for his use of computer programming could not program at that time, was the deep will to resist on the part of the Vietnamese people and the fact that their struggle for national independence was rooted not only in an immediate forty year period, but went throughout their centuries of history of struggling against foreign oppression. That it was rooted in their very culture. Therefore, we were immediately faced in fighting a people. We were fighting against a people's war. And, where does our strategy come from? It comes from one of the, I assume, instructors of our young brother here, Samuel Huntington at Harvard and Kissinger, too, no doubt. But, I mean, what did Huntington say? What you have to do to defeat a people engaged in a people's struggle against foreign intervention and oppression is to dry up the ocean so that the fish don't have any water. That's to say, destroy the logistic base of a movement struggling for national independence.

And, if you want to destroy the military arm of that movement, then you must destroy the people. You must destroy their social fabric. You must destroy their very infrastructure. You must uproot them from their land, you must move them into concentration camps and you must kill them indiscriminately so that a sufficient number are so destroyed, so uprooted, so demoralized, so broken apart that the rest will submit. But if there's anything that I've learned from the Vietnamese, they will never, never submit. Never! I think that what all of us are saying here is that we are fundamentally appreciative of the Vietnamese for that struggle because in the process they save us, as human beings. They give us the opportunity to struggle for our own freedom, our own independence, and our own liberation here.

MODERATOR. I'd like to simply add that if anybody doesn't believe the gentlemen that have participated in the panels today and the panels that will be given the next two days about the question of genocide, that he simply take a trip to Vietnam and go ask a rice farmer how he feels about having his crops blown away; that he ask a Vietnamese mother who has borne a deformed child how she feels about the question of genocide, and you'll get a pretty good answer.

PECK. When I was in Vietnam, I did have a chance to visit some of the bomb victims. We're under the impression, of course, that bombing of Vietnam has really ended north of the 19th parallel since the April Fool's speech of LBJ. Also, we think that that's the case since October 1968. But, I carry with me, and I always will these photographs of three bomb victims that I met. I asked the attending physician to have these photographs made after I met with them. This is the young woman, aged 21, Miss That who was the victim of a napalm bomb in December 26, 1969; and you see her leg. It's as though she's resting it on a bench. Well, the fact of the matter is, that's the permanent position of her leg. The napalm has so shriveled up that skin that the leg cannot stretch out at all. And they've done innumerable skin grafting already and they will continue to do it. She just doesn't have use of that leg and it will retain itself in that permanent position. The next one is a 22 year old saleswoman, who was struck by a pellet bomb, on March 28, 1970 and only survived because a person, who was killed by the pellet bombs, fell on top of her. But she has six pellets embedded in her body and they can't be removed. One is on the back of her neck and, as a consequence, the arm is completely paralyzed and subject to every whim and change of the temperature and to touch.

I just sort of reached out to her hand, and she just retreated in pain. And then here is a young farmer, aged 26, who was bombed in late '68. And he was bombed by a phosphorus bomb. Phosphorus makes for intense burning of the skin and his whole body is disfigured. You can see his arms and his whole face was blinded by it. He has one of his eyes restored. And I don't believe that I am responsible for that bombing. I mean I'm trying to say that to myself. But when you look and when you talk to Vietnamese and you see what is being done to a whole people (and this is just three of a whole number of people, every family in Vietnam no longer has members of it and I think you just have to understand how deeply loyal and close they are to their own kin and to their own family) you know what this means. I can only tell you when you ask is there genocide in Vietnam, I've seen the villages that have been leveled. I've seen the fantastic bombardment that has taken place there. I haven't seen it in the South as the GIs and others have seen it. But anybody going to Vietnam can tell you that the people are being destroyed and it's summed up in that horrible, absurd, dehumanized, brutalized phrase that in order to save the village we had to destroy it.

GALICIA. I think that each of us comes home with this kind of thing. I offer you a picture that was sent to me by a good friend of mine of a young Vietnamese girl. This was a 2nd Lt. who did my work for me down in the Delta. He's written off the back, "In the eyes of a child one can see what to most of us is a memory of life and love and being free. A child again can I ever be? Signed, Steven." And he says, "This child's sister was just killed by wounds inflicted by misdirected U.S. artillery fire. Pray for peace."

GEYMANN. How many times on television at night can you see John Wayne killing dirt yellow _____ on television? It happens every day. I dare somebody in this city, in Detroit to go to a TV network during the day and not find at least one war movie where they're killing yellow _____. That's genocide on just more than the Vietnamese. That's on the whole yellow race. You don't see them killing Germans because they're white. You don't see them killing Italians 'cause they're white. But something from the Orient's yellow, and it's not to be trusted.

QUESTION. I was with the 4th Infantry and 9th Infantry in 1967 as a rifleman. Ever since I got back, I've been working in the peace movement, mainly with veterans. I want to direct this question to Mr. Lifton. I skimmed over his book on Hiroshima and I kind of get the picture that you're not sure of what's going to happen with those of us who've returned and have this feeling of wanting to die, that you mention, or wanting to kill. And there's 2 1/2 million veterans and I don't know what percentage involved in the peace movement, I was just wondering if you could comment on that? Secondly, I know that we've been trying to get work within the government to try to get help and make the problems of the Vietnam veteran known. How are you coming along with this?

LIFTON. The first question has to with really the fate of millions of Vietnam veterans. Will they take a direction of violence and chauvinism and really tie themselves to reactionary and chauvinistic political movements in this country and tendencies? I think there's a real danger of that and I think we should be aware of it. We were discussing informally and we don't know how large an issue this is, but it may be a very large one indeed.

There is a tendency of a number of GIs to get out of service earlier by showing a willingness to join the police force. Now it's very possible, we can't prejudge it, but it's very possible that the most chauvinistic of the GIs, those who want to keep on a violent pattern that they learned in Vietnam or they learned before that but had intensified enormously in Vietnam, that they'll simply maintain that. I think there is an important psychological point here. Anybody who comes back from Vietnam, just as anybody who underwent an atomic bomb in Hiroshima, in fact, anybody who undergoes any extreme experience involving massive death, becomes a survivor of that experience and in Vietnam one has the added element of having been, as I suggested before, an executioner as well as a victim in many ways.

Now the survivor can fundamentally go one of two directions. He must, no matter what direction he takes, find significance and meaning in his life, because he's struggling to, in some way, reintegrate himself, find integrity in his life in a very personal way and in his overall world view and his general, larger political and ethical position. He can, in the traditional way of veterans, as veterans usually have in this country, take the direction of more chauvinism, more war, defending war and fighting as you saw in those little demonstrations outside today, objecting to anybody who wants to take peaceful direction or direction of fundamental change and transformation. There's a very real danger that a large number of veterans in this country will follow that. What I think is encouraging, on the other hand, is the enormous number of veterans who are struggling against very great odds, but with considerable success, to take the other direction, that is, finding meaning and exposing the very meaninglessness of the Vietnam war. But not only that, but finding what led to the war, giving form to the experience. That's more difficult, but a much more profound and a much more beneficial and noble direction that veterans are taking. And I think that it may be that if all of us work hard enough, we can swing the thing for the great majority of Vietnam veterans to move in that direction. Because there are large and important ties between veterans and youth culture and between veterans and militant political groups of a number of kinds.

The thing I would add to that is that it's a complicated personal transition and I think it's all too easy to reverse the NL paradigm I mentioned before, the cold war ideology; that America possesses all and total virtue and America's alleged enemies, the Communists, reflect total depravity. It's easy to reverse that, to see all too easily, I think, America as possessing total evil, the only evil that's ever been felt in the world. Clearly that's not true. But it happens that America is perhaps the most destructive force, given our technological and social structure, that the world now faces. If that's so, what we have to do is draw upon whatever positive and humane traditions, and there are some, the fact that we meet here in this way perhaps attests to this, that exist in American life, and strengthen them and deepen them and transform the rest of American life into that positive direction. Not sink in a mire of breast-beating about total evil. I want to say another word about the second question that he raised because that's important, too. I did testify before the Cranston Subcommittee. I do believe that veterans need much better facilities at all the veterans hospitals. That they've been a scandal; everybody knows that. In fact, the administration has apparently blocked whatever efforts Cranston's group has made to increase facilities for veterans. But I confess that my appearing before that committee, as I made very clear to the people when I went there, was not for the purpose of getting better facilities primarily, although that would be fine if that happened, but rather for the sake of publicizing the full breadth of the problem that we've been discussing tonight about brutalization of our whole society as reflected in the veterans' problems. And I guess what I really believe in (it's a small thing but lots can grow from it) are, as some of you in the audience know, informal rap sessions in offices of peace-minded veterans groups. They help vets to really come to terms with themselves and find their bearings along the lines we've been discussing, but also they help again gain information and publicize and spread over various media some of the things that we've been talking about tonight. I think that can grow in various ways that are unpredictable; along with many other movement efforts.

QUESTION. (not audible)

LIFTON. I was asked whether the process of basic training can be compared to a so-called thought reform process that I described in an earlier work on Communist China, or so-called brainwashing. Let me make clear that when I described that process in an earlier study, what I tried to do was take a specific series of examples and then apply them universally. The issue there was not even the nature of the political movement so much as the process by which men's minds could be molded and narrowed. The McCarthy movement in America at that time, which was then rampant, was another very vivid example that I spoke of and developed. The problem then became not Chinese thought reform so much as a general tendency anywhere, in any society, toward totalistic thought, toward an absolute point of view which totally taints with guilt and even non-existence, the threat of non-existence, whether through murder or some other form of the equivalent of non-existence by being tossed out of society, as in the case of certain Russian writers now who are protesting that that pattern of totalism, or ideological totalism, has to be defined. And I tried to set up certain criteria for it. Getting back to basic training in American military units; I think it falls into most of those categories and a colleague of mine, who I hope will be here tomorrow and the next day, Peter Bourne, who has studied basic training and also studied combat, has actually used examples and quoted work that I and others have done about thought reform or totalism and demonstrated their existence in American military basic training procedures. You must remember that what is characteristic of this kind of process is that a man is made to feel extremely guilty, as if he doesn't exist at all, can't exist, and is threatened with terrible harm unless he takes a very narrow, and in this case, very brutalized pattern, adopts it as his own, internalizes it, and then expresses it. I think basic training has to be looked at very severely in this light.

MODERATOR. I had a question passed up to me. It says, you speak of racism. Why is there no representative of black GIs on the panel when more blacks, per capita, are sent to Vietnam--and it's signed, "A White Canadian." If the gentleman hadn't run off to supper, he would have seen a very interesting discussion on racism with a black vet, a Chicano, an Indian veteran, an Oriental veteran and a white veteran. We have quite a few black veterans who are going to testify. Let me say one thing else on the subject of racism. Blacks have been talking about racism for years; they've been trying to get it across to white people. I think it's important that we whites are understanding it now; that we're talking about it, too. And the fact that these veterans who are predominantly white, understand that it's racism that's screwing up the works is very important step in building a new America.

QUESTION. Not much of the panel is along these lines true because if we need a total solution, we have to understand that there's a total problem. When we're talking about genocide I don't think we want to think only about the genocidal acts in Southeast Asia, but the genocide of 25 million blacks in America. I'm not talking about the repression of the Panthers. I'm not talking about Angela Davis. We expect intellectuals to be repressed and to be killed off. I'm talking about the people in the ghettos. Five years after the Hough fires those houses are still standing, gutted, homes for rats and for other things which are not good or healthy for babies and other living things. I would like the panel to discuss for a moment the effects of having two-thirds of our national budget being spent in Vietnam and what this does to genocide of 25 million blacks.

MODERATOR. I'd like to open that with just one thought. The war in Vietnam and racism are so closely related that now the National Guard has M-16s in my home state, which is Ohio, and you know Detroit and lots of other places, that are inner-city areas, have been subjected to the concept of free fire zones, which were developed in Vietnam. So I think there's definitely a close tie. Ken, would you like to talk on this point?

CLOKE. Sure. I think that one of the things that needs to be said about that problem is the way in which the United States creates, intentionally creates, categories which allow racism to foster and to develop. The primary category is poverty. The ways in which that happens in terms of the international relations of the United States and the ways in which it happens at home are very nearly identical. I think that part of the discussion has to deal with a question of the economics of racism in terms of the way in which poverty is reinforced by a social system which, I think everyone will recognize, can be called capitalism in which there are large numbers of people who own the major instruments of production and distribution in the society and who, by virtue of that ownership, force other people to sell their labor power and work for a wage. That fact ought to be clear to people here in Detroit more than maybe in other places in the country.

But the creation of a whole class of people, a whole category of people who are incapable, rendered incapable, not by virtue of their own activity but by virtue of the activity of the social system in which they operate, of participating in that society as equals, is part of a total historical process and I think that it has to be dealt with in that way. I don't think that it's possible to look only at the United States of America in the 1970's and to examine the question of racism and to think that it has to be examined on an historical scale. For example, the ways in which the United States forced Cuba to produce sugar cane. The ways in which the United States forced other countries of the world to produce items which would be economically beneficial to it. And all in the name of what some people have referred to as the multi-national corporate scheme of world development.

The fact is that at present the United States is, and American ruling interests are, deeply involved in the extraction of the wealth of the world from different parts of the world. That wealth exists not only in the form of natural commodities, that is, items for sale, but in the form of the human commodity also, labor and labor power. And it's important for us, I think, to see the question of racism in those terms. In addition to that, there develops alongside of that, and with that, a kind of social psychology of racism. A kind of social psychology of oppression which, I'd recommend a book which I'm involved in reading right now, which is a book by E. Meme called Dominated Man, which talks about the problems of racism, the problems of colonialism, the problems of sexism in terms not of one country at a given historical period in time, but it attempts to extrapolate from that experience and to generalize in the experience. And the conclusion, I think, that you come to is a conclusion which Sartre reached in his introduction to Franz Fanon's book, The Wretched of the Earth, where he says, at one point, that the engine of colonialism turns in a circle and that you can hardly distinguish its daily practice from its own objective necessity. In other words, you can hardly distinguish what is done on a daily basis from the necessities of that system in operation.

The most important thing I think which we've been trying to develop here is the idea that all of this is part of the system. That is, that there are not just isolated individual sources of oppression that exist within the society as a whole, here is not just on the one hand, the oppression of blacks and on the other hand, the oppression of women, on the other hand, the oppression of Vietnamese. But that all these dovetail; come together and integrate and that part of the process of our political awakening is discovering ways in which these things are integrated. When I spoke earlier about total solution, that was what I meant. That the only way in which you can begin to reach the fundamental problems of oppression first particular groups of people is to see the general oppression that exists throughout the society; to understand some of its general features, its historical evolution; the ways in which it originated and grew.

The difficulty in terms of dealing with questions of racism and sexism and imperialism, I think, are primarily, at this point, problems in how we organize ourselves in such a way that we understand that even though we're against this process in some kind of total sense, the ways in which we exemplify and participate in this process on a day-to-day level. This is particularly coming to the fore right now with the women's organizations that are growing and multiplying around the country. But it's a problem that exists for Vietnam veterans also. It's a problem that exists for everybody in the society. The ways in which the process that you go through, the political process that you go through, tends not to be critical of the society that you operate in. It tends to assume all kinds of things and to take things for granted. The ways in which, for example, in the early phases of the civil rights movement that whites moved into the South and essentially, in many respects, ran the civil rights movement.

These kinds of problems I think lead to one general thought in terms of a solution and that is, the integration of united and separate organization. The integration of, on the one hand, the right to complete total self-determination, the right to complete total separation at the same time as demonstrating in some concrete ways the ways in which our interests are all united. The ways in which we have to get together in order to solve the fundamental problems. And it's not just a question of eliminating racism, or sexism or the various forms in which we've been brutalized by this society. It's also a question of complete and total necessity on our part to recognize the ways in which we act and the ways in which we oppress other people in order to be able to reach a point, a level of development, where they can provide a real basis for a voluntary agreement between people; where we can unite women, blacks, white working class intellectuals, mental workers, people from towns, people from counties, people who are in the military, people who are civilians.

What I think we have to keep in mind is this dynamic that exists in terms of separateness and unity. The only other thing that I'd like to say about it is that there is no clearcut solution to any of those problems. The part of the process that we're going through right now is the discovery of the fact that even revolution, in places where revolutions have taken place, has not solved those fundamental problems. That what is required is some form of revolution inside the revolution. That process is not something that takes place at one appointed period in time, but it's a process that takes place throughout that period in time. So, therefore, I think that attention should be called to the use of the word "boy" in terms of black people; the use of the term "girls" in relationship to women; these have occurred right here in this panel and have been part of this very presentation. The absence of black people and women on the panel, I think, is something that illustrates that basic point. And what we have to be conscious of is the fact that as Vietnam veterans can tell us--Vietnam veterans who came into the war effort believing in all of the ways in which this country is oppressive and manifesting that oppression in their own relationships with other people--we have to realize that we're in the same boat. That we have to begin to deal with those problems also in order to be able to do anything about it.

MODERATOR. We have time for one more question.

QUESTION. I'd like to ask Mr. Lifton a question about violence. I'm a Vietnam veteran. Other veterans have come back from other wars expressing a certain intense hatred or dissatisfaction, perhaps not based on quite the same kinds of things that we base ours, Robert Ardrey, Desmond Morris and others, perhaps more respected than they, have written about territorial imperative, basic instincts of man towards violence. I wonder if you'd comment on this as it might pertain or if it does pertain, to Vietnam, and our participation, or anybody's participation there? And beyond that, whether or not youth culture, or youth consciousness is any kind of solution?

LIFTON. It's a big question for the last one. But I'll try to answer in a few sentences. The question, of course, is about violence, and how much of it is kind of instinctual and inevitable producing, Vietnam, and even after Vietnam in other wars. I'll make two simple points; one, that I think that violence always follows upon war, because there is such a thing as a habit of violence, and there are lots of other psychological and other patterns that perpetuate violence after war. But I think that there are degrees of violence, and there's an unusual or unique extent to which the Vietnam veteran feels used, betrayed, victimized, and therefore his violence, his potential for violence, may be considerably greater. It doesn't mean that that's inevitable, returning to that word. I don't believe in the Ardrey and other--Konrad Lorenz' theories about instinctual violence. I think that those are old 19th century, biological visions, that most thoughtful people in this realm don't accept, even though they've received a great deal of publicity. It doesn't mean that human beings aren't a violent race or violent species. Indeed, we seem to be among the most violent. But I don't think one can simply explain that away by biology. What you must say is that human beings, in a combination of history and upbringing or socializing or civilizing, call it what you will, have an enormous potential for violence, but that there's an enormous variation depending on the way in which it's symbolized, and the symbolizing patterns, the principles of relationships between people, and that's why, yes, male-female issues are very pertinent to all this. Relationships in families, domination and suppression, all these perpetuate, or make the maximum potential for violence emerge. So, I don't think violence is inevitable and instinctual. I think it's always there as a possibility. I think one has to work terribly hard to create new forms, in which youth culture, as you say, is a beginning. Youth culture is at the beginning of an idea; it's not the end of an idea. And it has a magnificent kind of idea about moving beyond violent solutions. But it's just the beginnings of that, and there's an enormous amount of work that must be built from there and from other sources.

CLOKE. I'd like to add just one short comment to that. I think that one of the sources of violence within the society is contradiction, is irreconcilable contradiction among people. That contradiction can be of many different sorts and varieties, but the basic problem of violence, I think, is not resolvable without dealing with the problem of where the violence came from to begin with. And how you can eliminate that violence is the most important aspect of that. For example again I think that we have to go back to the Vietnamese and the reason why that's so important is because that superficially it's quite possible to compare the violence of the Vietnamese and the Americans. But, in fact, the violence of people fighting for their own right to survival is of a whole different category from the violence of people who are attempting to prevent them from surviving in any viable way. I think the same thing is true in the United States again, and that only eventually can you speak about the elimination of violence. And only in terms of the eventual elimination of violence, can you begin to get a grip on it, if you begin to see where that violence comes from in this society as a whole.

There's also a kind of logic that works in modern society, which inverts the real cause of the relationship, and makes the effect seem like the cause. For example, I can analogize from law. The law that says "Thou shalt not steal" originates at a certain period in time. There is an attitude among lawyers in the society that that law exists for all periods in time and describes all relationships. But it's just an elementary thought that leads you to conclude that the law "Thou shalt not steal" arises at a particular point in time, and that particular point in time is when on the one hand, there is movable private property, and on the other hand there is a need to steal. That is, scarcity, poverty, and, therefore the law "Thou shalt not steal" in fact indirectly reflects a social need to steal on the part of the society. And that's true with a number of different laws. A law which says that thou shalt not drink is illustrative of a society that has created inside of it a need to drink. A law that, or a society that promulgates laws against possessing weapons, has created a need to shoot, etc. In all of these areas there's not a simple one-to-one correlation, but someone mentioned the question of inevitability, and while it's true that there is not absolute inevitability, there is relative inevitability. And those are the kinds of things that are relatively inevitable. Perhaps the major source of violence in the society as a whole is that contradiction between people that we've been speaking about, and the only way of eliminating that even at its most basic levels, is to eliminate that source of aggravation of it.
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Re: Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veter

Postby admin » Mon Jun 06, 2016 4:01 am

Part 1 of 3

9. PRISONER OF WAR PANEL

MODERATOR. Good morning. This morning the first panel relates to the issue of prisoners of war. Yesterday, we heard some testimony, or quite a bit of testimony, some of it very repetitive, relating to the treatment of prisoners, Vietnamese prisoners, in the hands of Americans. Today we are going to talk about the treatment of Americans in the hands of the Vietnamese. It's an emotional issue, and it's one certainly causing terrible discussion in this country right now. It seems like the whole war issue has centered around the prisoner of war issue. On the panel this morning we have more "alleged" veterans, some of whom "alleged" to have been prisoners of war in an "alleged war." Again I would like to remind you that this is not a mock trial. We are presenting testimony into an investigation relating to the prisoner of war issue, war crimes in general. My name is Don Duncan. I am a veteran. I served in Vietnam in 1964 and 1965. I was a member of the United States Special Forces. At this point I will have the rest of the people at the tables introduce themselves in turn to you.

ZINN. I'm Howard Zinn, I teach Political Science at Boston University. I'm a veteran of the Air Force in another war, but I'm here today because I went to North Vietnam in early 1968 with Father Daniel Berrigan to bring out the first three American pilots who were released as prisoners by the North Vietnamese.

FLOYD. My name is Jon Floyd. I was a pilot with the Marine Corps and I served in Vietnam in 1968. I flew missions over both the North and the South. I was discharged in December of 1969.

VAN DYKE. My name is Jon Van Dyke. I'm an attorney. I worked in the State Department on prisoner of war matters in 1966. I'm now Visiting Fellow in the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Santa Barbara.

SMITH. I'm George Smith. I was a member of the Special Forces Aide Team in South Vietnam in 1963. My camp was overrun. I was captured by the NLF troops and held prisoner for two years and released in November 1965.

NELSON. I'm Dr. Marjorie Nelson, and I'm not a veteran. I was in Vietnam from October of 1967 until October 1969. I was captured in the Tet offensive of 1968 in Hue.

CALDWELL. I'm Stephanie Caldwell, and my brother is a prisoner in North Vietnam. He's been a prisoner since October of 1967.

QUESTION. What is your brother's name?

CALDWELL. James Warner.

WARNER. My name is Virginia Warner, and I am the mother of James Warner, who has been a prisoner in Vietnam, North Vietnam, since 1967 in October. I'm here to ask the American people to help get this thing over with.

DROLSHAGEN. I'm Jon Drolshagen. I was a lieutenant. I was a prisoner of war interrogator. I was in Vietnam from '66 to '67.

DZAGULONES. My name is Don Dzagulones. I was an interrogator also. I was with the Americal Division in Southern I Corp. I was inducted into the Army in December 1967. I spent 1969 in Vietnam.

NOETZEL. My name is Steve Noetzel, and I'm from Floral Park, Long Island, New York. I was drafted in 1962, in July. I went to Vietnam June of 1963 and stayed until May of 1964. While in Vietnam, I was attached to the 5th Special Forces Group. I was a member of a psychological warfare civic action team. While in Vietnam I traveled extensively through the Mekong Delta with our psy war efforts, and during this time I witnessed several incidents of mistreatment, maltreatment, of prisoners and that's what I'm here to testify about today. I now work for the Bell System. I'm in management at their headquarters in New York.

MODERATOR. Mr. Noetzel, we'll start the testimony with you. Please explain specifically where you were in the Delta, and elaborate on this mistreatment, some specific instances, please.

NOETZEL. Right. Before I start maybe some of the media people are interested in some kind of proof that I was there, I am who I say I am, was what I say I was, whatever. This is my DD-214 form discharge from the Army. It tells what unit I was in in Vietnam and when I came back. I have a commendation letter from a Brian Mills, who was the psy war director for the CIA in the embassy in Vietnam in '64. Attached to the commendation letter is another commendation letter from Col. Theodore Leonard, who was the commander of U.S. Special Forces at the time.

I have several sets of orders, sending me on different missions in the Mekong Delta. I have an after action report, and official copy of the after action report, from our Civil Affairs Augmentation Team No. 4, U.S. Army Special Forces Provisional, Vietnam Detachment B-5410, November '63 to April '64. I have about 100 pictures from different places in the Mekong Delta, including many recognizable places to any reporters who may have been in the Mekong Delta, including figures like Henry Cabot Lodge, who visited our camp at the time that I was there, and pictures, maybe somewhat incriminating of a forced work detail of Viet Cong prisoners. If that's not enough, I have a copy of a statement that I made to the U.S. Army concerning the things that I had seen.

It's been brought out a few times yesterday, I guess, that some people may or may not be willing to make a statement about what they had seen. I'd like to read to you just a paragraph from the affidavit that accompanies this statement. "I, Steven S. Noetzel, hereby certify the attached eight pages to be an exact copy of a statement concerning my personal observations of war crimes committted by United States and South Vietnamese military personnel while I was on active duty with the U.S. Army in South Vietnam. I further certify that the original of this document was forwarded to the U.S. Army 12th Military Police Group, Criminal Investigations Detachment E, Military Ocean Terminal, Brooklyn, New York, 11250, care of Investigator William H. Bass, on September 12, 1970, for their subsequent investigation. I further certify that since that date Investigator Bass has acknowledged receipt of the original document and has assured me that an investigation is now in progress. To this affidavit and to each of the eight pages of the attached statement, I have affixed my signature and solemnly swear to the truth of all statements therein."

This is the statement that I will be speaking about today, and these are the incidents that are in this statement. Finally I was contacted, I believe on Wednesday of this week, by a reporter from the Detroit Free Press. He called me at my office in New York and asked me if I would give him my Army service number and so on so he could check out my validity at the Pentagon. He had reason to contact Colonel Heath at the Pentagon who said he knew me. I asked the reporter what Heath said about me, and the reporter said that Heath said that "Noetzel is okay." The first incident that I will speak about happened in November or December of 1963. I was stationed in Can Tho in the Mekong Delta and was trying to hitchhike a chopper ride to Saigon. The only flight going to Saigon on that particular day was a five chopper flight.

They were transporting some 16 prisoners, South Vietnamese prisoners, who had been interrogated at several levels before being sent to Saigon. They were transporting these prisoners in two helicopters, double-rotor helicopters, H-121. There were eight prisoners brought onto each helicopter. They were tied, their hands were tied behind their backs, and they were tethered together with rope around their necks, and about a six-foot length of rope to the next prisoner. A string of eight of them like that were put on each helicopter. With them were about an equal number of South Vietnamese or ARVN troops as guards. Also on that flight of five helicopters were three gunships, HUIB single-rotor helicopters. I flew in the first of these helicopters. The point helicopter. We were to fly support for this mission to bring these prisoners to Saigon. Incidentally, during those days, prisoners were brought to Saigon for a six-month rehabilitation program and then they were released after the six months to go back to wherever they wanted to go, that is, South Vietnamese or NLF prisoners. We took off from Can Tho. We heard, or I heard (I had a headset on), the radio message to Saigon. We got in contact with MACV headquarters in Saigon, told them we were coming with 16 prisoners, and they said they would have a greeting party for us at Tan Son Nhut Airport. We flew in one direct nonstop flight. All the ships stayed together the entire flight, about an hour and ten minutes or so. No helicopter left the group at any time. It could never have caught up with us if it did leave, and land anywhere. We landed in Saigon, I got out of the helicopter, and there was a greeting party there to meet us, a colonel from MACV and some other field grade officers. They had a paddy wagon to transport prisoners and so on. When we got off the helicopter, there were exactly three prisoners left on one helicopter, and one prisoner left on the other helicopter. These prisoners were now bound with their hands behind their backs. They were blindfolded, and of course no tether or no rope around their necks attaching to any other prisoners. I instantly realized what had happened and couldn't believe it, although I knew, rationally, what had to have happened. I went over to the American door gunner of one of the transport ships, and I asked him what the _____ happened, and he told me that they had pushed them out over the Mekong Delta. And I said, "Who?" and he said, "The ARVN guards did." And I just shook my head and said, "I can't believe it," and he said, "Go over there and look at the doorway." There are open doorways on these helicopters; they have no closeable door, there's just a door frame.

And I went over to the doorway and stopped when I got about five feet away and didn't want to go any closer because there was flesh from the hands of the prisoners when they were pushed out on the door jambs and on the door frames. And there was blood on the floor where they had been beaten and pushed out of the helicopters. I went back to my own helicopter that I had just gotten out of and there I overheard the conversation between the American pilots and the MACV colonel who had come to meet the prisoners, and he asked them what the _____ happened to the other prisoners and one of the American pilots simply said to him, "They tried to escape over the Mekong Delta." That was the first, or only, incident of helicopter murder that I had seen in Vietnam.

MODERATOR. Steve, could you now relate to treatment of prisoners at a specific A Team Camp or in the Delta?

NOETZEL. Right. This occurred at one particular camp, this was an A Team at a place called Tan Phu which is in the Caman Peninsula, deep in the Mekong Delta, the southernmost A Team. It was in a completely isolated area. It was completely VC controlled (around the A Team camp). In January or February of 1964, I'm not sure exactly which month, I witnessed an almost public, or not almost, a public display of electrical torture of Vietnamese prisoners.

MODERATOR. Excuse me, Steve, when you say public, who was present or who was witness to this specific one?

NOETZEL. Well, the way the camp was situated, it had about four or five foot walls around the compound, maybe even a little higher than that. There were at least 100 or 150 ARVN strike forces watching from inside the compound, all of the American A Team that was there watching, and also there was a little bridge at a canal right next to the camp, a little camelback bridge, and if you stood at the middle of the bridge, on the highest part of it, you could see down into the camp. And the torture was done outside at a place in the camp where anyone standing on the bridge could watch it. It was done for a psychological effect, I suppose, to show off a new invention, or a new kind of lie detector that they had conjured up. A captain there, the commander of the A Team, had conjured up a system of electrical torture, whereby they took a Sony tape recorder, a plain tape recorder with the w-meters on it, and hooked that up with some field telephone batteries (hooked up in series) and a toggle switch, that was held under the table by a Special Forces sergeant.

Then the captain asked questions of a prisoner, who was stripped naked, and electrodes from these field telephones were attached to the back of his neck to his armpits, to his genitals, and his feet. He was told that this apparatus was a lie detector, that he would be interrogated, and that every time he didn't tell the truth, the machine would give him a shock. He didn't know the difference between a lie detector, or had never seen a tape recorder, I guess. In truth, the captain simply asked questions and the interpreter asked them in Vietnamese, when the captain didn't like the answer, he gave some kind of signal to the sergeant who gave him an electrical charge and the fellow would jump and scream. Everyone was very impressed with this new lie detector except, I guess, the fellow who was being questioned and couldn't understand why the lie detector was working so badly. He may or may not have been telling the truth. At any rate, they got information. Whether it was valid or not, I don't know.

MODERATOR. In your testimony on your sheet here, you mention something about snakes?

NOETZEL. Right. At the B Team in Can Tho, this was the headquarters for the IV Corps, they had an eight foot python snake which was kept at the camp in a cage, supposedly for rat control. When we had prisoners or detainees who were brought to the B Team, they were immediately questioned, and if they balked at all or sounded like they weren't going to be cooperative, they were simply placed in a room overnight. This was like a detention room; the door was locked, and this snake was thrown in there with them. Now the python is a constrictor, similar to a boa. It's not poisonous. It will snap at you, but it's not poisonous, and it probably can't kill a full-grown American or a large male, but it sure terrified the Vietnamese. Two of them usually in a room overnight with the python snake, struggling with it most the night, I guess, and we could hear them screaming. In fact, on one instance, they had to go in there and gag the prisoners, so they wouldn't keep everyone awake all night. In the morning they were usually more cooperative.

MODERATOR. Steve, traveling around through the Delta as you did, just in two words or less, how would you summarize the general treatment of prisoners throughout the A Team camps in the Delta during that period of time?

NOETZEL. I didn't see any humane treatment of prisoners, but I didn't see that many prisoners. However, every time I did see them, they were being mistreated in one way or another. If it wasn't electrical torture, it was the snake torture. If it wasn't the snake torture, it was barbed wire cages, which are also used in Tan Phu. This was a coffin-like cage made of barbed wire, about the shape of a coffin--barbed wire strung around stakes. A prisoner was stripped naked and put into this cage for about a 24-hour period. In the daytime he would bake in the sun, and in the night the mosquitoes would eat him all night I guess. If the mosquitoes weren't particularly attracted to the Orientals, which they're not, they were sprayed with some kind of a mosquito attracting liquid, and they'd be full of bites in the morning. Finally, if it wasn't that, at the B Team at Can Tho, there was another form of torture, a water torture. Prisoners were taken, usually two in a small canoe, out behind the compound in a small rice paddy. They were bound, their hands behind their back. They were blindfolded and were put on this little canoe. An American Special Forces sergeant was there, another Vietnamese soldier was there, and they poled the boat around in circles in this rice paddy. Except that it wasn't a rice paddy anymore, it had been a rice paddy. Now it was used as a latrine really. That's where the drainage from the B Team latrines went, into this rice paddy. It was filled with urine and feces, and it stank to high heaven. The prisoners were rowed around in that water and were asked questions. And when they balked, the fellow who was poling the boat simply took the pole and knocked them out of the boat into this water where they sputtered around for a few minutes. It was about four feet deep or so. They were blindfolded with hands tied behind their back. Finally they surfaced somehow, after drinking half of it, I guess, and were dragged back into the canoe. That was about the only kind of treatment of prisoners I saw.

MODERATOR. George Smith, where were you stationed in the Delta, with your A Team?

SMITH. We were at a camp called Hiep Hoa; it was about 30 miles out of Saigon in the Delta area.

MODERATOR. During what period was this?

SMITH. This was from July 1963 until November 1963 when I was captured.

MODERATOR. So we're talking generally about the time relating to the time that Steve was talking about. This was the same period of time.

SMITH. Right. We were under the jurisdiction of the B Detachment that he was attached to.

MODERATOR. The same B Detachment we just talked about. Did any of this type of treatment of prisoners occur at your camp?

SMITH. Our treatment wasn't as sophisticated as what he had described. We just beat them and put them in barbed wire cages that were about three or four feet high.

MODERATOR. You were captured the 23rd of November 1963?

SMITH. That's correct.

MODERATOR. The same day that President Kennedy was assassinated, right?

SMITH. Right.

MODERATOR. Would you just briefly describe the circumstances of how you got captured?

SMITH. We were in one of those isolated Special Forces camps but we had a strike force of South Vietnamese that were on our payroll and about midnight on November 23rd, I was awakened by an explosion and mortar shells were falling on our house. The camp was very quickly overrun by a large NLF force, and I was captured along with three other Americans.

MODERATOR. You were taken captive. What specifically, you know, did they do. What were your feelings? How did they treat you at that specific moment?

SMITH. During the excitement of battle of course they were a little rougher than they were later on, but they didn't mistreat us terribly bad at the time, and I was sure that we were going to be shot, because all the stories that I had heard at Fort Bragg and after coming into Vietnam was that they didn't take prisoners, and if they did, that they tortured and eventually killed them, if not immediately.

MODERATOR. Were you with the other three prisoners at this time?

SMITH. I was by myself when I was captured, but I was later taken behind the latrine in the camp where I met Sgt. Comacho, who was one of the mortar operators and a string was attached to us sort of like a leash and I thought that we had been taken behind the latrine, of course, to be shot. They set us down in a cross position but nothing happened to us at this time.

MODERATOR. Quite apparently, you weren't shot, what did happen?

SMITH. After they had rounded up all the equipment, the ammunition, weapons in the camp, they took us out over the barbed wire apron surrounding the camp through Madame Nhu's sugar cane field that we were guarding, to a small village on the Oriental River.

MODERATOR. What were your feelings as you were being led away from this camp at that time?

SMITH. I thought they were taking us to another place to execute us. And I was worrying about that along with the air strike that we were under by that time. The South Vietnamese Air Force was attacking the cane field and burned down a lot of sugar cane. I thought they might accidentally drop something on us. But other than that there was no immediate fear, 'cause the guards seemed to have relaxed once we left the camp.

MODERATOR. What did happen in the village?

SMITH. When we arrived in the village, everybody sat down, lit up a cigarette, offered us one, gave us some bananas to eat, patted us and reassured us that everything was going to be all right. That they had no intentions toward us.

MODERATOR. And the next step?

SMITH. After they took their, sort of their break after the battle, we crossed the river and went farther into the Delta area. We traveled for about three or four days until we finally reached a place where we met up with Rohrback and McClure, who were also at our camp and had been captured. This was the first we had seen of them. After we met these two people, the four of us were taken in those little boats that they have through the canal system down into what is probably the Plain of Reeds, the swamp region, and we stayed on a little island there. They constructed a small shack just big enough for the four of us; they slept out in hammocks in the water. And they allowed McClure's foot wound to heal so he would be able to travel at a later time.

MODERATOR. What kind of medical attention did they provide for McClure?

SMITH. They provided immediate attention for him when he was captured. He told me that they dressed his wounds the best they could. He had a fragmentation wound of the foot which was extremely painful for him it turned out. It was difficult for him to walk. They treated it the best they could.

MODERATOR. How about in the swamp?

SMITH. In the swamp then they had time to do things and they got a medic from someplace and he was quite a good medic; he was well-trained; he had penicillin; he had the instruments to probe the foot and find if there were any foreign objects in it. Soon McClure's foot did heal quickly enough that we were able to move out in about ten days, I think.

MODERATOR. So, apparently what you're saying is, is that this stopover at the island was specifically for the purpose of taking care of McClure's foot for future movement.

SMITH. Right, I think it was sort of to allow us time to recover from the initial shock of being captured and for McClure's foot to heal so we could be transported.

MODERATOR. Were you ever bothered by American aircraft at this time?

SMITH. In that area there were some overflights, but no harassing fire in the swamp. But the day that we met Rohrback and McClure, that same day we were under extremely heavy attack by B-26s, helicopters, and everything that the Air Force had in '63. They strafed us, bombed us, and we happened to be in a village. They evacuated us from the village into a swamp area where we were luckily not bombed by B-26s.

MODERATOR. By this point you seemed to have the feeling you were not going to be tortured or executed but you had made reference to that. Why, specifically, did you think you were going to be tortured or executed?

SMITH. Well, that was what I would call common knowledge among the Special Forces people that if any of us were captured in South Vietnam, that we'd had it. They certainly hated us very much, and they would surely do everything to us, at least as much to us as we did to them, and that was kind of frightening from the stories that I heard in Vietnam.

MODERATOR. Did you ever think about the way you'd been treating prisoners before you were taken prisoner yourself? How your camp was treating prisoners?

SMITH. Oh, certainly, I was sure that I would be subjected to at least that bad a treatment, the beatings and living in barbed-wire cages, and probably much worse than that because they were reputed to have chopped heads off and tortured prisoners by any means that you could imagine.

MODERATOR. So now you left the swamp, and where did you go then?

SMITH. We went on a long march that led generally north or northwest, I would guess because we passed by the Tay Ninh mountain and went into the heavy jungle area. It was a long walk and very difficult for us because we didn't have shoes, three of us. It wasn't because they had taken our shoes, they did try to give us some shoes, but unfortunately the Vietnamese have small feet compared with Americans, and they just don't fit.

MODERATOR. You say it was difficult, was it because the Vietnamese were making you do something that they weren't doing or what?

SMITH. No, as a matter of fact we carried only the things that were necessary for existence, our hammocks and a change of clothes.

MODERATOR. And they carried the rest?

SMITH. And they carried all the food, and the weapons--and those big weapons they were carrying were some of the ones that we wouldn't carry because they were too heavy, like the BAR rifle that weighs 20 pounds fully loaded. They were carrying those plus sacks of rice around their neck which can weigh 10 to 15 pounds, all of their equipment, and some of our stuff that we weren't able to carry.

MODERATOR. Were you bound and gagged?

SMITH. Never at any time was I gagged; I did, as I mentioned earlier, have a rope around my wrist, that they sort of held on to me so that if I would decide to run away that they could pull me back a little bit.

MODERATOR. Not around your neck though?

SMITH. No, not around my neck.

MODERATOR. And you arrived at something like a permanent or semi-permanent installation?

SMITH. Yes, as permanent as they could build anything in the jungle there, because nothing was very permanent; if it wasn't eaten by termites they went away and left it after a month.

MODERATOR. Were you ever interrogated in this swamp?

SMITH. They asked us what our names were, that was the only thing they asked us.

MODERATOR. No attempt at interrogation?

SMITH. Absolutely none, it was very surprising.

MODERATOR. Were you ever interrogated?

SMITH. Finally, I was interrogated after about three months.

MODERATOR. After you were a prisoner for three months, they finally got around...

SMITH. Right, about three months.

MODERATOR. What type of military information were they looking for?

SMITH. Well, he told us that he certainly wasn't interested in any military information that we had, because it would be outdated anyway, and he reminded me that their intelligence was far superior to any information that we might have.

MODERATOR. Well, what form then did this interrogation take? It sounds like they weren't after information, so what, what were they after, or what form did it take?

SMITH. He wanted to present the views of the National Liberation Front, concerning the war in South Vietnam. In other words, tell their side of the story. And he asked me if I would think about it, and try to rationalize whether we were right or they were right, and to come back later and talk with him about it, and try to have a discussion about South Vietnam.

MODERATOR. Would you think of this as brainwashing?

SMITH. I would think not, unless you would say that what they did at Fort Bragg was brainwashing.

MODERATOR. If you could, elaborate a little bit. In what sense?

SMITH. Well, before we went to Vietnam, they tried to impress upon our minds that the South Vietnamese were something less than human, and that it was quite all right to go over there and kill them because this was the only war that we had anyway. Yeah, it's a report from a Lieutenant in a secret class, they call an area study, and he said that I'm sorry, you know, that it's not much of a war, but it's the only one we have, so we'll have to make the best of it.

MODERATOR. Could you compare this interrogation session, then, let's say, to a command information class?

SMITH. Yeah, you could compare it with the Saturday morning Information and Education classes where they told us about different things that were happening in Vietnam and the way their life was compared with what we were led to believe it was.

MODERATOR. What were the physical circumstances of this class or interrogation session?

SMITH. Well, we sat at tables, approximately like this, except that it was hand made in the jungle, and they served tea and sugar cubes if they had it. They really didn't have chocolate candy for us, but...

MODERATOR. How long would a session last?

SMITH. Usually an hour or so, and they gave us cigarettes while we were in interrogation, and gave us a pack to take back to our hammock with us--or the bed as the case may be.

MODERATOR. At any time--you were a prisoner for two years--at any time were you ever physically abused?

SMITH. Never physically abused. I was really surprised to find that out because contrary to everything we'd heard, they never once laid a hand on me; except when I was captured they pushed me around a little bit, which I would expect to do myself if I captured somebody.

MODERATOR. But still and all, you were a prisoner of war. There must have been difficult times. What was the attitude of the guards towards you and the other three prisoners?

SMITH. Their attitudes varied from time to time. They could be very friendly, and at times they would appear very hostile towards us. We learned during our stay with them that these were reflections of political activities in Saigon, that when the NLF soldier was executed in Saigon it usually influenced their attitude to a certain extent. But it seemed that there was enough control from their commanders that they never took any hostilities out on a prisoner. They may have disliked us intensely because of what was happening, but they still were under the control of the commanders. We were told at one time that our men would like to kill you, but we have discipline and we don't allow them to do so. And I can understand that because of the things that we were doing to them in '63.

MODERATOR. Are you aware that when these NLF soldiers were being executed in Saigon that the American government was being warned against that?

SMITH. Absolutely, they let us listen to Radio Hanoi; they brought the radio around every evening. Of course they didn't force us to listen to it, they turned it on, and if we wanted to talk that was all right. But Radio Hanoi was warning the United States and the Saigon regime that executions had been taking place (we had heard about them) and they were warning the United States if any more executions took place (I think there were three prisoners being threatened at the time) they would definitely retaliate. They said the United States must bear the responsibility for these executions, and so this sort of put us in a crimp, because, you know, who are they going to execute besides American prisoners of war if they want to retaliate against the United States? It worried us a great deal.

MODERATOR. This did in fact lead to such an act. Would you go into that in a little detail?

SMITH. After they had warned for probably a week that the executions would take place, I heard that the executions did in fact take place. At about that time one of the members that was captured with me, a Sergeant Rohrback, was taken from our camp area. And it was later found out that they had reported that they had executed him; the strange thing is that they never told us that they had executed Rohrback; they never used it for coercion. As far as we knew, he had disappeared from the earth and his name was never mentioned again.

MODERATOR. For the record, there was another man executed at that same time?

SMITH. Yes, I understand it was a Captain _____.

MODERATOR. Right. But that was after repeated warnings about the execution of NLF soldiers.

SMITH. Yes, well this was like a final warning. They had warned some months before when they executed somebody in Saigon that had tried to blow up McNamara, but wasn't successful. But they executed him for the attempt. They had warned at that time that they were going to retaliate, but as far as I know, they didn't retaliate at that time.

MODERATOR. How did it make you feel? I mean you were there as a prisoner and the warnings are going out and these executions are still going on?

SMITH. It's kind of a panicky situation, really, you know, that there's nothing you can do about, you know that the United States is so stubborn and bullheaded that they won't listen to someone like the NLF because they don't recognize that they exist. So how could they listen to them protesting? So really we were in a bad position, almost hopeless, because we knew that the United States wouldn't listen to them, and they were saying that they would retaliate, which I didn't appreciate, but gee, they were certainly within their rights. If their soldiers were being executed, there was no reason why they shouldn't retaliate.

MODERATOR. George, I know you can't testify to POWs in the North, but we have heard a lot about POWs in the North, much of which relates to the subject of food. You were a prisoner for two years under some rather strange circumstances in the jungle. How would you describe the food that you had in terms of whether it was sufficient, adequate, whatever?

SMITH. I usually had more food than I could eat; I usually ate better than they did. They brought in things like sardines for us, which they didn't eat themselves. They brought in cases and cases of sardines. And it sort of worked in a cycle, like I would be able to eat the food for a certain period of time and then I would build up an intolerance toward it and I would become ill, and wouldn't be able to eat the food for a while. But strangely this only affected Comacho, McClure, and myself; Rohrback thrived on the food. He ate mountains of rice, and everything else he could get. If one of us was sick, he of course ate what we didn't want. The man was really well-fed and he got fat.

MODERATOR. In other words, there was nothing wrong with the food. There was something wrong with your head, is that what you're...

SMITH. I would suspect that this was the problem. It was a matter of being under the circumstances of being bombed daily, and having rice to eat for breakfast with the sardines, and the whole thing of looking into the future.

MODERATOR. Did you ever eat rice before you went into the service?

SMITH. Oh, of course I ate rice, but not that much, but I was rather fond of rice, and I do still eat rice.

MODERATOR. When you were released, finally, in November of '65, it was, right?

SMITH. Yes, November, '65, almost two years to the day.

MODERATOR. What was your weight in relationship to your weight at the time of capture?

SMITH. I probably weighed about the same as I did when I was captured.

MODERATOR. You mentioned sardines, that they were giving you sardines as sort of a special little diet supplement or something. How about other special things?

SMITH. Well, as I said they gave us sardines and they brought in canned milk for us. It wasn't limited to that. On Christmas, our first Christmas, they brought in a woman who spoke English and asked us what we would like to order for Christmas dinner. We told her, well, a chicken would probably be good, with some bread, and of course this was an asinine request as far as we were concerned. But sure enough, they brought a chicken and bread, along with a paper star with a candle in it, so I had it hung in the cell for us.
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Re: Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veter

Postby admin » Mon Jun 06, 2016 4:01 am

Part 2 of 3

MODERATOR. And when you say cell, uh...

SMITH. It was like a little house, it was made of poles that they had cut nearby, in the forest there.

MODERATOR. It's not a permanent installation, though, it's something that...

SMITH. It's something they just constructed, with pegs, and bamboo string.

MODERATOR. When you say "bread," they had bread in the camp?

SMITH. No, they told us that they did not eat bread, and they didn't even buy bread, but since we requested it, they sent men to wherever the nearest bread factory was, and got us some bread. It was at least two days away, I'm sure of that, because there were certainly no towns large enough to have a bakery, and when the bread came, it was long loaves of French bread, so it definitely wasn't made in some jungle.

MODERATOR. And how about smoking material, and things like that?

SMITH. Tobacco they usually gave me more than I could stand, because it was an extremely strong variety that they smoked themselves. If they had the tailor-made cigarettes, they gave us what they had. They'd give us a pack if they had a pack. If they had a couple, they'd divide them with us. They gave us cigarettes, and as I went to talk about this Christmas thing, this prompted us to capitalize on the fact that they recognized our holidays. So we told them how important birthdays were, and about Easter and the Fourth of July, and Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. We were trying to just be kind of silly about the whole thing, but it turned out that the people recognized the fact that, you know, we felt this way about our holidays, because they would bring us a bottle of beer and a chicken dinner, usually something special. If they could get bread, which they couldn't always do, they brought us a loaf or so of bread apiece. At Christmas I think we had twelve loaves. That was a lot of bread for them.

MODERATOR. How did your rations of food, tobacco, whatever, how did that compare with your guards? In terms of quantity and so on?

SMITH. Oh, the quantity of tobacco, we always had the biggest share of tobacco. They brought us so much one time we didn't know what to do with it. We had to store it all over the house trying to keep it from being soaked up with water from the rainy season. But the guards would run out of tobacco very soon after we got our supply because they seemed to get just a handful. They would occasionally bum a cigarette from us. They'd come up and ask if they could have it; they never took the liberty to take our tobacco away from us. They always asked us for it, and we would usually give it to them, if we had some. But they would stand around without a cigarette, watching us puff away all day long while we lay around on our beds and they were out working and digging holes or what have you.

MODERATOR. Did you ever receive mail? As a prisoner?

SMITH. Yes, I think I received about four letters, three or four letters, anyway, while I was a prisoner, from my mother.

MODERATOR. Back in the jungle.

SMITH. Right.

MODERATOR. Were you allowed to write?

SMITH. They allowed me to write as often as I wanted to. I didn't write often because I didn't believe that the letters would be delivered if I wrote, and possibly they might use it against me at some time or another. I wrote two letters, I believe, two solid letters. But they asked me and said, "You may write every week. We'll furnish you with the paper and material which is necessary to write." But I normally declined. McClure wrote a number of letters himself. How many were delivered, I don't know. The ones I did write were finally delivered to my mother.

MODERATOR. How would you describe the attitude of the prisoners towards your captors?

SMITH. Well, I can speak for myself. I was extremely hostile and very arrogant with them. This ethnocentrism thing was strong enough that even though I was a prisoner I still looked down upon them. And how they were able to tolerate my attitude for a year or so until I finally decided that these were people, and I could look upon them as such, I don't know. But I was really a bad prisoner, and they told me at one time that I was the worst prisoner they had.

MODERATOR. But despite that, you were never physically abused.

SMITH. Never physically abused; and finally released, which was the most unusual thing.

MODERATOR. Did you ever make any statements while you were a prisoner?

SMITH. Yes, I made statements. Like I was telling you, these classes that we had where they presented their views and we would go back and discuss them at some length. I stated that I believed that they were basically right about Vietnam--that I didn't have any business there, that the war in Vietnam was wrong, that we were violating the Geneva agreement, that I certainly didn't want any part of it, and that all the troops should be withdrawn. This was basically what I said. We, of course, elaborated on different points of it. But these are statements I made, and I wrote a letter to that effect in one of the letters to my mother, describing the situation there and how I now felt about it, according to what I had observed from that frame of reference.

MODERATOR. You've been out of the service now five years, about. How do you feel about those statements now?

SMITH. Well, when I first came back, I was not positive that I was taking the right position, so I did considerable research on my own to find out just where I was. The more research I did the more entrenched I became in my beliefs. And now I feel very strongly that what I said then was right. In fact, I say even more then than I do--even more now than I did then, and I'm not under the duress of being a prisoner of war.

MODERATOR. How old were you when you joined the Army?

SMITH. I was seventeen.

MODERATOR. And what are you doing now?

SMITH. I work for the post office in New Cumberland, West Virginia.

MODERATOR. You going to school?

SMITH. I go to the Kent State University branch in Ohio.

MODERATOR. Rather appropriate. Did any of the other prisoners make statements while they were there?

SMITH. All of the prisoners as far as I know made statements very similar to mine and McClure made more statements than I did, I believe, because he wrote more letters to his wife than I did. But everybody that was there were making the same statements because we got together and talked about it after the interrogation. We all generally agreed that it was a bad situation, we really didn't belong there, and that we would just be glad if the war ended and we all went home.

MODERATOR. And, Sergeant Comacho made these statements also?

SMITH. Oh, absolutely, he and I lived together. In fact, he was the senior NCO among the prisoners and when they were asking us to make a statement one time concerning our views (a written statement so they would have something to retain in what could be considered our records I suppose) Comacho said he thought that was a good idea. That we should go ahead and write a statement if we felt that we wanted to do so. They didn't tell us that we had to write anything, but they said that if you would like to write something they would be glad to have it.

MODERATOR. It's a matter of public record that in 1965 Sergeant Comacho, Isaac Comacho, escaped from the same camp that George was at, thereby becoming the first prisoner of war to successfully escape since the Second World War. At the time that he did escape, as it appeared in Life magazine, Comacho made the statement that what made it possible for him to escape was the fact that George Smith was the one that covered for him, so he could. In other words, one man could go and one man had to stay and cover for the other to give the other one a head start. What was the net result for Comacho after he got back?

SMITH. Well, from what I heard after I got back (the Army refused to tell me where Comacho was even), after I got back...

MODERATOR. I mean, what recognition was given to Comacho?

SMITH. This is what I was getting to. I found out after I got back that Comacho had been returned to the United States, to his home in El Paso, and that President Johnson made a special trip to El Paso to personally decorate Comacho with a Silver Star for escaping.

MODERATOR. In November 1965, you were finally released. Did they ever tell you why you were being released?

SMITH. Yeah, the NLF told me that I was being released in direct response to the peace movement in the United States, and more specifically to replace Norman Morrison and a woman who had immolated themselves, Norman Morrison in front of the Pentagon at that time, I believe. They stated that they realized that the American people were basically peace-loving people and did not condone the actions that the United States government was taking in South Vietnam, so they were returning two of their sons to them for the replacement of the two who had given their lives for the cause of peace in Vietnam.

MODERATOR. Where were you actually first released?

SMITH. I was turned over to the Australians in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

MODERATOR. And when did they tell you this about the peace movement and so on?

SMITH. Well, they had mentioned the peace movement back at the camp before I was actually taken to Phnom Penh. And at Phnom Penh of course they set up a press conference for us. International reporters were there. And someone asked me a question of what I intended to do when I got back to the United States. I told him that I was going to tell the true story of Vietnam as I could see it, from my experiences. That the United States had no business in Vietnam, that it wasn't in the best interest of the American people, and that therefore we should all get out immediately. And someone asked me, "How do you intend to tell this story?" I said, "I'll probably get in touch with the peace movement when I get back because I understand they're asking similar things."

MODERATOR. Had you ever heard of the peace movement before you were captured?

SMITH. On Radio Hanoi. I had heard of demonstrations.

MODERATOR. But not before you were captured?

SMITH. I didn't know anything about such a thing existing.

MODERATOR. You had no way of knowing what the attitude of Special Forces toward the peace movement would be?

SMITH. Right, I didn't know what the peace movement did, even.

MODERATOR. So, did you look up the peace movement?

SMITH. No, I never did.

MODERATOR. Now, if I can get this straight, Sergeant Comacho, who made the same statements, and who escaped with your assistance, was given the Silver Star?

SMITH. Right, exactly.

MODERATOR. And you are now under court-martial charges which hold the ultimate penalty of death.

SMITH. Seems rather curious.

MODERATOR. Yes. Would you comment on that?

SMITH. Well, I suspect the fact that I opened my mouth and said I was going to look up the peace movement when I got home didn't set very well with Special Forces and the Army. And to be able to stop me from doing this, they brought the charges against me, which allowed them to hold me on Okinawa indefinitely, until maybe the peace movement forgot about me or I forgot about the peace movement.

MODERATOR. Before you were released, you had to sign a piece of paper relating to classified information, and they specified certain information you were not to discuss.

SMITH. Right.

MODERATOR. Would you give us a couple of examples, a couple of things you weren't supposed to discuss?

SMITH. Well, one of the strangest things (this was a secret you know, I'm under violation of the National Security Act if I discuss this thing, so I expect to be arrested as soon as I finish saying this) but I wasn't allowed to tell anybody that I received a Red Cross parcel while I was a prisoner of war.

MODERATOR. You did receive a Red Cross parcel back in the jungle?

SMITH. Oh, yes, yes we received--Comacho, McClure and myself each received a large Red Cross parcel, probably weighed fifteen pounds apiece.

MODERATOR. They had to be tracked on somebody's back into the jungle?

SMITH. Right. They had to carry it maybe fifty miles at least because they certainly didn't have any roads in the jungle.

MODERATOR. Thank you, George. We're now going to hear from our second prisoner of war, Dr. Marjorie Nelson, and I wonder if she could just begin by saying in her own words how she was captured and what the experience was like in the hands of the Viet Cong.

NELSON. Well--can you hear me?--I had gone to Quang Ngai in October of '67 and I had been there for four months when the Tet holiday was coming up. I went to Hue for Tet to visit friends and, of course, you know, Hue was overrun and held for some time by NLF and NVA forces. I was staying with a friend, Sandra Johnson, who was working for International Voluntary Service teaching English in Dong Thaien High School, which is a girls' high school in Hue, and she and I spent the first four days of the attack in an improvised bomb shelter in her dining room while the fighting went on outside. On the fourth afternoon, NLF soldiers came to the house and pounded on the front door. We were too frightened to respond, so they went around to the kitchen door and broke in through the kitchen. We could hear them kind of rummaging around the kitchen, and then they came to the door between the dining room and the kitchen, which was bolted from our side by two bolts, and they began to shoot the bolts off the door. I said to Sandy, "I'm going to talk to them." And so I asked them in Vietnamese, "What do you want?" and they said, "Open the door," so we did. There were five of them. They came in, asked just a few questions--asked us if we had any weapons in the house, to which we replied, "No," and then they searched the house. We talked a bit more; they attempted to reassure us that we should not be afraid and that they did not intend to take anything. Then the fighting sort of began again and we moved out of the living room and just about that time I heard something coming. I don't know what it was, but I jumped back into the bomb shelter and whatever it was hit the living room where we'd just been, and demolished the living room.

So they went back outside and left us alone for two more days. Then, on the sixth afternoon, they came back and told us that we should go with them.

We were in Hue about three more days before we were officially registered as prisoners of war. We had to fill out forms in triplicate, giving our passport number, our name, who we worked for, etc. And then, finally, someone who spoke English--for the first time we met someone who spoke English--he told us that because of the continued heavy fighting in the city they couldn't keep us safely; that we were going to be taken to the mountains to study, and that when there was peace, we'd be returned to our families. So we expected to be there for the duration of the war.

That night we left with about fifteen or twenty Vietnamese prisoners. We walked into the mountains and were held then in the mountains for a little over six weeks before we were released.

MODERATOR. Just to emphasize one point, when you were captured, Hue was still very much a battlefield, was it not?

NELSON. Absolutely.

MODERATOR. And so, they seem to have taken a great deal of care with you. All this was done while a huge battle was raging throughout the city. Now, once you were in the mountain camp there, and even before, could you say whether there was any physical molestation of you, any abuses taken of you as a woman or as a person?

NELSON. No. This is a question that I know comes up in the minds of, well, certainly of any GI who's been in Vietnam, and many other people. Certainly this thing could have occurred and I think on a couple of occasions, we were simply lucky that it didn't. However, once we were in the camp, it was quite clear that the cadre also were concerned about this, and they made sure that our privacy was respected. In the first camp we were living with a Vietnamese family, and were living family style--I mean we didn't have a separate room. And then in the second camp, we had our own house.

MODERATOR. How many other prisoners were there with you at the second camp?

NELSON. At the second camp Sandy and I, that is, my girl friend and I, were the only ones there during the whole time. When we were separated from the main group of American prisoners, two fellows came with us. They stayed a couple of days and then went on.

MODERATOR. And in the first camp, you were with how many other people?

NELSON. We were with about fifteen or twenty Vietnamese prisoners, and when we got there we found about twenty-five American men already there, all of whom had been captured in Hue.

MODERATOR. Do you have any knowledge that any of these other American or Vietnamese prisoners were mistreated by the Viet Cong?

NELSON. I can't speak about the Vietnamese prisoners. I didn't see any Vietnamese prisoners mistreated. I talked with all the American men. None of them had been maltreated or mistreated, except that at the time of capture, I mean when they were captured, several of them had their shoes or watches or rings taken away from them. One man said that he had been, and I think I quote exactly, "They made me walk over barbed wire on the way out." He did not indicate whether he thought that was a deliberate act or simply an order to go that way and he went.

MODERATOR. This of course was during the heat of battle.

NELSON. This was during a battle, when he was captured. I think two or three others had received wounds before they were captured, you know, fragments and that sort of thing.

MODERATOR. And was there medical attention given to the wounded people?

NELSON. They received medical attention and a nurse came two or three times a week to dress their wounds, which was adequate except for two of them: that was the man I mentioned, whose feet were in bad shape, and another man who'd taken a big piece of something in his side; they needed more medical attention. I spoke to the camp commanders in the best Vietnamese that I could about this. I said that I felt they needed more medical care and they should be sent to a hospital, if possible. He seemed very uncomfortable with this. He said, "I'm sorry. We'll do the best we can. The situation is temporarily very difficult for us, but please don't worry. I'll do the best that I can for these men."

MODERATOR. What about yourself, did you get adequate medical attention?

NELSON. Yes, I did. I didn't need any medical attention at that camp except for blisters, which I could take care of myself. But about two weeks later, at the second camp, I came down with amoebic dysentery, and the cadre, I call him, that is the man who spoke English and who was in charge of prisoners, immediately had a nurse come and see me. She gave me a standard anti-diarrhea treatment, which didn't help very much. And so, after about a day and a half, when it was apparent to them that I was really quite ill, I heard them talking about trying to get me a doctor. So I waited all that day and all the next day and finally, just before supper time on the second day, a doctor did arrive, a young man who'd been educated in Hanoi at medical school, very well-trained. He examined me and prescribed appropriate therapy. Any of you who know medicine, he gave me chloromycetin, and I was really surprised, because I expected at best that I'd get tetracycline, but he did have chloromycetin. He also gave me fluids, intravenous fluids, by dermoclysis, and in four days my symptoms were gone.

MODERATOR. After you were released from prison by the Viet Cong, did you stay in Vietnam?

NELSON. No, I returned to the United States for about four months, and then I went back.

MODERATOR. And what was your job when you returned to Vietnam?

NELSON. I returned to the project in Quang Ngai that I was working with before, which was basically three things. It was a child day-care center for refugee children, and a rehabilitation center for civilians (primarily war-injured, though we had some like polio and other cases). The third thing that I was doing was, once or twice a week, I was going to the local civilian prison, that is, the provincial prison, where I was examining sick prisoners.

MODERATOR. What kind of prisoners were these?

NELSON. Well, this is basically the province jail. In normal times, this would be where any person convicted and sentenced to jail would be sent. But at present, that is, at the time I was there, I was told both by the prison officials and by the prisoners, that eighty percent or more of the people in the prison were there because they were accused of political crimes.

MODERATOR. So these would be Viet Cong or Viet Cong suspects?

NELSON. Well, presumably, though in my conversations with prisoners it seemed to me that many, many of them were there because one, they didn't have proper papers; two, they'd been picked up in an unauthorized area, someplace it was thought they weren't supposed to be; or in the case of the women (and there were usually somewhere between a hundred and fifty and three hundred women in the prison) they couldn't account for where their husbands were, so they were put in jail for that.

MODERATOR. Did you have any chance to discover whether or not these prisoners had been mistreated in prison?

NELSON. Yes. As I say, I was examining sick prisoners. Almost every time that I went I would see one or more prisoners who had been tortured, not in the prison itself, but in the province interrogation center, which I was told by the Vietnamese was the American interrogation center. I examined people who had been severely beaten. On at least two occasions, I was able to document broken bones by x-ray, and I kept very careful records and after several months I went to the province senior adviser, who is the highest-ranking American civilian in a province, and I took my records along and I said, "Look. This is what I'm seeing, and the Vietnamese tell me that this takes place in the American interrogation center. What do I do?" And he said, "Well, yes, the province interrogation center system was started by the Americans. The idea was to teach South Vietnamese enlightened intelligence in interrogation procedures. It's intended to be a total isolation center, but no torture is to be going on, and if it is, we'll stop it." So I said, "Please do." I saw him two or three days later and he was quite embarrassed. He said, "I'm sorry; I didn't know this, but the province interrogation center has been turned over to the Vietnamese. We're no longer in control of it." There was still an American adviser assigned to the center, however. He said, "Since that's the case, I suggest that you go directly to the province chief," which we then did. The province chief at that time was Col. Than Tat Kien. I took my records along and I presented this to him, and he said, "Well, you know, most of the prisoners that we take have been forced to work with the VC and they're very cooperative and they tell us everything that we need to know. But sometimes we meet people who are very hard." Those were the exact words he used, "very hard, and we have to use other methods, and these are used." He said, "There are limits." And I said, "Well, it seems to me that any reasonable limits are being exceeded, that this is inhumane and furthermore, even from your point of view, I would think it would be politically counter-productive. And I'm asking you to do something to stop this."

He did not promise that he would stop it. After about two weeks I began to see the same thing again, and it's still going on.

MODERATOR. So you saw bruises and broken bones from beatings. Any other kinds of torture that you had experience with?

NELSON. I was not able to document by physical examination any other methods, though my patients told me of the electrical torture, such as has been described, with the field telephones. They told me of being forced to drink concoctions containing things like powdered lime. They also told me of being tied up and hung from the ceiling, sometimes upside down, but I couldn't document this.

MODERATOR. Marge, just one last question. What dates are we talking about? When were you working at this?

NELSON. This was from September 1968 until October 1969 in Quang Ngai Province, which is south of Da Nang.

MODERATOR. Thank you, Doctor. Mrs. Warner, I must apologize for having kept you sitting here so long. I hope you have been somewhat reassured by some of the things you've heard here, however. I would just like you, if you would, to express your thoughts. I don't see that we need to ask questions.

WARNER. First of all, I want to say, I am an American. I'm sure I'm going to be labeled Communist; I'm sure I'm going to be labeled revolutionary, but I am not. I am an American. I love my country. It's being torn apart by this war. I want to appeal to the middle-aged, middle-class America. We have to wake up and realize what's happening to us. My son's been a prisoner, and, of course, I'm interested in him coming back. I'd love to have him back, and I know he wants to come back, but this isn't the only consideration. We have to consider the people in Vietnam. What would we do, what would you and I do, if a Vietnamese plane flew over and bombed our town? How would we react to somebody that we've captured?

I think my son isn't being humanely treated. I don't think he's been brutally treated, but he doesn't get steak; I'm sure he doesn't get chicken like George Smith got. But I think he has food enough to sustain him. Lt. Frischman said the food that they get is enough to sustain them, and if we can sustain him till he comes back, fine. We're allowed to send him a package every other month. We send, oh, aspirins, vitamin capsules, and such things as that. We hadn't heard from him for two and a half years. We knew he was a prisoner. We knew he had been captured by the North Vietnamese. We began to write letters for foreign newspapers and letters to foreign governments to try to get the Vietnamese to tell us about the prisoners, where they were and who they were. Now we've gotten two lists. I don't understand why we claim the lists aren't complete; I don't understand that. Of course, maybe it's because my son's name has appeared on it and you know, in the back of my mind, maybe I'm satisfied. But I've talked to other families and the circumstances of their son's disappearance or their husband's disappearance is quite different and it's perhaps that the North Vietnamese don't know where they are. These are the things we have to rationalize with. We have to stop and think what's happening to our country and to that country. Is it worth going on, is it worth tearing everybody apart? I think, I don't know what else to say. I'd just like to say that since Hanoi has said that if we set a date, they'll talk about the release of the prisoners, is that asking so much, just to set a date? Let's put them on the spot. Let's put them on the spot. Let's set a date and see if they really will live up to their word. They've told the whole world that this is what they'll do, and if they're interested at all in world opinion, like we've been told they are, I think they will. I think they'll listen. And will America listen? Will middle-aged, middle-class America listen? Don't let our country be torn apart by this.

MODERATOR. Thank you, Mrs. Warner. Stephanie, did you want to add anything?

CALDWELL. No.

MODERATOR. Fine, thank you. We're going to break the format here a little bit. Mrs. Warner has to go back to work, but I know some of the press, if Mrs. Warner does not mind, might like to direct some questions directly to her, and then we'll go on with the rest of the format. Does the press have questions? Would you identify yourself please?

QUESTION. What relationship has the President or his aides had with you? Has there been any attempt to propagandize you?

WARNER. No. We get a Christmas card, that's about the size of it.

MODERATOR. Yes? Over there, please.

QUESTION. Mrs. Warner, do you think the POWs in North Vietnam are being used for political purposes by the President?

WARNER. Well, it seems that way. The Song Tay raid, well, it was called a success, even if there weren't any prisoners there, it was labeled a success; suppose there had been prisoners there? Is it reasonable to assume that they could have captured, rescued twenty? How many lives would have been lost? It just seems like it raised the hopes of prisoner families for really no good reason, no good purpose.

QUESTION. Have you been in contact with any other prisoner families?

WARNER. Yes, I have, sir.

QUESTION. Do they share your opinions?

WARNER. I think not. I wish if they did they'd step forward. I feel like I'm on a mountain top all by myself, my husband and I.

MODERATOR. The question was have you tried to express your opinions to the United States government?

WARNER. Sir, I've written many letters. A month or so ago, when the bombing was renewed over North Vietnam, my husband called everybody he could think of, because I'm sure you understand that we didn't want the prison camp where my son was to be bombed. It's sort of like batting your head against a stone wall. I've written many letters to the President, many letters to the Free Press and the news media but never mailed them because I felt that I'm being put on the spot. I'm isolated. I'm alone in the way I feel about this, and it's kind of frightening, you know?

QUESTION. But I believe every prisoner of war family, let's say, has someone that they can contact. The Defense Department has an adviser let's say. You've had personal contact with your adviser. What sort of reaction did you get from him?

WARNER. Well, it's a Marine officer, and they've always been very kind. I have no complaints whatever. They try to get questions answered for us through the Pentagon, any questions that we have. They're willing to cooperate with us in any way. They have to turn in a report every three months, I understand, and I have no complaint about these men. They're doing their job.

QUESTION. You're not harassed in any way?

WARNER. Not harassed, not yet. Not yet. We were told when Jim was first shot down that if we let his name be published in the paper that we'd probably get harassing phone calls.

MODERATOR. From whom, from whom?

QUESTION. Your objection is that the White House has not been responsive. Is that correct? To your letters and so on?

WARNER. Well, maybe not in a way we think they ought to be. I'd like to see us get out of Vietnam. I'd like to see us get out completely, so that we don't tear our country apart any more than it already is.

QUESTION. Did you say earlier that your letters to the White House were not answered?

WARNER. No, I did not say that. I said I had written them, but hadn't mailed them. I put my feelings down on paper, as a release, I suppose, maybe it's frustration. Maybe I feel if I wrote it, it wouldn't really help how I feel.

QUESTION. Have you tried to contact the White House at all?

WARNER. Yes.

QUESTION. You have?

CALDWELL. Can I answer that? When the bombing was resumed over the North, my father called the White House.

QUESTION. What sort of a reaction did you get?

CALDWELL. Well, he didn't talk to anybody. He didn't get in touch with anyone. As Mrs. Warner said, he made a lot of phone calls, and he did make a lot of phone calls, but he didn't get in touch with anyone at all, not directly. He was promised all of these phone calls would be returned, so on the following Monday, or Sunday, he sent a telegram to Melvin Laird, and we didn't get any response from that either.

WARNER. No, he got a letter. We got a letter back.

CALDWELL. Did he? But the personal letter didn't really give us a justifiable explanation as to why the bombing was resumed without thought for what it would do to the prisoners that were being held there.

QUESTION. Would you say as a flat statement that the United States government was not being responsive to the...

CALDWELL. They're being responsive to the families that are cooperating with them and the families that are backing them. They aren't being responsive to us.

QUESTION. What were your opinions on the war in Vietnam before your son was shot down over North Vietnam?

WARNER. From the very beginning, before my son ever went to Vietnam, I had mixed emotions about this thing. I've read a lot of things about it, I talked to people about it. Well, I'm anti-war, period. I'm anti-violence, period. I never could figure out why we should be there and why we should be afraid that they were going to come over and take over our country. Obviously, we're fighting on the side of the minority. If it was the majority, we wouldn't have to be there.

MODERATOR. Can you tell us what the basic content of the telegram to Melvin Laird was? What sentiments it expressed?

WARNER. I hope I don't get my husband upset about this. He said, "Congratulations on the resuming of the bombing of the North. Whose brilliant idea was it, Premier Ky or General Westmoreland?"

QUESTION. Mrs. Warner, is it your feeling that President Nixon and his staff are using the publicity on the prisoners of war to divert the American public's attention from what they are actually doing in Vietnam?

WARNER. I wouldn't say that's my feeling. It just seems we have been kept busy with little busy work, like writing letters to Hanoi, condemning them for the inhumane treatment. And we've gotten everybody in America to write a letter to Hanoi. How many was it they took over there and dumped on the steps of the Hanoi delegation in Paris? I don't think they're going to read all these letters, in the first place, and our government isn't swayed by public opinion. How do we think that Hanoi is going to be swayed by public opinion from another country?

QUESTION. Do you feel that President Nixon is using this as a focus for American public attention, rather than having the focus on anti-war activities or anti-war public sentiment?

WARNER. Let's not just say President Nixon, let's say our administration. Sometimes I feel yes, that we are being used. I feel that they did not want the prisoner of war families to join with any peace groups, but I'm a peace-loving person, that's why I had to go.

QUESTION. Mrs. Warner, a few moments ago you said that you were alone on a mountain top. Well, I want to say that you're not alone because these people are all our brothers and sisters and we've got to get them back.

WARNER. Thank you.

MODERATOR. Are there any other questions from the press? I'd like to thank you personally, Mrs. Warner, and our prayers go with you.

WARNER. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening.

FLOYD. My name is Jon Floyd. I was a pilot with the Marine Corps. I was based with Marine Attack Squadron 533 in Chu Lai. Mrs. Warner's son was at Chu Lai. He was shot down about five months before I arrived there. Most of our missions consisted of close air support (which amounts to blowing the tops off of hills or something for helicopters to land) and what is called a TPQ Mission, which is a radar set. This guides the aircraft in at a high altitude, usually about 20,000 feet; they'll give us an air speed to fly, an altitude, and heading control, and we'll reach a point their gear tells them to tell us and we release the bombs. Sometimes we were told what our target was; the targets might be a suspected enemy truck park, or a suspected supply depot, or sniper fire. Normally we'd go up in either single or section aircraft, two aircraft. We carried normally a load of 28 500-lb. bombs per aircraft, and it isn't uncommon, it was a kind of standard joke, about releasing 56 500-lb. bombs on a suspected sniper.

The TPQ bombing is a strato-level bombing which is directly condemned by the Nuremberg principles after Dresden, in World War II, was wiped out because no significant military targets were there. Regarding pilot's living conditions, at Chu Lai we had air-conditioned Quonset huts. We lived there on the beach.

We had access to sailboats, and mainly spent our time in the Officer's Club and nominally doing some sort of job. We also flew into North Vietnam. I was flying an A6A Intruder aircraft, and this is a radar strike aircraft. We'd fly in at a low level at night. They had stopped bombing Hanoi area about two months after I arrived there. This type of mission up into the Hanoi-Haiphong area, called Route Pack Six, was called a "rolling thunder." Primarily what we did, while I was there, was basically going in at night, low level, popping up to about 1,200 feet, acquiring a target on radar, and through the information from our various systems, it went into a computer; I pulled a commit switch and the computer dropped the bombs. We went back at low level. This was always done at night. I didn't get any rolling thunders while I was there, I'm not too unhappy to say.

Our bombing of the North mainly consisted of between the 17th and 18th parallel. This is where the Air Force and Marine Corps area was allotted when the bombing halt was called above the 20th parallel. The Navy had between the 18th and 19th parallel. Our primary objective was to pick up moving targets, such as trucks, or barges, any convoys carrying supplies, etc. We also had secondary targets, which were normally called a truck park or a gun-emplacement or ferry positions across the river, which we would drop our bombs on if we didn't pick up any moving targets. These were the same targets that we had for months and months, and they'd be bombed many times over each night.

Basically the type of weapons we used there were 500-lb. bombs, and 2,000-lb. bombs with what we called "daisy-cutters," which was about a yard-long 1 fuse, to make sure that the bomb doesn't go ahead and penetrate the ground when it explodes but it stays above ground so the frag pattern will be large enough. We also used CBUs (cluster bomblet units) which are classified, a secret I believe, which amount to a canister which releases a number of small bomblets which are anti-personnel. Also, we mined the rivers and roads with 500-lb. bombs which were set to go off normally in the 24-hour period following to catch trucks and barges coming along at later times.

Anywhere in North Vietnam basically is a free drop zone. There were no forbidden targets. If you didn't find any particular targets that you wanted to hit, then normally you'd go ahead and just drop your bombs wherever you wanted to. They had zones off in the water where you could go and jettison your bombs, but this was very seldom ever used. Many times, I know, a lot of pilots I've talked to said they would drop their bombs on the city of Dong Hoi, which is the main city between the 17th and 18th parallel there on the coast. We had gotten information that the North Vietnamese had told us that they had a prisoner of war camp in Dong Hoi. It was always blacked out, but no one seemed to believe this and they'd go ahead and dump their bombs on the city there. Referring to Dr. Nelson's experience in Hue, our government claims that most of the people that died there were executed by the Viet Cong, after the cease fire, but a great deal of the city of Hue was destroyed by our own bombing and I'm sure a great deal of these people that died were destroyed by our bombing. I wouldn't doubt but that her living room was blown up by one of our bombs. This war from the pilot's standpoint, is a very impersonal war. You go over there and whether or not you believe the goals that the government prescribes for us to fight for or whatever, most of the pilots just go along and figure, well, it's a job. And that's the way we all looked at it. You fly. You see flak at night. That's about as close to war as we get. Sometimes you get shot down, but you don't see any of the explosions. You can look back and see 'em, but you don't see any of the blood or any of the flesh. It's a very clean and impersonal war.

You go out, fly your mission, you come back to your air-conditioned hootch and drink beer or whatever. You're not in contact with it. You don't realize at the time, I don't think, what you're doing. It dawned on me, I think, when we got reports of 13 year old NVA soldiers coming across and being captured; that most probably they had young girls driving most of these trucks that we were destroying up north. And as far as the damage reports that were put out by the pilots, it was a kind of a standard joke. Especially when you knew which pilots would not particularly do a good job and every bomb they saw exploding, they'd come back and report secondaries. It was just a standard joke. Among the career officers, especially major and above field grade officers, this was just a place to advance your career. They tried to give everyone a command of some sorts. They made sure everyone pretty well got a medal of some sort. In my unit (it was in a flight status) it was a Distinguished Flying Cross. I got two of these; virtually all of the officers got one. This was just a standard procedure. Have you got your DFC yet? It was a common thing. We had an older bombardier navigator and he used to fly with a lot of the colonels who would come down from Group. They had a high change-over of command to make sure everyone got their command over there. We would send him up with all the colonels to take them up north, get shot at, and bring them back and write up their horror tale of how brave they were, and give 'em a medal. Then they'd probably never fly again with us, after they got the medal.
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Re: Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veter

Postby admin » Mon Jun 06, 2016 4:02 am

Part 3 of 3

MODERATOR. Okay, now I'd like to go and talk to a few of the other men here on the panel who were interrogators. First we have Jon Drolshagen. He was in the Army. He worked with S-5 which is the Civic Action Program in Vietnam. This is what he was assigned to. This Civic Action Program is to win the hearts and minds of the people. I'd like Jon to explain a little bit about how he carried out this Civic Action Program.

DROLSHAGEN. Right. Well, being an interrogator you automatically don't win hearts and minds. Being an interrogator the way I was, you definitely don't win hearts and minds. I've heard about these bell telephone hours where they would crank people up with field phones. I guess we did them one better because we used a 12-volt jeep battery and you step on the gas and you crank up a lot of voltage. It was one of the normal things. I'll give a little background. I started out in Vietnam as a platoon leader, seven months in the field doing little fire fights, killing people, etc. You get a little bit hardened, I guess. You become a superhawk or whatever you want to put it at.

After a while, people in my unit were a little bit weary of going out in the field with me. I started enjoying killing people a little bit more than you're supposed to, I guess. Even for the United States, I guess you can like it too much. I was taken out of there and put in the Civic Action. The basis of the Civic Action is to win the hearts and minds of the people, propagandize them to our way of thinking. We're supposedly building schools for them, getting medical aid to them, food and clothing, all the nice things that you can think of that you would want to do for people that are "less than we are" so we can bring them up to our standards--which is amazing for a country that's been there an awful lot longer than we have. Instead of doing this type of thing, we had a major that enjoyed doing other types of things. We worked more as an intelligence unit to gather information for our brigade and division. My area was from the city of Tay Ninh, the Tay Ninh Province, down to Phu Cuong which Cu Chi bisected. Outside of Cu Chi, there's a little village called _____ Tau Chi that has an ARVN battalion and an RND unit outside. A little bit north of that is another village that we had commandeered, some head honcho's hootch, which is a big place, you keep your beer cool in it, and where we could carry on interrogation without outside people knowing what was happening. There was another lieutenant and a major there that was an adviser to the Vietnamese battalion down there. There were Vietnamese officers, enlisted men, and NCOs and American officers, enlisted men and NCOs that were present for the wiring of prisoners. You could take the wires of a jeep battery (it's a tremendous amount of voltage), put it most any place on their body, and you're going to shock the hell out of the guy. The basic place you put it was the genitals. There were some people who really enjoyed that because people would really squirm. The major that I worked for had a fantastic capability of staking prisoners, utilizing a knife that was extremely sharp, and sort of filleting them like a fish. You know, trying to check out how much bacon he could make of a Vietnamese body to get information. Prisoners treated this way were executed at the end because there was no way that we could take them into any medical aide and say, "This dude fell down some steps," or something, because you just don't get them kind of cuts and things like that. That was our basic way of getting the information that we needed from prisoners, suspects or whatever. These people were not taken in to the 25th Division Headquarters which is stationed in Cu Chi. These were utilized out in the ARVN areas. We would go back into base camp at night, and being red-blooded American like we were, we'd go down to the Officers Club and get blasted and talk to people. So I'm sure that my brigade commander, my brigade CO, and all the officers attached to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Brigade, 25th Division, knew what was happening. There was no condemnation of this. People would request to go out there with us and watch it. We had pilots with us and they don't get on the ground too much. They don't see what's really happening. We would take pilots out with us to show them our side of the war, as it were. You become very hardened after being out in the field, losing a lot of people, killing a lot of people, and when you come in, torturing really is just another way of going over it.

MODERATOR. Would you say, Jon, that these were commonly used tactics for interrogators over there, our interrogators?

DROLSHAGEN. Well, using personal experience, yeah. It was so commonplace, you know, you just do it.

MODERATOR. Just accept it as policy.

DROLSHAGEN. Right. That's just what we do.

MODERATOR. What about the prisoners? Who were these prisoners, normally? How did you acquire them, or where did you get them?

DROLSHAGEN. Well, they would be brought to us by the Vietnamese.

MODERATOR. I see. For what? Were these actual prisoners taken in an engagement of some sort, or what? Or do you know?

DROLSHAGEN. I'm not really positive as to whether they were taken in engagements or whether we're going to label them as suspects. Anybody, and this is the racist attitude of Americans in that country, anybody that has slanted eyes and is our age is a Cong if he doesn't have a South Vietnamese uniform on. And if you find one of these guys (we don't even use the term suspect) he was known, and if he died, he was definitely a Viet Cong. You know he's not going to retaliate or anything. He's used as a body count. We would take snipe fire in that area quite often. There was, I guess, a price on our head. We were told that the North Vietnamese, the Viet--I'm just going to use Vietnamese because they all are--they didn't like us, which I can imagine. They were trying to do away with us so any time we had to slice somebody up and do away with them, it was just another body count.

MODERATOR. Jon, what was the highest ranking officer that you've seen at these interrogations?

DROLSHAGEN. A major.

MODERATOR. Major.

DROLSHAGEN. Right.

MODERATOR. Did he take part in them?

DROLSHAGEN. Well, yeah. He was my instructor-type guy.

MODERATOR. He taught you what you knew.

DROLSHAGEN. Right. He was pretty good at it, I guess.

MODERATOR. Okay, thanks very much, Jon. We have another gentleman here, Don Dzagulones, who was also an interrogator. He was an interrogator for eleven months in Vietnam. I'd like him to describe a few of his experiences to you. If you would, tell us where you were stationed and basically what the setup was there.

DZAGULONES. Okay. I was attached to a Military Intelligence Detachment which was attached to the Americal Division and it was subdivided further into teams. During the three days of interrogation, MPs were present at all interrogation sessions, which is a rule in Vietnam. All interrogations are conducted in the presence of MPs who are to make sure that we adhere to the Geneva Convention, but, as it is, the MPs were usually the most sadistic people. As far as the field phone itself, I watched as the MPs applied the torture themselves. Like I didn't have to do it. They did it for me. And that night, the night of the first interrogation, a medic came to my area with a syringe with 7 cc's--I believe it was of sodium pentothal--and it was kind of like an anonymous gift.

I was told how to use it and it was left to my discretion whether or not I wanted to. I didn't because I was afraid of killing the guy. I didn't know too much about that particular drug. There were numerous incidents I feel I should explain what our function was as an interrogator. Most of the prisoners were women, children, and old men. It wasn't often that we got a military-aged male and our primary function was to find something that these people had done wrong. In that part of Vietnam (I guess they call it disputed) but it's controlled by the Viet Cong; there's no doubt about it. No one ventures out anywhere at night and the Viet Cong force people to join organizations. The Viet Cong tax them heavily and these people are forced to join various organizations, each of which has a separate interest in aiding the Viet Cong. So anyone that we got as a detainee prisoner who admitted to being in an organization was classified as a civil defendant, which meant that he or she went to the National Police and the National Police applied further interrogation techniques. The National Police were probably, well, they could put the Gestapo of the SS to shame.

In our particular district, the favorite tactic used by the National Police was to string a guy up from a beam or a rafter or anything that would extend his hands out, get a speedometer cable, I believe it was, and kind of whip the person until either he died or talked or was unconscious. A lot of the interrogations were witnessed by officers. As I said, all of the interrogations were witnessed by MPs, none of whom ever did anything to prevent brutality.

When I first got into Vietnam, I was an observer at most interrogations for a couple of weeks just to learn what was going on and how to conduct the interrogations. One of the first interrogations I witnessed took place in a hospital in which a North Vietnamese prisoner was brought in wounded. He was severely wounded. He was going into shock from loss of blood. They had gotten the prisoner at an ambush. We had an interrogation team there that was interrogating the guy, but he wasn't offering information fast enough. The Brigade S-2, which is the Brigade Intelligence officer, a major, was there and he was dissatisfied with the proceedings so he took over the interrogation himself.

He got smelling salts, hands full of smelling salts, and he held them to the guy's face to keep him conscious, to make him talk. That didn't work very well, so he poked around in the wounds and what not. And there were MPs present again. There was a captain who was a doctor present and two or three interrogators who could easily corroborate what I'm saying. Anything I say can be corroborated. I can get people to corroborate what I say. No one took any steps to prevent the abuse of the prisoner.

As I said, he was severely wounded and he was there for maybe half an hour. They were working on getting a helicopter to medivac him up to Division for more intensive treatment, medical treatment that is. Field phones and beatings were commonplace occurrences. As an interrogator, I was subject to the Geneva Convention and I was watched by the MPs during the interrogations. However, there were other people in our unit who were counterintelligence and, during their interrogations, there was no one ever present. They conducted their interrogations on their own. There was no one to supervise, and consequently, they took advantage of it. They always used the field phone. They never bothered to ask the person questions.

One of the incidents that I know of personally, which I witnessed, was a guy who was supposed to be a spy. They'd interrogated him for about four or five hours and they alternated between beating him and wiring him up with the field phone. Subsequent to the interrogation, the guy was unconscious. I don't know if he was alive or not. They loaded him in a jeep, left the base camp, dumped him off Highway 1 somewhere off the side of the road and came back. No one ever found out about the conduct of the counterintelligence people.

Another time they brought in a woman prisoner who also was alleged to be a spy. They continued the interrogation in a bunker and she wouldn't talk. I don't think she even gave them her name. So they stripped off her clothing, and they threatened to rape her, which had no effect on her at all. She was very stoic. She just stood there and looked at them defiantly. So they threatened to burn her pubic hairs, and I guess it wasn't done on purpose, I'm sure of that, but they lighted a cigarette lighter and she caught on fire. She went into shock. I guess she was unconscious, so they called the medics. The medics came and they gave the medics instructions to take her to the hospital under the pretext of being in a coma from malaria, which they did. And nothing was ever done about that.

I also had experience with Psy-Ops teams, which is basically the same thing Jon was. They were to win the hearts and minds of the people. There was one sergeant in particular who had a reputation for being a sadist. His mission was to go into areas and propagandize the people, try to win their hearts and minds over to the South Vietnamese government's side, which is an impossibility. There was no part of his mission which involved detaining people, but at least once or twice a month, he'd send in a bunch of prisoners. Usually they were old women, and, invariably, all had been beaten. One time in particular, we had five elderly ladies sent in, all of whom were beaten. One had a broken leg, I believe, and another had a skull fracture. We sent them over to the hospital for medical attention and we brought it to the attention of the people at Brigade (the majors, the captains, and the colonels).

We told them that it wasn't an isolated incident, that it happened before with the same guy, but no one took any action to prevent it or to reprimand him or to see that it never happened again. As I said, it was commonplace to beat people. There were many assorted techniques used. The field phone was the most popular, though. I'm sure there's a lot more I could relate but right now I'm too nervous to think of them.

MODERATOR. Okay, how about the dehydration?

DZAGULONES. One of the favorite methods used in coercing a prisoner to talk was dehydration. Our main objective in getting a prisoner to talk was to make sure we left no marks, nothing that was traceable. So the MPs were very cooperative with us. We'd get a prisoner and we'd keep him on a diet of crackers and peanut butter, which comes in C-rations. The prisoner was kept out in the sun for three or four days eating crackers and peanut butter and occasionally they'd make him do a little physical labor. If the guy wasn't suffering enough, they'd make him fill sand bags and carry them around. They did this until it was obvious that the prisoner wasn't going to talk, or the prisoner broke. No steps were ever taken to prevent these actions. There was no supervision.

If people did find out about it, they just let it go, because it was an accepted practice; it was common. They were after the information and since the Vietnamese, as has been mentioned, were treated and held as less than human, anything that we did was perfectly all right. I was trained at Fort Meade, Maryland, and officially we weren't trained to use any kind of torture tactics. A class was supposed to last for an hour. They'd lecture us for half an hour and then they'd turn the class over to Vietnam veterans, people who had been interrogators in Vietnam. It was up to them to tell us what they felt was essential to help us function as interrogators in Vietnam. Invariably the instruction would turn to various methods that they'd seen or heard of or used in torturing people in Vietnam and there are many, many, many methods.

MODERATOR. Also, you related to me earlier about women in the camp and about a mother and a daughter.

DZAGULONES. Like I said, most of the prisoners we had were women. It wasn't uncommon to have a mother and daughter coming in the same group of prisoners. I don't know why, I can't understand it, but we had a rarity in our unit. We had a black interrogator, which is really uncommon. There aren't too many black people in military intelligence. So we found out that by threatening a woman with having the black interrogator rape her, would usually make them talk. So they'd have the woman and her daughter brought in at the same time. We'd send the daughter into a bunker and tell the mother that we were going to send the black interrogator in to rape the daughter if she didn't cooperate and give us information. Usually they took it only as a threat. There were occasions on which the guy did go in to the bunker, but he was a pacifist, he never did anything. He didn't even want to interrogate. I guess he was considered by the brass to be a malcontent, but he served his purpose just by walking in the bunker. He'd scare the woman and usually they'd talk. They'd tell us what they knew.

MODERATOR. Okay, thank you very much. I think the point is obvious here. We talked yesterday about maltreatment of prisoners by combat troops in a combat zone in the heat of battle. And of course what we've presented here with this type of testimony is the fact that this is delivered by professionals not in the heat of battle. It's common knowledge at all echelons of command. At this point, I'd like to ask John Van Dyke if he would sort of summarize what we have been listening to here this morning.

VAN DYKE. My contribution to this panel is that I did work in the State Department in 1966 for the Office of the Legal Adviser on the question of prisoners of war. Since then, I've kept in contact with the people in Washington that are connected with us and I've tried to find out as much as I could about what the actual practices were--are in the North and the South in connection with prisoners. I've talked with as many of the men who've returned from North Vietnam as I can persuade to talk to me. I've just tried to piece together the picture of what is going on as best as I can.

Now we've all been deluged in the last eighteen months with this incredible campaign from Washington to get us aroused over the prisoner of war issue. I don't need to go into any great detail about what's been happening. Members of the Cabinet have met with wives and parents of the prisoners. Congressional resolutions have been passed with great urgency. One hundred thirty-five million prisoners of war stamps were issued by the Post Office. Local telephone companies have circulated little notes with the bills telling you to write to Hanoi. The Steve Canyon cartoon strips went through a period of presenting daily sagas of life of relatives of POWs.

This whole effort has been designed to arouse us, get us concerned, and generate hatred toward an enemy that none of us find it very easy to hate. Ho Chi Minh looked like Santa Claus. It's very difficult to generate hatred toward him. Most people you know just don't want to have anything to do with hating this enemy. The campaign has had some success and I think it's useful to try to understand what's been going on and to acknowledge how closely this is being regulated from Washington.

The Defense Department provides direct encouragement for wives and parents who have organized themselves into a group called the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia. The chief fund raiser for this group is a chap called Paul Wagner who was Barry Goldwater's Press Secretary during the '64 Presidential campaign and has since, as a PR man, served clients such as Portugal in its disputes with Angola. The group's chief lawyer is a chap called Charles Havens, who was employed by the Defense Department when I was at the State Department and worked on prisoners of war affairs.

Then just in typical military-industrial complex fashion, he switched over to the private sector. This group has continued to work closely with the Defense Department to get as much interest as it can. Now the amazing thing about this campaign to me is how little evidence the government and the League of Families has come up with about abuse by the North Vietnamese toward our prisoners.

Virtually each of the nine men who've been freed has made statements which contradict themselves. So we're left with a great state of confusion. Two of the three men who were last freed, which was in the summer of 1969, said after they'd had a month of debriefing in Washington, that they had been mistreated to some extent. These are the prime witnesses for the government.

These statements that they made in September 1969 directly contradicted statements they'd made when they were freed. And at that point, none of the other seven prisoners who had been released would corroborate the statements that the two of the nine made. I called one of the other seven, Air Force Captain Joe Carpenter, after the two, Robert Frischman and Douglas Hagdahl made their statements, and asked him whether he had experienced any of the kind of mistreatment abuses that Frischman and Hagdahl announced or whether he'd heard about any. He said, "No," but that he could not make any public statement because he'd been contacted by the Pentagon. He'd been contacted right after Frischman and Hagdahl held their press conference. They had told him not to say anything, that there was an elaborate plan being organized and that his role at this point was to stay quiet, which he did, because he was still in the Air Force and still wanted to make a career of it.

Last September, September 1970, which was some two years after Carpenter was released, he finally did make a statement on ABC News and gave a generally mild account of his captivity. He said that soon after he was shot down he was, of course, terrified when he arrived, but he soon got over his fears when he realized that his life was being protected by the militia that quickly arrived. The most serious problem that arose was that some villagers pulled at his mustache. He was, once he got used to the prisoner's camp, kept alone in a bunker and he found the isolation somewhat difficult to get used to.

But it wasn't total solitary confinement because he had a window out on the street, kids would come by and they would communicate as best they could without knowing the language. He'd make faces at them and they would make faces back. They got along and eventually the older people came over and he sort of dug it. Friendship developed and he had no charge of brutal treatment at all toward his captors.

Well, since that statement of September 1970, two of the other released pilots have made public statements and indicated that they had some rough times, especially when they were being transported around North Vietnam during periods of heavy bombing. They had to suffer the same inconveniences as the North Vietnamese. As we know, our government and the pilots who fly for our Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, have been making it very unpleasant to live in North Vietnam. There's been no explanation of why these two pilots that have recently made statements waited two, and in one case, three years, before making any statements. The remaining charges against North Vietnam involved procedural irregularities.

In those areas, North Vietnam has responded and has made dramatic improvement. There's been an official list that has been released and mail is now coming regularly. Mrs. Warner indicated that since March, she's gotten a letter about once a month. That's the general average that most families have been getting. Now what's the comparable situation in South Vietnam in terms of the legal structure? We've heard a great deal about what happens before prisoners get to formal prisoner of war camps. It's fairly clear that life is made very unpleasant for any prisoner before that happens.

Now, there are six formal prisoner of war camps in South Vietnam which hold some 35,000 men and the International Committee of the Red Cross does make inspections of these camps. The Department of Defense, for some reason it's not been announced, classifies as confidential information about the number of prisoners who have died in these formal prisoner of war camps. Richard Dudman, who is the Washington Bureau Chief for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and a man who was incidentally himself a prisoner in Cambodia for a month last year, did some investigating and discovered that the figure of prisoners who have died in the formal prisoner of war camps in South Vietnam is at least 899 out of the 35,000 and that includes at least more than 300 North Vietnamese and another 500 Viet Cong soldiers.

The comparable figure of Americans who have died in captivity in North Vietnam is five. I'd like to mention some other aspects of the legal situation. There's been an effort in one or two cases to bring to trial men accused of killing prisoners of war in the South and the record of convictions is so amazing that it just elevates what we've heard here as unofficial and what really happens to an official policy. The trial of Lt. James Duffy in March 1970 indicates the somewhat hypocritical attitude that our government takes.

Duffy was in command of a company in Binh Phouc district, September 1969, attempting to set up an ambush. The company discovered a man hiding inside the bunker with documents indicating he was a deserter from the South Vietnamese army and they suspected he was a Tiger Scout for the Viet Cong and imprisoned him.

Subsequently, according to allegations which the Court-Martial panel accepted, Lt. Duffy told Sgt. John Lanasa, "It's time to get up and get out and shoot him." Lanasa replied, "I always wanted to shoot a gook between the eyes." Lanasa then put an M-16 to the prisoner's head and did in fact shoot him between the eyes. This is uncontradicted testimony. Lt. Duffy reported to his superiors that the man was shot while trying to escape. Duffy's lawyer, in the defense in the court-martial, did not deny that any of these events took place, but instead argued that Duffy was acting in accordance with an Army policy not to take prisoners in combat operations.

Two fellow 1st Lieutenants in Duffy's company testified in his behalf at the trial that there was a conscious policy to avoid taking prisoners. And we've heard plenty of evidence here that this has been a policy throughout South Vietnam. The eight-man military court-martial accepted this defense. They first concluded that Duffy was guilty of premeditated murder, but upon learning that such a finding required a sentence of life imprisonment, they changed their verdict to involuntary manslaughter and gave him a six month sentence.

Duffy continued to be paid by the army while in prison with a forfeiture of $25.00 per month. He was allowed to remain in the Army. The court-martial panel, in fact, wanted to avoid imposing any penalty on Lt. Duffy and they only gave him a six month sentence after they were told that they could not completely suspend the sentence. Sgt. Lanasa, who was put on trial in July of last year, was acquitted by the court-martial entirely. There's another trial that I'd like to mention and it happened more recently. Last month a court-martial panel was being organized to try Sgt. Charles Hutto for participation in the My Lai massacre.

In the process of impaneling the group of officers to try Sgt. Hutto, an army colonel was questioned to determine whether he could be an impartial member of the panel. He was asked whether it would be appropriate to execute a prisoner of war in Vietnam, his answer was, "This is not a conventional war. We have to forget propriety." It's an army colonel that makes this statement. He was then accepted as foreman of the court-martial panel being deemed to be an impartial observer of the situation.

I think that that elevates a policy of killing prisoners of war to an official level. Since then, Sgt. Hutto, of course, was acquitted by this court-martial panel and since then all but five of the twenty-five people originally charged with the My Lai massacre have also had the charges dropped against them. So it would appear that we will not even get a scapegoat for the My Lai massacre. I'd like to touch on one other aspect of North Vietnam's prison treatment: the question of inspection of camps which generally comes up. The North Vietnamese have always refused to have an international body inspect the camps and I think that position ought to be explained a bit. The North Vietnamese genuinely doubt whether any international body can be neutral in this war.

The United States has for some time tried to persuade North Vietnam to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit the captured American pilots. The United States views the International Committee as an impartial body. It's composed entirely of Swiss nationals and they cannot understand why North Vietnam does not similarly view the committee. Well, the history of it is that Asian nations were first introduced to the Red Cross by Western countries which brought it along with their colonizing missions.

The Red Cross is still viewed as an arm of imperialism. Although the International Committee of the Red Cross has done as best it can to be neutral in the war, the Swiss naturally find it easier to communicate with other westerners and they've maintained a close relationship with the United States. North Vietnam has in turn grown to mistrust the Red Cross. Second, and perhaps a more important reason why the North Vietnamese do not want any foreign organizations inspecting their prison camps, is that they fear a renewed and even more intensive bombing campaign by the United States if the United States learns the exact locations of all the prison camps.

The North Vietnamese reason, I think correctly, the Air Force and Navy would be free to begin a saturation bombing campaign in all other parts of the country and to send over more commando raids on the camps themselves. The bombing attacks on various parts of North Vietnam in January, February, May, September, and November 1970 and again during the past month, provide new reasons for North Vietnam's fears. In fact, I think the recent commando raid would end forever the possibility of any international inspection of North Vietnam's prison camps. The North Vietnamese should not, however, be viewed as intransigent on this issue of prisoners of war. Mrs. Warner mentioned the Viet Cong offer about prisoners of war. In September of 1970, Madame Binh said that if the United States would set a definite timetable for troop withdrawal, the Communist forces would refrain from attacking withdrawing U.S. troops and in addition they would begin immediate discussion on the exchange of prisoners. Never before in modern warfare has there been a general prisoner exchange prior to the end of hostilities. It's a really remarkable offer. The Nixon Administration ignored the offer.

Instead of responding directly to it, President Nixon made an address the following month, October 1970, in which he said he favored the immediate release of all prisoners but he would not link this gesture to withdrawal of American military forces from Vietnam. Another obstacle in the way of complete settlement of the prisoner of war situation is the U.S. insistence that those men now held in Saigon's POW camps be given a choice of whether or not they will be returned to the North.

And there's evidence that we may be undertaking some kind of reeducation program in the POW camps in the south similar to what we did in Korea to encourage the men in those camps not to return to North Vietnam. This issue of voluntary repatriation delayed the Korean truce by some 18 months during which 140,000 casualties occurred and it seems possible that the Nixon Administration is going to use this issue again in an attempt to gain time for what they hope might be a military victory.

In contrast, we see that the issue might backfire on them. Mrs. Warner is not alone; there are at least half a dozen other relatives that have gone on record as favoring Madame Binh's proposal. Fred Thompson who was released in the summer of 1968 has gone on record in favor of Madame Binh's proposal and the day may come in which the majority of these relatives turn around and force the administration to accept Madame Binh's proposal as the appropriate way of getting out of Vietnam and getting the prisoners out of Vietnam.

It would seem that this is a possible course that we can take. In the meantime, however, government officials are talking about more raids into North Vietnam to rescue prisoners. Before the November raid, the administration's use of the prisoner of war issue seemed a cynical attempt to manipulate popular support in order to gain emotional hatred toward the North Vietnamese. The raid raises deeper questions. Unlike President Johnson, Mr. Nixon has given no assurance against American military expeditions to the North. As we know, an American invasion of Laos seems imminent. The Administration is exploiting the prisoner of war issue to generate emotional support for military actions as a pretext for yet another expansion of the war. Thank you.

MODERATOR. Relating directly to the concern of the American military and the American government to the release of prisoners, at the time George Smith was captured, three other American Special Forces people were captured in Vietnam in November 1963. Steve has a leaflet, part of an after action report, relating to those three people, Sergeants, Versage, Rowe, and Pittser. Rowe, I think, was a lieutenant.

NOETZEL. This is a copy I showed you before of an after action report. It's an official report which was forwarded to the Pentagon which included every major piece of civic action that was accomplished by this particular Psy war team. I had an extra copy. I brought it home with me. Before I explain the leaflet, I want to give an example of the kinds of leaflets we did use in a leafleting campaign all through the IV Corps or the Mekong Delta, then I'll show you the leaflet that relates to a ransom for the three sergeants. One is in Vietnamese and there's a translation with it. I'll read it quickly to you.

To the people in the VC-controlled area. On 3 February 1964 government military units on the way to liberate the village of Can Chu engaged in a battle with the VC unit. The battle was very furiously fought and both sides suffered casualties. As a result four of our members and Mr. Nyguyen Van Do, an innocent civilian, were killed. We confirmed the exact figure in order that we might be able to keep a record of soldiers killed and their families. The bodies of these brave men killed by VC were removed from the battlefield by the comrades and taken by helicopter back to Camp Long Kanh where their leaders and comrades helped their families and shared their grief. After their bodies were washed and prepared for burial, in accordance with their particular religious customs at the camp dispensary, all expenditures of burial, including coffin and incense stick, were beyond the families' concern.

We also provided transportation by helicopter to those families who wished the bodies of beloved soldiers to rest in their home towns and substantial payment was made to the survivors of each soldier killed by VC. Dear Countryman, it is evident that the government of the Republic of Vietnam always cares for each and every brave soldier sacrificed for his nation. How about you? Have you ever thought of your life? You have already witnessed that when your comrades die, their bodies will be hidden beneath the mud or thrown into the river. Their families will never get neither gratuity nor the least of condolence. On the contrary, they will starve and peril will be brought down on them.

From the miserable life of present time to the shameful deaths sooner or later and a stormy outlook for such beloved people, have you ever thought about it? Be sincere and answer the question by yourself and bravely change sides which are integral to your life. We are always delighted to welcome your return to the nation and to your families.


This leaflet was used. The leaflet that I will read now was not used. Never dropped. Communique of IV Corps Tactical Zone Leaflet. There's the leaflet in Vietnamese. It says:

1. Commanding General of IV Corps Tactical Zone will have a reward of 300,000 Vietnamese piasters to the one soldier or civilian who releases or helps release the three Americans Versage, Rowe and Pittser.

2. Pro-communist members are able to benefit from this reward too and when they return they will also benefit from the government's clemency in the surrender inducement campaign, now known as Chieu Hoi.

3. Inform or conduct the three Americans to the nearest strategic hamlet or military post. 4. Procedure of collecting reward will be simplified and prompt. Reward will be drawn within 48 hours after the release of the three Americans.

Signed Phong Dinh, 27 November 1963 by General Nyuen Hu Ko, Commanding General IV Corps, the ARVN Army.


Special Forces commanders in Trang Nha, Vietnam, saw this leaflet, read it and decided that they were not going to ransom, not going to pay any money to communists whether civilian or VC, to release American prisoners. This amounted to a total of $3,000 or $1,000 apiece because they didn't want to contribute that to the war effort of the Viet Cong. That's how interested they were in the release of these three Americans.

MODERATOR. The testimony we've heard so far, of course, continues to relate between Americans and Vietnamese. Much of it, I hope at least, is not very pleasant to listen to. Much of it must seem rather incredible. Is this what we can do to people? Other people? Vietnamese? I have two people who I'm going to bring on very briefly to show you we are capable of it. We do it to ourselves. Denny Leonard and Thomas Carroll come forward, please. We've talked of prisoners of war and we think of it usually in the classical sense of being captured by an unfriendly power or hostile power. Denny Leonard was a member of the United States Army, an American Indian. He was in basic training and as part of the command information classes there, to show the elitism and the esprit de corps and the buildup of esprit de corps, they were shown the proud tradition of the 1st Cavalry, which included, of course, the massacre of his people and this was considered the way to build esprit with the troops. Denny left. Subsequently, he did return and was confined to the stockade at Presidio, California, United States Army stockade. Denny, would you just very briefly talk about, first of all, your briefing on entry and maybe one or two other little incidents?

LEONARD. When I entered the stockade in San Francisco, they made you go through a process, a special processing detachment--they called it a black cell. It was downstairs and they used all black soldiers there. These soldiers were returning AWOLs and they promised them that they would be set free or not be court-martialed if they would teach the new people that were coming down there that going AWOL or defying the army was a very bad thing. And so, all the black soldiers that were in this black hole would counsel new people that were coming in. That was GIs that were being returned by the armed forces patrol from AWOL, or those people that were transferred to the Presidio from other stockades. When I was down there, there was two prisoners that were beaten. They were both white. I wasn't bothered because I was an Indian and the black GIs dug Indian people, but the whites were treated pretty badly. That's how the army was utilizing racism when I first went into the stockade.

MODERATOR. The man sitting next to Denny is Thomas Carroll, formerly of the United States Marine Corps, who went AWOL and was subsequently court-martialed for that, is that correct? We don't have time to go into the whole story, Tom, but perhaps the press can ask you questions about it later, if they want. I have on your sheet here that you were held in stockade for nine months, four months in solitary. Would you just relate some of the conditions under which you were confined?

CARROLL. Well, I was in solitary confinement for 120 days for not going along with the brig program. I was confined at 3rd MAF, outside Da Nang, first if you didn't go along in your cell, then you were put on diminished rations which was bread and water three times a day and dehydrated vegetables. But, you never got the vegetables and they'd spit in the water and step on the bread. Charges were written up against you for talking in your cell. You weren't allowed to do anything.

MODERATOR. How much did you weigh when you went in there?

CARROLL. About 170 pounds.

MODERATOR. How much did you weigh when you got out of there?

CARROLL. Ninety-eight pounds. I had malaria when I got out that was why they let me out. But they'd spit in the water and step on the bread and most of the time in my cell there were handcuffs and leg irons. They'd come down and give you injections of thorazine to immobilize you.

MODERATOR. Can you explain what thorazine is used for? Or do you know?

CARROLL. Well, the only thing that I knew it was used for was an antidote to bring someone down that was on LSD or to quiet someone down. They'd do this about three times a day and then they'd come in and throw water in your cell and kick the door and once they sprayed five gallons of DDT to kill a spider while I was still in there.

MODERATOR. Would you briefly go through the routine that you went through to go to the latrine?

CARROLL. Well, when you were in solitary you didn't go to it. There was a bucket in there with you.

MODERATOR. This was in medium compound?

CARROLL. Right. But when I was in maximum compound, first you'd have to request permission to speak to Sally Quarter NCO who's the guard walking the aisle. To do this you'd say, "Sir, prisoner so-and-so requests permission to speak to the Sally Quarter NCO," and he'd make you say it four or five times and then he'd give you permission to speak. And you'd say, "Sir, prisoner so-and-so requests permission to make a head call." You'd go through the whole thing again and he'd keep you standing there. He'd give you permission and then you'd have to ask permission to leave where you're standing and step over into the aisle and go through the same routine to first to speak, and then to get permission to do this, and then once you got that far, he'd tell you whether or not he was going to let you go all the way. Then you'd request permission again to do it, and he'd march you down there and you had a limited amount of time. You had to go through the same procedure to get back. And all during this time, after you requested permission to speak, then you had to ask permission to ask whatever question it was that you were going to ask him.

MODERATOR. How did they usually address you when they responded to your questions?

CARROLL. "Turd" or "Scum" or a few other choice names. And while you were standing there, they'd go over all the things that was wrong with you. If your boots weren't shined or you didn't have shoe polish or your uniform was dirty (you had no place to wash it) and then if you'd talk back, they'd mark it down in the book.

MODERATOR. Would you consider this type of training demeaning? Did it make you a better Marine?

CARROLL. No, that's what the worst part of it was. That was the purpose for it; it was for discipline so they got you completely disciplined to kill without question. You weren't allowed to question orders and this was the reason and they told us they did this. We had to go through all this stuff to learn not to question an order and to do exactly what you're told, when you're told, and how to do it, how you were told to do it.

MODERATOR. Thank you, Tom. I have one more question. Let the press have their licks at it, I'd like to ask Dr. Zinn about the treatment of the prisoners in North Vietnam again, and specifically, can you relate what George was saying about food and starvation and so on to anything in the North?

ZINN. I don't want to take too long with this but the point about the food given to the prisoners of the North Vietnamese, but when Father Berrigan and I were in Hanoi to pick up the first three of the nine pilots who were released by the North, we met them for the first time in the prison compound inside the building in the outskirts of Hanoi. We were introduced to them and we wondered what condition they were in. We wanted to see if they had been well fed or ill fed and they looked as if they'd been well fed, that is they looked pretty good. To put it another way, they looked better than we did, which may not have been saying very much. But when we talked to them later, they said they'd been given adequate food; in fact, they'd been given double the ration that the Vietnamese themselves were getting because the Vietnamese assumed that the Americans were big, which was true. They needed more food. They gave them more food. They also told us that they had plenty of French bread all the time--all the French bread apparently that they wanted, more than they could eat. We wondered if they, these three particularly, because they'd been selected for departure from North Vietnam, had been given special treatment in the way of food and we asked them about that.

They said they were quite sure that all the prisoners in the camp were getting the same food because, although they didn't see the other prisoners very often, when they would go out to pick up their particular tray of food, they saw all the other trays of food, and all the other trays of food looked the same. So it seems that the prisoners were being adequately fed. Just let me make one point to reinforce what has been said several times about the fact that the American government, despite all its heart-rending pleas about doing something for the POWs, and deluging the North with letters and so on, has never cared for the fate of the American POWs. It has taken us a while to realize.

We also knew that the American government didn't care what happened to the Vietnamese but it was assumed that they cared something about what happened to Americans. It turns out that that's not so either, and I suppose it should occur to anybody who thinks about it that if the American government were concerned about the treatment of POWs in the North, the first thing they would do is not to add to the number of POWs in the North by more bombing raids. And the second thing they would do is not intensify the bombing raids in order possibly to provoke the North Vietnamese into worse treatment of the prisoners that they hold.

Of course, this hasn't happened. Father Berrigan and I had one graphic and close at home illustration of this. When we were talking to the Prison Camp Commandant in Hanoi about the release of the three pilots, he said to us, almost offhandedly at one point in the conversation, he said, "Of course, you realize, that if your government bombs Hanoi while you are here and while we are talking about the release of these three pilots, we may not release them." And we thought about this. It seemed on the one hand cruel and upon second thought, understandable. That was a Wednesday, I remember, and we were to leave Hanoi on Friday with the three men.

The next day was Thursday and we were having a conversation with several North Vietnamese and the air raid alert sounded. There had been several days of no bombing. Later the American government claimed that they hadn't bombed in deference to the POWs and the fact that we were bringing them home. By a remarkable coincidence those were days of bad weather. It wasn't easy to bomb on those days. Thursday was the first clear day, on Thursday the bombers came, and they bombed Hanoi. And, as Dan Berrigan and I were sitting there in the shelter listening to the bombs fall on Hanoi, we wondered about what was going on in the minds of the people in Washington and the generals in the Air Force and whether they really gave a _____ about the American prisoners or about anybody else.

Just one more point, before I conclude, and that is that Mrs. Warner said at the very outset of her remarks that she wanted to make it clear she wasn't a revolutionary, she was an American. Of course, I suppose you can be an American revolutionary. But, I think, she was concerned to make it clear that there is something about America which she cherished and which she cared about and which was inside her. I was thinking as people were talking here, as ex-GIs were talking about their experiences and listening to Randy Floyd talk about a bombing (I was a bombardier once)--I remember how we just dropped bombs and everybody claimed we were doing pinpoint bombing. We never knew where the bombs were falling.

But I thought those were crude times. We're in sophisticated times and technology has improved. Johnson and Nixon said we were doing pinpoint bombing; maybe it was true, of course. Technology is secondary to human will and the fact is, we don't have the will not to bomb civilians. That's the crucial thing. But listening to all this testimony and thinking about what Mrs. Warner said about America, it occurred to me that what is happening in this country now is something very special and that is that we were all brought up to really believe that there is something about America that is great. We were different from other countries. We were different from tyrannies; we were different from totalitarian states.

These other countries were cruel; they were brutal; they invaded countries. They sent armies across borders; they bombed; they bombed civilians; they destroyed cities; they lied also to their people--these other countries did; they tortured. America was different and what's happening now in the United States is that all the things that we believed about America and which were part of the American tradition-- our ideals, turn out, well, not to be true, if they were ever true, and certainly not to be true now.

I guess it's very important for us to hold on to this original notion about what America stands for because what's happening now as more and more Americans become aware of the gap between what America is supposed to stand for and what we are really doing, not only to other people but to ourselves, we are going to see a Mrs. Warner multiply a thousand times. We're going to see these GIs, veterans, multiply a thousand times. We're going to see the people in this room multiply by thousands of times and when that happens, things are going to change in this country. At that point, maybe we'll begin to match the traditions that we always claimed we stood for.

MODERATOR. We'll take questions from the press now.

QUESTION. I'd like to ask the former interrogators to comment further on the American forces' attitude toward and treatment specifically of women, female prisoners of war.

PANELIST. The interrogating I did was basically with the men. That's all we did. With the pacification, we used to round up a lot of women; we would separate families, when we brought them in from the field. We put the children in an area away from their parents and take the women away from their husbands and just totally separate the whole family. We wouldn't let them know what was coming off. I never worked with any torture against women, but we did mess up their minds by taking them away from their children and the rest of the family.

PANELIST. None of my experiences in interrogating women had any sensationalism, if that's what you're seeking.

QUESTION. I wasn't really asking for sensationalism. I was, more than specific incidents of treatment, asking you to talk about the general attitude toward women.

PANELIST. Oh. Most of our prisoners were women and they were treated basically like a Viet Cong soldier was. They weren't taken advantage of in any way. Only if they had a child or something, we would separate them from their child-- try to use that to make them talk. Our basic job was to get information. That was our basic mission and if the situation was that we could exploit a woman, a woman with a child, we would do it. Other than that, women were treated no differently than the men prisoners. They were treated the same way, they were kept in the same areas. They weren't segregated or anything. They were all kept together with the men.

PANELIST. I'd like to add to that. I tried to make obvious the fact that of all the people that I had encountered in military intelligence, this guy was the only black man that I had encountered. I can't attribute it to official Army policy, but to me it seems that the ratio of blacks in military intelligence would have been more than one out of maybe five hundred people that I had seen. I tried to bring that point out. That this was the only black man that I had encountered in military intelligence in two years in the Army.

QUESTION. In a discussion with black GIs yesterday, I was informed that, especially in the 3rd Marine Division, black GIs were always given the dirty work in torturing villagers, slapping around villagers. They always made the black GIs look like devils to the villagers to strike terror into their hearts. Perhaps this is related to the theory that the villagers had about blacks interrogating.

PANELIST. Well, I'd like to make a comment on that statement. In my experiences in Vietnam, the blacks were more apt to identify with the Vietnamese than the white GI was because, they, the blacks, are suffering from racism as the war in Vietnam is a racist war against the Vietnam people. Therefore, they can identify with them in my estimation. I believe that black GIs were less apt to be sadistic and violent with Vietnamese people. The black interrogator that we had refused to interrogate people. Any classification that he put on the prisoner would intensify. If he found the prisoner to be guilty of any of the numerous crimes that they can be guilty of, you know, belonging to Viet Cong organization, they would go to the National Police and he wanted no part of it. He tried to remove himself from it completely.

QUESTION. Was there a difference in attitude between the heads and the alcoholics?

PANELIST. Well, generally, the alcoholics were the career types and their attitude was body counts. Killing people was what they were after, but they didn't have to do it so they were really anxious to send people out into the field to do it. I imagine if they had gone out into the field, they may have tried grass, but seeing as they were in rear areas they had alcohol. It was readily available. But had they gone out and had they experienced some of the combat conditions, which they expected other people under their command to go through, I imagine maybe they would have tried other things.

QUESTION. I was wondering if drug abuse...

PANELIST. I never saw anyone interrogate anyone under the influence of any drugs, other than maybe alcohol. But, I think that had anyone been stoned during an interrogation, they would be less apt to use torture than somebody who was straight or especially drunk.

QUESTION. Earlier, when you testified, you referred to the Viet Cong forcing people to join them. How did you get this information? Was that information extracted from them under duress or force?

PANELIST. Normally they'd volunteer the information. Saying that the Viet Cong had forced them was probably a bad statement to make because to them, especially in the northern part of Vietnam, the government of Saigon is a remote intangible entity. The only government that they've known and they identify with is the Viet Cong. Because the Viet Cong don't own the land that they're farming. The Viet Cong don't tax the land that they're farming. The people in Saigon own the land and it's the constant struggle between the poor and the rich. They give their allegiance to the Viet Cong because Viet Cong are the people they encounter in their daily lives; the people that live in the same way that they do. The people who are fighting for them, as opposed to the government of Vietnam, the official government of Vietnam, the American- sanctioned government of Vietnam, which has nothing to do with the people except levy taxes and kill them.
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Re: Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veter

Postby admin » Mon Jun 06, 2016 4:04 am

Part 1 of 2

10. MISCELLANEOUS PANEL

MODERATOR. This panel is comprised of various units from Vietnam which is why it's called a Miscellaneous Panel. Each vet will introduce himself, tell what unit he was in, what years he served in Vietnam, in some cases months, and briefly summarize what he will give testimony on. After the testimony we will talk very briefly about why these things happened and about the changes that occurred in them between the time they went and came back. So, we'll start at this end and work on down.

MCCUSKER. My name is Michael McCusker and I'm from Portland, Oregon. I was in the 1st Marine Division, in I Corps, in 1966 and 1967. I was discharged on 19 October 1967 as a Sergeant E-5. This ragged piece of paper here is a Xeroxed copy of my discharge papers. I was in the 1st Marine Division with the Informational Services Office which meant that I was an infantry reporter-photographer. I spent all of my time out in the field with the infantry on infantry operations. I went out with damned near every Marine outfit in all of I Corps from 1st Marine Division and 3rd Marine Division units. And so, these things in the field, the torturing of prisoners, the use of scout dogs in this torture, the Bell Telephone hour as has been described with the field phones, by seeing all of these units, I discovered that no one unit was any worse than another. That this was standard procedure. That it was almost like watching the same film strip continually, time after time after time. Within every unit there was the same prejudice; there was the same bigotry toward Vietnamese. All Vietnamese. There will be a panel tomorrow on the press censorship that a military reporter goes through. At this time I'm not going to speak much of that because we're going into detail in tomorrow's panel. Today I just want to mention a few atrocities of a larger scale that I saw. All three of them were ironically with the same battalion, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division. All three atrocities happened in the month of September and October 1966.

Now the first one took place around September 6th or 7th 1966 about ten miles northwest of the Province capital of Tam Ky near the mountains. It was in a pineapple forest and a Marine had just been killed. He had been hit by a sniper and the entire battalion, in revenge, destroyed two entire villages, wiping out everything living, the people (and that was men, women, their children), all their livestock, burning the huts, destroying the paddies, their gardens, their hedgerows, just wiped them out--erased them. They did not exist the moment after the Marines were finished and they might never have existed. The next instance happened also in the same month of September when a squad of nine men, that was a Chu Lai rifle squad, went into this village. They were supposed to go after what they called a Viet Cong whore. They went into the village and instead of capturing her, they raped her--every man raped her. As a matter of fact, one man said to me later that it was the first time he had ever made love to a woman with his boots on. The man who led the platoon, or the squad, was actually a private. The squad leader was a sergeant but he was a useless person and he let the private take over his squad. Later he said he took no part in the raid. It was against his morals. So instead of telling his squad not to do it, because they wouldn't listen to him anyway, the sergeant went into another side of the village and just sat and stared bleakly at the ground, feeling sorry for himself. But at any rate, they raped the girl, and then, the last man to make love to her, shot her in the head. They then rounded up ten villagers, put 'em in a hut (I don't know how they killed them--grenaded them or shot 'em down), and burned the hut. They came back to the company area where it was bivouacked for the night while on a regular routine search and destroy mission. I personally came into contact with this when the squad came back, told their CO, who was a lieutenant, and they hastily set back off again towards that village with the lieutenant. I sort of tagged along in the rear and when I got up there they were distributing these bodies that were charred and burned and I asked what these bodies were. They said, "Oh, we were hit by an ambush. These were the people who ambushed, but we got 'em." Okay, I didn't want to ask them how they killed them because all the bodies were burned as if they'd been roasted on a spit. There was a tiny little form, that of a child, lying out in the field with straw over its face. It had been clubbed to death.

As later was brought out, the Marine that clubbed the child to death didn't really want to look at the child's face so he put straw over it before he clubbed it. The woman survived, somehow, and crawled to a neighbor; the neighbor ran off to the ARVN commanders. The commanders were rather angry, put pressure on the Marine Corps and these men were tried. However, they got very light sentences--a little slap on the wrist. I don't know exactly how much time they got nor do I know how much time they actually served, but they're on the streets again because I ran into one about two years ago in New York. The third atrocity was a village called Pho Duc which was farther northwest of Tam Ky, across the first range of mountains into several valleys. This area was not touched for two years until the Army started taking up operations in that area. Jonathan Shell wrote a very very graphic two-part story for the New Yorker concerning that area, mentioning that nobody had been in there for two years after the Marines had passed through. Nobody had to. There wasn't really much left after we went through. In this one particular village of Pho Duc another man was killed by a sniper. He was a lifer by the name of _____ and I really don't know whether a sniper blew him away or not because _____ was not one of the most popular men in the company. This involved Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, and I believe it was the 1st Platoon with the Company Commander along. Well, the CO pulled us back. We were sweeping across the party when _____ got hit. He pulled us back and called in for nape, which is napalm, or which the military now likes to refer to as incendiary gel as if it were as harmless as Jello, an after-dinner dessert. But it was napalm. We walked into the ville after the fires burned down and there was an old man lying on a cot, burned to death with his hands stiff in rigor mortis, reaching for the sky as if in prayer or supplication forgiving us for what we had done. We walked past him and across the hedge row there was an old woman lying dead curled into the fetal position as if she had been just born. An old man lay beside her. Over the next hedge row there were thirty dead children. They had been lying out there in this courtyard for us to see them before we got into that village. They were laid out there by survivors who split into the jungle. Now these kids, thirty of them, none were over fifteen; some of them were babies. Some looked like they had just been sunburned, that was all. Their skins were a very ruddy, ruddy pink or scarlet color. Others were just charred with their guts hanging out.

Ironically it was my mother's birthday, 27 October, and I somehow seemed to feel that there were her children. An officer, a captain, walked up to me and said, "Well, Sgt. McCusker,"--remember I was the reporter--"do you see what the Viet Cong did to their own people?" And I said, "Captain, I saw our planes drop the napalm." He says, "Well, Sgt. McCusker, you had better write that the Viet Cong did it." I told the captain politely what I thought he should do to himself and I walked off. Now these things happened. Now these were some of the more gruesome things that happened, or more gruesome because of the numbers. But daily things like this happened, a kid shot down in the paddy because, well, it looked like an adult running away. I couldn't see, so we walk up to him, and it's a kid. The philosophy was that anybody running must be a Viet Cong; he must have something to hide or else he would stick around for the Americans, not taking into consideration that he was running from the Americans because they were continually shooting at him. So they shot down anybody who was running. I was in a helicopter once and I saw this farmer in a cart. Suddenly the farmer in the cart just blew into all sorts of pieces and the helicopter I was in was shaking like the devil. It wasn't hard to put it together because I watched the gunner finish off the rounds. He had extra ammo. The tortures started in the villages. Prisoners were picked up by the average infantrymen who really didn't have much idea of exactly what intelligence was needed. So, therefore, you're all prisoners. We'll let interrogators take care of it. The method of taking prisoners was that you take the villagers that were left in the village, not those that had run away. You tied them to a tree and get the dog handler to let the dog jump and bite at the person tied to the tree. Or again, with the field telephone, you wired it up to his ears, his nose, his genitals. This was done to women; I've seen it done to women. In Ben Song, which was the province capital, in a prison, this guy was telling me all about why war was hell. He took me down to this dungeon where South Vietnamese troops were pulling fingernails out of an old woman. There was an American captain standing by, rocking on his heels, rather enjoying the show. I could testify to the systematic destruction of village hospitals, by mortars, by air, by artillery, believing that if those hospitals were destroyed the Viet Cong could not use them for their wounded. I was also on an operation in the Rung Sat area just north of Saigon which is just mud flats, like the Mississippi delta at high water.

It was in April 1966 with the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines again. They were a battalion landing team at that time. We came across a big NLF hospital complex and destroyed it out of hand. Now interestingly enough, in Portland, Oregon, where I was a medic in the student strike, we had an unauthorized hospital tent in what was called the park blocks out in front of the college. The city decided to destroy it because it was an unauthorized hospital. We did have patients in it, but these were unauthorized people too. They were long hairs. So the cops came in, the tactical squad with their sticks. They bloodied up about thirty of us pretty badly and did a lot more damage to perhaps fifty more. So not only in Vietnam do Americans destroy hospitals. It was graphically pointed out to the people in Portland that they were destroyed too by police power, except of course, the hospital was not officially authorized. nor are Vietnamese hospitals in the villages. Dr. Margarette, who was in Quang Ngai, can testify to the condition of the provincial hospital in Quang Ngai, the Vietnamese hospital for the province. That hospital is so overcrowded that they can't get anything done. People are dying in those wards; they just shove them off the beds and put somebody else on them. One of the reasons that that hospital is so crowded is because all the little hospitals within the villages were all destroyed. Quang Ngai, in that province of Quang Ngai, an entire war of attrition is being put across there. My Lai is in Quang Ngai; My Lai suffered that war of attrition. When Calley and his people went through there, it was not the first time anyone went through My Lai and put the torch to it, nor was it the last time. You can prove it by a Reuters dispatch of October 1969. They were doing it again, and in the villages of the whole Son My Province. The entire Quang Ngai area was slated for destruction. The Vietnamese were slated for relocation and forced urbanization, which is what is happening in this country as a matter of fact. So the methods don't differ. I guess, really, that's the end of my testimony, except right now, while I'm speaking, it's happening in all of Southeast Asia, some guys are going through what I did, what all of us did; they are going through it right now. The Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians are dying right now, at this exact moment, and they will continue to die tomorrow, maybe even next year. So remember that and maybe you're going to find one of these days an F-100 flying in napalm strike on a ghetto; you're going to find an F-100 flying a napalm strike on where the long hairs live. It's not too far off. They've used tear gas from helicopters already; they've used shotguns; they've blown away Black Panthers--it's not too far off.

COHEN. My name is David Cohen. I was with Coastal Division 11, USN over in Vietnam, stationed down in IV Corps in the Gulf of Siam, from November '66 to November '67. I left high school to enlist in the Navy. When I left the Navy, I was thoroughly disgusted with everything I'd seen and everything I was still seeing. I tripped around for a long time trying to figure out where I was at. And now what I'm doing is full time GI organizing, because I know, I'm convinced that one of the best ways to end this war is to get all the active duty GIs to say we are not going to fight your war any more. I can talk about the dehumanization of the Vietnamese. I can talk about the brutal treatment of the Vietnamese. But one thing that I saw, and that I participated in as government high-up promulgated policy, was the hiring of Cambodian and National Chinese mercenaries by Special Forces teams who operated in Cambodia, South Vietnam, other places. I only participated in operations in South Vietnam and Cambodia.

SCHORR. My name is Sam Schorr. I'm from Los Angeles. I was in the U.S. Army, 86th Combat Engineer Battalion in Vietnam from September 1966 to September 1967, in the area of Lai Khe, the Iron Triangle, the Mekong Delta around Dong Tam, Ben Luc, and Tan An. I was an E-4. That was the highest I ever got; they wouldn't promote me after that. I will testify to the destruction of crops and rice paddies, ripping off graves, random fire on civilians, recon by fire, indiscriminate firing in mad minutes, throwing people out of helicopters, throwing C-rations at kids along the side of the road, killing of water buffaloes, and last but not least, the whole major issue, the issue of fighting in this imperialistic war.

BUTTS. My name is Dennis Butts and I'm from Madison, Wisconsin. I was an infantryman with the 4th Division and the 9th Division in 1966 and 1967. My testimony will involve the killing of civilians, the playing of games with mortars--setting them so that they will burn down civilian homes, and also I will try to give my insight into why this happened.

HEIDTMAN. My name is Thomas Heidtman and I'm from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I served from October '66 to September '67; I served with 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines all this time. I can attest to prisoners being shot. I've seen it; I've done it. Villages being burned was a common everyday thing in the "Burning 5th Marines." Prisoners were tortured. They were forced to carry other wounded prisoners on bamboo poles for up to seven hours. Women and children were brutalized. I've seen water buffaloes killed. Any time you have to dig a hole, you find a nice soft bean field. You destroy crops. Rice is contaminated with CS. For three months they were attempting to burn rice with illumination grenades, which never did work, but they kept on trying. Destroying villages was a common practice. On one occasion, a captain ordered the burning of a villa because we were staying in this area for a day and a half and it was "too close."

WILLIAMS. My name is Paul Williams of Fayetteville, Arkansas. I served from May of 1966 to June of 1967 in the 1st and 3rd Marine Divisions. I was a Lance Corporal and I was a Forward Observer in the field. Among other things that I witnessed were POWs being beaten, the condition of children after air strikes had taken place in their villages, H & I (harassment and interdiction) fires, and most particularly the command that I received at Khe Sanh that after dark anything was a free fire zone for H & Is. Further, recon by fire, FSCC orders, at Khe Sanh, to do this on unidentified targets, and, in the northern part of Vietnam, the killing of unarmed individuals, destruction of houses, property, crops, the use of prisoners of war as pack animals, the use of CS grenades, the forced evacuation of villagers, and refugees being moved without prior notification, without time to pack their own personal belongings. In Operation Hickory, which was within the DMZ, we made an amphibious landing. We were given the order that anything north of the river there, which marked the demarcation line at that point, was to be considered a free fire zone.

DONNER. My name is Don Donner. I'm also from Fayetteville, Arkansas. I served with the 86th Engineers from approximately September '67 to July of '68. I'm going to testify about the refusal of medical attention to civilians wounded by Americans, the allowing of desecration of dead Vietnamese bodies by ARVNs, corroboration of the destruction of livestock, and many of the other things that have been mentioned.

GALBALLY. My name is Joe Galbally. I'm 23, I served as a Pfc. in the 198th Light Infantry Brigade from October of '67 to April of '68 when I was medivaced to Japan. My testimony will deal with the gassing of hungry children, the use of scout dogs on innocent civilians, indiscriminate leveling of villages, killing of livestock, and pollution of water supply. In other words, they made it totally impossible for these people to live in their ancestral homelands again.

MURPHY. My name is Ed Murphy. I'm 23, I was an E-4 rifleman in the 198th Infantry Brigade, Americal Division, and I served in Vietnam from October '67 to September '68. I'm from Philadelphia.

HAGELIN. My name is Timon Hagelin. I'm from Philadelphia. I was in the Graves Registration Platoon attached to 233rd Field Service Company, 1st Logistic Division. I'll testify to the racism of human remains, the rape of women, the misconduct and child molesting of children, and just an all-around bad attitude of Americans towards Vietnamese and Vietnamese attitude towards Americans.

KOGUT. My name is Russel Kogut, I'm 22, I'm from Flint, Michigan. I was a Warrant Officer Helicopter Pilot with 155th Assault Helicopter Company in Ban Me Thuot. I will testify on illegal operations in Cambodia, on the destruction of livestock in free fire zones, burning of villages, forced evacuation of villages, and attitudes of Americans towards Vietnamese.

CALDWELL. My name is Dennis Caldwell, I'm 24 from Ypsilanti, Michigan. I was a Warrant Officer flying gunships from October '68 to October '69 in Vietnam. This was the Cobra Gunship Helicopter. I flew for the 3/17th Air Cav., which was not part of the 1st Air Cav. It was part of the 1st Aviation Brigade. I have testimony concerning the destruction of hootches, destruction of crops, destruction of animals, treatment of prisoners, and also, I have some comments on censorship which I witnessed.

PITKIN. My name is Steve Pitkin, age 20, from Baltimore. I served with the 9th Division from May of '69 until I was airvaced in July of '69. I'll testify about the beating of civilians and enemy personnel, destruction of villages, indiscriminate use of artillery, the general racism and the attitude of the American GI toward the Vietnamese. I will also talk about some of the problems of the GIs toward one another and the hassle with officers.

PUGSLEY. My name is Don Pugsley. I served as a Spec 4 as a Green Beret Medic in South Vietnam. I will testify about some of the little known organizations that worked within the Green Berets in South Vietnam. When I was in Vietnam I carried a Secret Classification and I had several close friends who had top-secret classifications. Also, I have a photograph that I was ordered not to take at Nha Trang. It's a picture of an aircraft that serves the specific units my testimony deals with. I also want to say a few words in the capacity of a medic regarding the most abused drug in South Vietnam, alcohol.

MODERATOR. Joe, you talked a lot about the use of dogs in interrogation, as well as the treatment which kids received and about rape. I wonder if you would elaborate on this.

GALBALLY. I'll talk about the rape first. As I said earlier, I was a Pfc. in an Infantry Company, which meant that there was about seventy-five of us turned loose on the civilian population in Vietnam. We would set up our night perimeter between three and four every evening. If we had passed any villages on the way to this night perimeter, there would be patrols mounted and sent out. On several occasions, one in particular, we sat upon a hill which was strategically important, I suppose. There was a village sitting at the bottom of the hill. We went back down to the village; it was about an eight man patrol. We entered a hootch. These people are aware of what American soldiers do to them so naturally they tried to hide the young girls. We found one hiding in a bomb shelter in sort of the basement of her house. She was taken out, raped by six or seven people in front of her family in front of us, and the villagers. This wasn't just one incident; this was just the first one I can remember. I know of 10 or 15 of such incidents at least. The gentleman on my left can corroborate my testimony because we were together the whole time; served in the same squad, the same company.

MURPHY. At the time most of this happened, our platoon leader was a minister. He's dead now so he can't really be found out and questioned. But when he got there, he was a pretty well high-character man because he was the minister. By the time he got killed he was condoning everything that was going on because it was a part of policy. Nobody told you that it's wrong. This hell changed him around. And he would condone rapes. Not that he would do them, but he would just turn his head to them because who was he in a mass military policy.

MODERATOR. Joe, you told me about a guy who collected ID cards. Do you want to talk about that?

GALBALLY. Okay. There was an individual, I won't mention his name, he was a friend of mine, a Spec 4, and he was, I guess you would say, the platoon hatchet man. Any time that he had a prisoner that nobody in the room wanted, this guy would take his ID card and tell him to "Di Di Mau" which is "run" in Vietnamese. The guy would get about ten feet, and get a full burst of automatic, which is 20 rounds, in the back. As I said I was medivaced in April of '68 and as of April I know that he had at least five or six ID cards also. He was, I guess, more or less proud of the fact that he was the hatchet man and was all the time showing everybody the ID cards. "Look where I got this guy and, how about this, and look at this." It was common knowledge what was going on. On certain occasions, if there was something that had to be done, the commanding officer would call up and ask for this guy by name over the battalion radio. I'm sure that somebody had to be monitoring this, you know, listening to it, but it was never stopped and no action was ever taken.

MODERATOR. Joe, you also said something to me about the dogs and wells.

GALBALLY. On occasions we were on the road. I don't know the name of the highway. As I said, I was a Pfc. and nobody ever told me much. It was between two LZs--LZ Baldy and LZ Ross. It was a fairly secure area. I don't think we ever received any fire. As I said, we were with a company of maybe 75 of us taking a break along the road. A Vietnamese civilian, wife and child, were riding down the road on a motorcycle, small motorcycle. Vietnamese were very ingenious and this guy had probably most of his possessions packed on the back of his motorcycle. We were sitting with this guy; I don't remember his name or rank. He had a scout dog with him. As the motorcycle was approaching us, he told the scout dog to get this guy. The dog jumped over the handlebars of the motorcycle, grabbed this guy off, had him by the leg and was really doing a job on the guy's leg. This caused the motorcycle to crash by the side of the road; the woman went one way, the baby went the other.

All the possessions were all over the place. When we got to the guy, the dog trainer took the dog away from the guy. We went through his pockets. He had an ID card and a pass. As it turned out, he worked at either LZ Ross or LZ Baldy and had a pass signed by some military personnel. His motorcycle was wrecked. His wife had to push it down the road. He followed, limping, because had blood pouring out of his leg, carrying most of his possessions and his young child. No action was ever taken against this guy. This was amusement, I suppose. There were at least 75 people watched this--four officers and I don't know how may E-7s and E-6s. Nothing was done.

MODERATOR. Timon Hagelin, you served with Graves Registration and I believe you have some observations on how Vietnamese are treated. In addition, I believe, you have some testimony about a young girl who was mistreated at Dak To.

HAGELIN. I was at Dak To at two different times. The first time was about a month after I got in the country. I came in country with the MOS of shoe repairman. And when I got to my field service unit they said that I had a choice of baking bread or picking up dead bodies. So I told them that I wanted to go to the field to see what was happening. They sent me up here. While I was on the base taking care of KIAs as they came through, I made friends with people in my company that I considered basically nice people. We used to get together at night and talk. I went down to a certain place where _____ or the Montagnards are just treated as animals. They know they're human beings but they really don't treat them that way. It's like they're a lesser thing; they're a lesser type human being. Anyway, it was a KIA from a straight force, a Mike force. That was Special Forces, you know. The Special Forces guy came in and he said, "I'll just put the body back on the runway because it's just a dead yard you know. Just leave him out there." This was the person that was supposedly helping these people out. And going out in the jungles with them was, "It's just a dead yard, you know; like forget about him." There was also an incident in Pleiku where the Special Forces E-5 from Pleiku did 'em a favor. He put a Montagnard body in one of our reefers turned on for American KIAs. When we had spare reefers that we didn't always use _____ refrigeration to keep the KIAs. The yard was in there for about five days. The guy that put him in there forgot that he was in there and the body was just laying inside this reefer for five days. That's like putting it in an oven. And finally, two of my friends were walking through the mortuary, and they smelled something. When they opened it up, the guy was really very _____ like, you know, he was really, after five days inside that thing. And the action taken against the E-5 that did it was Article 15--you know, they called him stupid.

MODERATOR. Why don't you explain to people what an Article 15 is.

HAGELIN. If the Army court-martialed everybody, they'd have court-martials all the time. So they made a lesser thing. A lesser way for them to burn you. If you do something wrong, they just take your money away from you. They took some of his money away from him for destroying a Montagnard body.

MODERATOR. Sam, you talked about recon by fire and mad minutes. I wonder if you'd explain these terms, as well as talk a little bit about the incident with the helicopter?

SCHORR. Recon by fire is when you go into an area and you're not exactly sure what is in the area. You want to find out, so you just fire into the jungle or into the surrounding vegetation in the hopes you hit the enemy or something. But they really didn't know who was out there or what was out there. And mad minutes is just where everybody on perimeter, around the base camp (you have bunkers all the way around it) opens up and fires away with all their fire power for about a minute, two minutes. I saw several incidents of recon by fire. This was on convoy duty. The convoy would stop. Tanks would pull out to the edge of the convoy. These are around inhabited areas; there were villages all up and down the highway. This was Highway 13, Thunder Road. And they would point their muzzles down into the vegetation and fire a canister round. Now a canister round has something like 7,000 oblong bearings in it. It's got a range of about 400 meters and it spreads as it goes. It goes in at an angle. Starts out at a small angle and just goes out like this. It's kind of like a Claymore mine. It just rips everything to pieces that's in the way. If there's anybody out there--any animal, any person, any kid, any hootch--it's going to be destroyed, flattened. Knocks trees to pieces. Regarding throwing people out of helicopters, I only saw one incident to this. I was coming out to do bunker guard during the day and right outside their perimeter, this was Lai Khe, there was an armored personnel carrier and a Huey chopper, which was warmed up and ready to go. There were people standing around the APC. There were five Vietnamese people. I do not know if they were civilians, Viet Cong or Viet Cong suspects. Three of them were wounded, had bandages on their bodies and their legs and their arms looked in bad shape. The other two were older men, somewhere around fifty years old. The Lieutenant from the armored personnel carrier and the captain from the chopper helped place these people in the helicopter. He got in the helicopter and took off. He got a couple of hundred feet up and three bodies came out. The lieutenant who was on the ground radioed up to the 'copter and he asked, "What happened to the prisoners?" The reply was point blank, "They tried to escape."

MODERATOR. Sam, you also spoke about the random destruction of crops, including some fields with graves, and shooting of people. Do you want to discuss that at all?

SCHORR. Right. The destruction of crops was fairly widespread. I was in an engineering outfit. I operated a bulldozer and also an earth mover, which is a very large piece of equipment for removing eighteen cubic yards of dirt at a time. When we had to build a base camp or we needed dirt for a road, we just drove off the side of a road into somebody's rice paddy and just started scraping away and taking their dirt. It didn't matter if the Vietnamese people there were using it at the time, or if they were going to use it at a future time. We just went in there and got it anyway 'cause we needed the dirt. Along almost all these rice paddies, they have graves on the dikes, at corners of the dikes, and these are the fathers, mothers, and grandfathers of the people who lived near that particular rice paddy. If there was a grave in the way, we just went right through it. I scraped up several graves into my pan and probably dumped it on a road somewhere. And there were sergeants and lieutenants watching it. They never said a thing. I was never reprimanded for doing something like this. Also, this was kind of a contradiction in army policy. When we were at a base camp that had a rubber plantation in it--this is thousands of rubber trees planted for the use of taking out the sap and using it for latex--when we ripped off a rubber tree we paid the French owner of that plantation 700 piasters per tree. This was the deal they had worked out. Somebody was getting rich off of taking down thee unused rubber trees. But when we did it to these local Vietnamese peasants, or anybody living around there, we didn't pay anybody anything. We just went off and did it. As far as random fire on civilians, this happened quite often, especially on bunker guard. You sit on bunker guard for a week, 24 hours a day and you get pretty bored. So we'd play little games. The Vietnamese would be working out in their rice paddies with South Vietnamese flags stuck in the rice paddy so you would know they were there. And we would try and knock the flag down. I had a machine gun. My friend had a grenade launcher. We would shoot all over the area and the Vietnamese would just take off for the hills. They thought we were friendly and they put the flag up there to let us know that they were there and we fired at it anyway. This was just out of sheer boredom and also because we just didn't give a damn. Also, we threw full C-ration cans at kids on the side of the road. Kids would be lined up on the side of the road. They'd be yelling out, "Chop, Chop, Chop, Chop," and they wanted food. They knew we carried C-rations. Well, just for a joke, these guys would take a full can if they were riding shotgun and throw it as hard as they could at a kid's head. I saw several kids' heads split wide open, knocked off the road, knocked into tires of vehicles behind, and knocked under tank traps.

MODERATOR. Dennis, if I can switch to you quickly because I remember you mentioned something about the rubber plants too and about payoffs. Do you want to discuss that and then talk about the destruction of that perimeter village?

BUTTS. I'm going to talk about the perimeter at Dau Tieng, which I was on for about two months. I spent about every night on it. Dau Tieng is on the Michelin rubber plantation owned by the French. When someone is not there on this perimeter protecting these rubber trees, well, they might be just a little bit confused or embittered at what they're doing. It came down from battalion. We wondered why we weren't too careful when we were in the rubber about getting mortared and battalion said the reason we weren't mortared was because the French were paying a volunteer fee to the Viet Cong for not mortaring the rubber. Where did the French get this money? Did they raise their prices on the rubber? No, they got it from the American government. So the American government was paying the French rent at Dau Thieng and then the French were paying the VC. The VC were carrying out the war in other parts of Vietnam with this money. This was part of why you might feel a little bit confused in Vietnam at what's going on around you. I'd like to talk about the general situation on this perimeter. It was really a confusing thing. I don't know if I can make it clear. We had concertina wire up. The people in the village were friendly. In these two months I never saw any sniper fire coming from that village. The girls would come in at night and stay in the bunkers with us and smoke pot. A lot of guys would go in the village and sleep in the village at night; they'd go through the concertina wire. And it was that friendly. The army has a policy of putting people who are in a rear echelon in the perimeters, such as cooks, mechanics, and mortar people (like I was at that time) who have really no experience at combat or anything and might feel a little bit uneasy at what's going on. They put these people on the perimeter, just after they've got off a day of being cook, or working in a motor pool. They're using World War II equipment also which wasn't designed for Vietnam, so they got 50 caliber machine guns for the mess halls. Well, the mess halls don't really need 50 calibers so they put them out in this perimeter. Now the perimeter of the village was about 150 to 200 feet from this 50 caliber. And anybody who knows what a 50 caliber can do can, if he can see any logic in that, I would like to know. But, anyway, they got this 50 caliber sitting there and the bullets on a 50 caliber are about that long (approximately six inches).

With some guys, not everyone, it just got to be a game of shooting at lights in the village. One night there was a light or something in the village, and this one guy, he was from a rear echelon, a mechanic, he was on this 50 caliber. He saw something and he opened up onto the village with a 50 caliber in about a ten second burst. Then the rest of the perimeter opened up. Not everyone, but a lot of firing. And all I could hear--it was just people screaming all of a sudden, people screaming, you know. So a few guys started yelling, "Come on, cut it out. Cut it out!" And everybody was wondering what was going on because there was no fire coming from the village. Then there was a big silence, and all of a sudden, just babies crying. And, you know, it just--every time I hear a baby cry right now, I--that comes back to me. In another incident that happened, at the same perimeter, up about 100 yards, and this gives a little bit more insight into why this thing happened. They had a man whom I know. He wasn't a close friend but I'd known him pretty well. And he just didn't want to be in Vietnam. He started out to be pretty straight, a pretty straight guy, pretty level-headed. He tried everything to get out of the army.

He took court-martials and Article 15s and he finally shot himself in the foot to get out of the army. They patched up his foot and sent him on this berm. He was on the berm and there were a couple of other guys there with him. I was on the next bunker and we had field phones in between us. There was a kid out there urinating. And this guy talked the other two and himself into shooting. Now, I think the other two guys shot. It was only about 150 feet away. I don't think they tried to hit him. But this guy did with a grenade launcher. They hit him with this grenade launcher and I don't know, he must have been about 13 to 15 years old, I witnessed this. We went into the village and he had shrapnel in his back. The medics did treat him and take him into the first aid station. This guy did not get a reprimand for this. He was just kind of given up on and he was still put in the field again. I don't know whatever happened to him, after that. But, I'm just trying to say the things that happened to people. They go in the army pretty sane or level-headed or adjusted. They tell the army that maybe they shouldn't be there and nobody listens. They just put them in a worse situation and this is how some of these things happen.

MODERATOR. I might just point out to the audience that a 50 caliber, which is the bullet which Dennis was talking about, is outlawed according to the Geneva Convention for use against people. It is not an anti-personnel weapon. It is actually anti-vehicular. However, in Vietnam it has been used by every unit as one of the major staples of weaponry for people. Paul Williams and Don Donner, you both talk about mistreatment of refugees amongst other things. I wish you two would amplify upon the mistreatment of refugees first.

WILLIAMS. Well, in Operation Hickory, an operation inside the DMZ, we were told that the reason for our being there was to evacuate Catholic refugees. We had a detachment of military police with my company at that time, who were to handle these refugees. After making our landing on about the second or third day, in May of 1967, I went out with the platoon to a village about 1,000 meters from our position. From all appearances the villagers had not been notified that they were to be evacuated and they obviously didn't want to be evacuated. About 30 or 40 villagers were rounded up; they were not given a chance to collect any of their belongings. They were taken back to our position where they were loaded on amtracks and taken down the beach. We were told they were being taken to Gio Linh to the refugee camp. I don't know what actual disposition was made of them after they left our position. On another occasion a couple of days later, we saw refugees about 1,000 meters in front of our position, moving south. I checked them out with binoculars to see if they were troops or what. They were all people carrying belongings on their back. There were no weapons present. The platoon that I was with at that particular time was in a position about 500 meters from the rest of the company and there were no officers present. Some of the men in the company, or in the platoon, rather, fired upon these refugees. They were too far away for any accurate firing. I don't know if any of them were hit, but there was no command given for them to cease. This went on until they got tired of the sport.

DONNER. First of all, I would like to corroborate a little bit which has already been said. I was with an engineer unit, the 86th, with the other gentleman at a much later date. The engineer unit is not allowed to have 50 calibers as a standard weapon. We had borrowed two 50 calibers from an infantry unit and we had them the full ten months that I was there. We also had borrowed an automatic grenade launcher from a naval unit, much the same as is mounted on Huey Cobras; a very, very effective anti-personnel weapon as far as killing and maiming goes. I'm an OCS drop-out. I decided I couldn't stand the extra year. It was a hard decision there at the last. But in OCS Fort Belvoir, Engineer OCS, Combat Engineers, recon by fire is a standard technique for convoy duty, which is taught to all the officers and suggested to be used. We often fired on flags in the field, both VC and VA flags, and South Vietnamese flags. We often shot water buffalo while on convoy sort of to relieve the boredom. Cleaned weapons, things like that.

We threw C-rations at kids. Part of the feeling behind this being the poor gooks are so hungry, you know, give them some food. We don't want these damn C-rations. Some of the people did a pretty good job of aiming the C-rations. I never saw anybody get killed because of one, but there were a few kids who were pretty fast jumpers. We were on a bridge site, building a bridge over the Com Nuong Choi River. We had the two 50s, one at each end of our position on the one side of the river. Standing orders were that at night time any sampan which came along the river was to be fired and sunk; any sampan. The two or three which I remember being sunk were basically sampans which had broken loose from neighboring villages. This was about fourteen, fifteen miles outside Saigon and had floated down the river. We had binoculars. We checked them out. We knew that nobody was in them, as close as we could tell. Standing orders were to sink them and it was a good chance to get in some target practice. Mad minutes we didn't do too much of. The one situation that I can remember was Tet '68 before we ever heard word that Tet had actually broken out. We'd spent the entire day with neighboring villagers, getting gassed up on rice whiskey (which is a very, very effective form of home brew) and many other forms of dope. When midnight rolled around we unloaded everything we had into the sky and it was quite a sight to watch the tracers climbing up and back down. Again, this is like fourteen miles outside of Saigon. I don't know how far 50 caliber bullets carry when shot in the air, but the entire circle of sky as far as could see around us was completely red with tracers going up--a fantastic sight. When I was in Vietnam I usually drove a jeep, except for a few weeks. It gave me a unique opportunity to get out and see the country which most of my fellow men didn't have. It gave me a unique opportunity to meet with the people. One time--I'm going to give some background so you can understand my feelings on it. I was running a steel convoy after we left the bridge site, back to Bear Cat. We had a large truck loaded with steel and it was barreling along about fifty miles an hour. I was in a jeep trying to keep anybody from a crossroad from getting in the way. So we were pretty well back to Saigon, back to Bear Cat, rather, past Saigon, past the last turnoff, and we slowed down to about thirty-five when an oil tanker came hustling around, moving much faster than we were. About two miles on up the road, we came upon an accident where the oil tanker had hit a civilian car. There were two kids in the car, boys, twins, about 12 or 14 and two older men. They were pretty well broken up. I got on the radio and called for medivac pretty fast. It took a while, but normal length of time, before there were medics out there and the kids were medivaced out with no questions asked.

Okay, that's the background. We were down at base camp Linda on the Mekong River, or just off the Mekong, rather, running a convoy up to Saigon again. Bunch of five tons, jeeps, vehicular stuff. We were about, I'd say, about ten to fifteen miles out of base camp Linda. We came upon a bridge with a village around it. The truck, oh, five or six vehicles ahead of me, made a dash for the bridge at the same time a forty-fifty year old Vietnamese civilian man was trying to go on the bridge. He was on a bicycle. He saw he wasn't going to be able to make it so he slipped off the bicycle, straddling it, trying to back it up off the bridge. The rear wheels of the five ton caught the bicycle, pinning him underneath it. The metal seat caught in his crotch and quite a bit of blood was pouring out. Our medic checked him over fast and said he couldn't do anything for him. They'd have to get him on to a different hospital or something. So, I got on the radio and called for another medivac which would take about 15 minutes to get there. I called in on the straight medivac band. My company was monitoring that band and, unfortunately, I guess, the CO of the company was walking by at the time. He came back and asked me what was happening. I explained we had a wounded Vietnamese civilian. He said not to do anything till he got there. Now this fellow's bleeding to death very fast, very fast. There's a crowd of thirty to fifty villagers standing around in a half-circle sort of watching, talking to themselves. So I argued for a couple of minutes and said, "Okay, you know, hurry up and get here." About five minutes later the civilian was in much, much worse shape. It was obvious that he was going to die by now. I called back to the company again and said, "We got to have a medivac now. It's not right just to leave this man bleed to death in front of his own people. We're the ones who wounded him, therefore we should at least try to show that we're trying to help him." Again the captain came back. Said, "Don't do anything till I get there. He's a civilian, you know." Another five minutes later and the medic brought my poncho to cover him up with. He was dead. About fifteen minutes, twenty minutes after that, the CO finally got there. He took quite a while leaving. The body was turned over to advisers working with the ARVNs that were guarding our perimeter and I don't know what happened to it other than that. But, you know, what can you say? What can you say? The other major instance I'd like to talk about was the one time that I actually saw a dead Vietnamese body. It sort of got to be a game with us. This was after Tet and there was a slight push by the VC later on in the year. Let's say this was around May '66 or so. They were trying to block supplies coming up from the southern Delta region to Saigon. And we were trying to keep Highway 4 open for those supplies. So every day we would go out and work on the roads. Dig up the mines and the VCs lay low and take a shot at us. We'd lay down beside the road and fifteen or twenty minutes later, we'd get up and go back to work. They'd take another shot at us. We'd lay back down again.

They didn't seem to be really, at that time, trying to kill us; it was more of a game. We had ARVNs providing our security. Whenever a shot was taken at us, we'd lay down and sweep the ARVNs through the area. They'd go through, say everything's fine, all clean, no VC. We'd go back to work and then get shot at again. Usually they'd go through a field until they received fire. As soon as they were shot at they would sit down, wait, call in our air strikes, our artillery. Then go forward again. The VC were wise to this. They wouldn't shoot at them. They'd run back to their shelters, wait for the air strikes, artillery to get over, then come back out and shoot. This time the ARVNs were being pushed by a new adviser who got them moving instead of calling in air strikes and they caught a VC who was hiding in a bunker. And they shot him. They towed his body back to camp, oh, four, five miles behind a jeep. They drug up outside our area. Everybody came up to look at the VC. After a while, there were quite a few GIs standing around. We were company size strength. Some of the people wanted to cut his ear off--this sort of thing. It was the common sort of thing which we understood as being done. I can't testify to any though. But quite a few of the EMs there, like myself, didn't particularly like the idea and notified the officers, at least the good ones, who also didn't like the idea. The ARVNs then took the body, sat it up along the roadside, and let it set. This is what it looked like four or five days later... Sort of frightening to realize I still have this on film. I almost forget about it because I don't like to look at the film very much. I don't like to be reminded. To the best of my knowledge there was no protest filed with ARVNs or the adviser working with the ARVNs at that time, about letting the body sit there. And part of the importance of this is that, as I understand some of the religions there, is that immediate burial is very, very important in their religion. It's as if you didn't confess before you died. There's no hope. It breaks the cycle of reincarnation if you're not buried, or if your head's cut off, or if the head is mutilated in any way. But to the best of my knowledge, there was no word said about it. The body was allowed to lay there and rot. There was another instance of a body laying beside the road which I drove by for about three days. There was some sort of a sign pinned on him, but it was in Vietnamese. I never did find out if the body was a Vietnamese civilian, a VC, a Vietnamese working for the Americans, or what. And I don't know if anybody else did either. One of the other things which I might mention is this sort of mad minutes which go on. Before I got to the bridge site, evidently one had gone on earlier.

Oh, six months earlier, or so. There was a very pretty, very vivacious little twelve, fourteen year old girl who lived within our perimeter at a hootch. She was permanently disabled. Her leg was stiff, would never straighten out again. She was on one side of the river and evidently somebody thought there was some VC over there and everybody opened up. Most likely everybody was messed up on some sort of dope or other. And she was wounded, could not be helped. To help balance it out though, I might say, that at least at Com Muong Choi, where we did get to know the people, we were fairly good about giving medical attention to anybody who needed it or to taking any Vietnamese who was wounded or sick to a hospital. In fact, I guess that was the only time that I really felt decent over there, was the three or four times that we took pregnant women over to have their babies.
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Re: Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veter

Postby admin » Mon Jun 06, 2016 4:04 am

Part 2 of 2

MODERATOR. Tom, burning is something which is pretty much taken for granted in Vietnam but it's the destruction of dwellings which are inhabited by civilians that is a war crime. And, Tom, I think you wanted to talk a little bit about the burning of villages and the Marines and their nickname.

HEIDTMAN. My first day with 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, I was informed that the nickname of the company was the "Burning Fifth Marines." Once, just before my first operation, we had a company formation, which means that the entire company who was going on the operation is fully equipped with everything they're going to take with them, including ammunition. At the time, our company commander was a 1st Lieutenant, who was hit on Hill 1100 in April, but he said that we're going out in the morning and we're going out on choppers. We're going out into an area west of Tam Ky. Then he said, "We're going to have a zippo inspection right now." And I would say approximately two-thirds of the entire company had zippo lighters. We held them up, lit them, demonstrated that they were filled, would burn. Then put them away. He smiled and let it go at that. When we went out, I would say 50% at least of the villages we passed through would be burned to the ground. There was no difference between the ones we burned and the ones we didn't burn. It was just that where we had time, we burned them. I've seen a gunnery sergeant take a .45 and kill six piglets that probably came from Americans because they had a big program to give the Vietnamese people pigs, ducks, and things like that. They were shot because their area, their pen, or whatever, was right next to a village or a hootch that was burning. The entire village, for about a quarter of a mile, was on fire with illumination grenades or zippo lighters. Everything was burned. Everything was torn down. All the animals were killed. Water buffaloes were shot and allowed to just lay right where they were. They were just shot right in their pen; they couldn't move. It's hard to kill a water buffalo, but when he's standing right there there's nothing much he can do. Everything is burned. On one particular occasion we had been moving on Operation Arizona, in April and May, we'd been moving constantly. About one hour just before dark, the order came right from our first lieutenant to first squad, which I was a member of, to go burn the village because it's too close.

We're spending too much time here. So my squad, myself included, went and put a zippo lighter to the village. Burned it. They were still inside the houses. They came outside and just stood there and cried and carried on. A short while later they wandered off. We don't know what happened to them. That was the only village in the immediate vicinity so we cleared the area more or less. Everything was liable to be burned or destroyed. We would stop along the side of a hill, going up a hill, just to check out the top which is a procedure the Marine Corps seems to adhere to. Every time we would stop somebody would be taking a machete or some such thing and chopping down banana trees. The people would slice potatoes and dry them out in front of their hootches. They would be scattered all over the place. They would just be kicked and destroyed. Men would urinate on these vegetables that were drying in the sun. If they complained they were definitely brutalized. That was a common procedure. The reason I came down here was because I've been living with this thing for two and a half years.

HEIDTMAN. There was an aura of hate in my outfit. I mean, a Vietnamese...there was no such thing to my unit as a friendly Vietnamese. Every Vietnamese was a gook. I've hardly ever heard the term Vietnamese. They were always gooks. There was no difference between a good one and a bad one except that the good one at the time is carrying no weapon but he's still fair game. The games that some of the Marines in my outfit played, myself included, would be to find older papa-sans with long whiskers, which I guess is the symbol of his identity in their culture, and they would just be cut. Every man in my outfit had at least a combat knife and they would just cut these whiskers. They would brutalize anybody who complained. We would move into a village and we would just sit down. We owned the village while we were there. These people would do what we told them, or they wouldn't be allowed to stay in their own house, or would be beaten inside the house. In one village we were using this particular hootch for the command post. There were officers, two officers and two senior enlisted men inside. The old grandfather appeared to be about sixty or seventy years old. He would not cooperate and go get water for some of the enlisted men and officers, so he was picked up by two Marines; each had a wrist and an ankle and they just pitched him in about 15 feet out the back door; he just landed there and split. To the Marines, there was no such thing as a free fire zone in my outfit. Everyplace was a free fire zone, whether it was 50 yards from the perimeter or five miles or whatever.

MODERATOR. A free fire zone for the information of somebody who just came today is an area designated by the command, whichever command has jurisdiction over an area, stating that anything in it is fair game. Any moving thing can be shot. Anything can be destroyed. It's a VC area. Many of these areas were designated such without any American presence for two and three year periods.

HEIDTMAN. One other thing that was more or less like a joke, like cutting the whiskers off, and it would get a laugh every time from somebody, was if we were moving through a village and there was a woman present. Her clothes, at least the top half of her clothes were just ripped. I've seen that happen and done it several times, probably thirty, forty times I've seen civilians with their clothes just...just because they were female and they were old enough for somebody to get a laugh at...their clothes--the top of their clothes, at least, would be ripped. Just torn right down. It only takes one hand to rip those kind of clothing. They're real thin silk or whatever, and they would be shoved out into the ditch and we'd just keep going.

MODERATOR. Now, when you first arrived in Vietnam you told me that they burnt a village just to show you how to do it. Is that true?

HEIDTMAN. Well, it was more or less demonstrated. We were on our first operation and it was an operation so it just followed the procedure. They were used to it and we were just shown how you destroy a village. How you cut anything taller than you are down, unless it's a big tree and will take time. Banana trees are chopped down. Everything is set on fire. My squad leader personally ignited the first two hootches and then just told us to take care of the rest so we could learn how this procedure was carried out. And he said, "Now you know that everything in the way gets burned," and we just proceeded to follow that procedure.

MODERATOR. David, you wanted to testify about U.S. operations in Cambodia as far back as 1967 and I think two others also have testimony on this subject with slides. Why don't you go ahead.

COHEN. I was in the Navy and I was on swift boats which are patrol boats. Their primary mission is board and search. And all they do is search every junket and sampan they see, looking for VC suspects and contraband. But it was a very mundane operation. It wasn't really exciting. I was really bored and I figured well, what the _____, here I am in a war zone, let's go see some war. So I went and I volunteered for any sort of special operations that were going on. Our base was on this island about fifty miles off the coast, on the Gulf of Siam, and there was this town right on the coast. It was called Ha Tien. There was a Special Forces, mercenary group, there which was a team of Special Forces who were provided with money. I mean, I've seen the safe full of the million piasters. They hired Cambodian and Nationalist Chinese mercenaries. Most of them were bandits, you know, who hired themselves out to anybody. They would go out on these operations. The base was five miles from the Cambodian border. So anything in that direction would have had to have been in Cambodia because we always went more than five miles in a northerly direction. I went out on operations with them anywhere between five and ten times. Sometimes it'd be out riding the boats and sometimes I'd be out relating to the Special Forces. Supposedly, my capacity was coordinating naval gunfire support. But fifty miles inland there are no naval guns that are gong to do that. The Special Forces maintained arsenals of unregistered weapons. That is, weapons that are not registered anywhere in the United States. Not even with the manufacturer. So that if anybody was captured, if any of the weapons were captured, there would be no American implicated. There would be no Americans implicated in anything that happened. Nobody ever wore uniforms. They wore either black pajamas or camouflaged fatigues and tiger greens. I would like to say that one of the reasons they hired mercenaries was because the ARVN troops realized that the NLF were really representative of the people and they didn't want to fight against the NLF. So they had to hire these bandits to do it. I saw NLF. We talked about racism here. The terms VC and Viet Cong is racist. The terms for the supposed insurgent forces is the NLF, National Liberation Front.

MODERATOR. Russ, I believe you were a helicopter pilot and participated in dropping Special Forces teams in Cambodia. I think at this time we might show your slides and you can explain that operation.

KOGUT. In July of '68 I worked with the Special Forces unit, B-50, out of Ban Me Thuot. Their main support were these air force helicopters here, the UH-I, and you'll notice there are no markings on the aircraft. We were just being used as backup because they were running more missions than they had aircraft for. And we supported them like this, on and off, for the whole year I was there and it continued after I was there.

Our company took over a good deal more of this mission, as I was told by a friend of mine who came back. We worked out of a base camp at Duc Lap down on the border. We put recon teams in consisting of two or three Americans and two or three hired, well, I can't swear that they were hired, but they were Cambodes or Montagnards, sympathetic with the U.S. --either for money or other reasons and we put these teams in. We went anywhere from one to three miles inside of Cambodia and, in the briefing that we received, they told us that their mission over there was to gather information on a known NVA unit that operated out of that area.

The NVA had a base camp there of approximately 15,000 of them by the estimates gathered from these reports, from these spies that we took in. These missions were secret. The President had knowledge of these. I am informed that a copy of what goes on, goes to him. I can't verify that so I shouldn't say it, I guess. But, these missions continued up until the time of our going into Cambodia on the legitimate side and now they're no big thing.

Other testimony I have would be corroboration of these mad minutes. These things took place in our compound. They were quite common. Also, evacuation of villages. On occasion in Da Lat, a village southwest of Da Lat, we evacuated all the inhabitants and the ARVNs went through afterward and burned the whole village. The livestock that they didn't kill, they stole and brought back for themselves. It was on a similar type operation at Tuy An on the coast. A whole peninsula on the coast was said to be uninhabited and we went out there on these little search and destroy things.

On one occasion they found a woman. We took her prisoner and she had a whole basement full of rice. They destroyed the house and I believe they destroyed all the houses in the village. On one of these operations, as we were leaving the pickup zone, which is where we operated out of, somebody gave the okay for all the crew members to load rocks aboard the helicopter. Apparently, the province chief, who is like God in these areas, said that it was okay for the gunners and crew chiefs to play bombardier by dropping rocks in the bay. He said anywhere over in this one part of the bay was okay to drop rocks. We took off to go pick up the troops.

On the way we passed over this place, and all the crew members were throwing these rocks out. One sampan I know of was hit and sunk. There were two people in it. They swam to shore and another old man was hit by an ARVN captain. He threw the rock out and hit this old man right in the chest and at that speed there's little doubt of what happened to him. The ARVNs burned the villages whenever they found rice because these missions were strictly one-day things and they didn't have time to haul rice out or investigate. The province chief decided where everybody was going to live, so if they didn't live where he wanted, they took the risk of having their houses burned. Free fire zones are all over the place, wherever somebody decides to have one.

We had one where we regularly tested our gunships after they came out of maintenance. We took them out there, they would check them out, and anything in there was a free target. On one occasion I was flying north near a village called Ban Dong on a sniffer mission. For anybody not familiar with it this is a device in a helicopter which detects ammonia scent emitted by humans. It's also emitted by monkeys. When they got a high enough count, they would bomb it, and either get monkeys or VC by their book. On this particular mission the gunships had to turn back early because they were low on fuel, and there was just myself with a sniffer and the commanding patrol ship which was a ways above me with a map, I saw an elephant and made mention of the fact. The captain was in charge of the overall mission told me to go back and look and see what was going on.

I went back. There were four adults and a calf. I circled them several times. There was no village in the vicinity, so they were not friendly elephants, and there were no (this was by the captain's definition) there were no marks on the elephants or packs or any signs of any people around, so I assumed they were wild. The captain assumed they were enemy and told me to have 'em destroyed. So I had my gunners shoot 'em. And this is the price an animal pays for being wild in Vietnam. The same thing goes for water buffalo. Several times I've seen water buffalo shot for sport. If they were on a certain side of a ridge or on the other side of a river, they were considered fair game.

MODERATOR. Russ, you told us about taking Special Forces into Cambodia. Sitting at the end of the table is Don Pugsley, who was in Special Forces with Project Delta. Don, do you have another slide to show and explain?

PUGSLEY. Well, first of all, it's kind of an involved rap, but just like our large universities have colleges within them, the Special Forces in South Vietnam have different subsections within--A teams, B teams, and C teams, all of which you know about through the media, movies, and that ridiculous song.

There are other subsections of this Special Forces that are not too well known to the people of the United States of America. These are known as C & C North, C & C Central, and C & C South. I'd estimate about a hundred Green Berets, and then I don't know how many more mercenaries, work in these different subsections. There is also an organization known as Project Delta B-52, of which I was a member.

I will explain the functions of these units. I'd started off in 1964 as SOG, Special Operations Group. It evolved some time between '64 and when I went to Vietnam, into C & C. C & C stands for Command and Control, which is just an army term that has absolutely nothing to do in regard to explaining the unit it represents. C & C North's sole function was to run reconnaissance and related missions into North Vietnam. C & C Central's sole function was to run reconnaissance and related missions into Laos and northern Cambodia; C & C South did the same thing in Cambodia exclusively.

Project Delta did the same thing only within country, within South Vietnam. I served with Project Delta as a Green Beret Medic. I had a very close friend, who will have to remain nameless because he chose to make the Army a career, who was a weapons expert. In Green Berets you are given a specialty--medics, weapons, demolitions, operations and intelligence, communications. He carried a top-secret clearance because he wanted out of country. I carried a secret clearance I worked in country. He was at C & C South. His first mission into Cambodia (and this is all prior to our official invasion of Cambodia) was sanctioned by the CIA because all these C & C units take their orders directly from the CIA. A man in civilian clothes, who my friend did not know, he would come into the room and say, "Okay, men," and put a map on the wall. "An aerial photograph shows that this particular NVA installation in Cambodia has armor. We don't know if they're mock-ups or real. We want you men to go in on the ground and determine if they're real or not."

Then the man would leave the room and my friend and his fellow teammates decided whether they wanted to go in or not. He went in, and encountered an approximate NVA company. He went in with another American and three Montagnards. I might point out that Montagnards are not allowed to serve in the South Vietnamese Army because they're considered subhumans, and contrary to what this man said down the table, I have never seen an instance where a Green Beret was down on Montagnards.

Perhaps it happens, I never saw it when I was over there because the Montagnards, we really loved them. The Montagnards women were never molested, ever. We just didn't touch them. They were something different than a South Vietnamese. In his particular photograph here, this is a C-130 aircraft, right in front of it on the flightline is a C-123 aircraft. This photograph was taken from the Nha Trang airport. Nha Trang is the headquarters for the Green Berets, and my particular unit was a gypsy unit. We had our main base in Nha Trang, but we went all over the country.

I was wounded and injured in a helicopter accident on the Cambodian border about fifteen klicks west of Kontum, the highland. In the front, the first aircraft is an official American aircraft. It's got a different type of camouflaging. The official camouflage of South Vietnam is a light sand, light green color. It carries numbers on the side of the aircraft that register with our government plus the usual insignias, etc. This here is called the blackbird. It used to be known as the SOG bird. This is a C-130. They have several C-123s, like the other one painted the same way and used for the same functions. You'll notice that the only marking on it is a star here to the rear.

My friend flew in these--well, as a matter of fact, he flew into Nha Trang trying to visit me one day on this. People in C & C fly only on these aircraft right here. He told me that the pilot and the copilot, all crew for this aircraft, were of Chinese nationality. Not related to the Americans in any way. On the front right here, there's a boom which at the moment is folded back. There's another identical one on the other side. When that boom is folded forward, it creates a "V" with the apex of the nose. In that "V" is a winch.

For those of you people who saw the James Bond movie Thunderball, at the end of it, James Bond put on a rubber suit which had a cable running up the back that went to a balloon up in the air. An airplane came by, snagged that rope, and yanked him out of the water. This is what this is functioned for: to snap agents out of North Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia when they get into hot spots and they aren't able to get choppers in to get the teams out. The uniform, etc., is dropped in an aluminum cocoon and the man puts it on and is snapped out. This is the only aircraft I ever saw with that particular device in the nose. I saw this device demonstrated at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the United States headquarters for all of our Special Forces. My friend did not wear a uniform. He carried a special weapon. I carried a thing called a Car-15, which is a kind of a submachine gun, a cut-down version of the M-16 weapon. Only officers in the regular army units carried them. All Green Berets carried them, those in C & C South specifically.

I carried a weapon known as the Stoner system, which is eight weapons in one. It incorporated silencers for silent prisoner snatches in Cambodia. You'd wound the man in the leg, grab him and get out of there with the man. These particular agents for C & C South carried cards, which I saw, that were from MACV which said to anyone stopping these people, they have a right to carry whatever particular weapons found on them; they're not to be molested in any way by MPs or what have you in the country.

In Nha Trang, when I was speaking to my friend, he had a friend with him who was in C & C South. We were at the bar and he was telling me about all the craft they were putting on Cambodia, in regard to bombing, etc. This was when we weren't supposed to be bombing. He also told me about a group of men within C & C South code named then as the Earth Angels.

I said, "What do these Earth Angels do?" and he said, "Well, this guy here is an Earth Angel." This guy hadn't said one word to me throughout the whole night, and he said, "I really don't know what they do. I know that they go in one and two-man teams, they come back, and it's rumored that they commit assassinations and atrocities." I've heard that same rumor, not only in Vietnam, but at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, several times from several different sources, sometimes officers, so I just began to assume that it was true after a while.

MODERATOR. Dennis Caldwell, you were an attack helo pilot. If we could just move very quickly through your testimony, we'd like to get to another area.

CALDWELL. I'd like to just briefly explain exactly how we worked, because you probably haven't heard much testimony on this. I was a helicopter Cobra gunship pilot. I worked with another aircraft at all times; 90% of the time it was called a hunter-killer team. A hunter-killer team goes out and does reconnaissance on certain areas. The other aircraft that was with me was a small observation helicopter, normally OH6A Cayuse. Every morning we'd go out and look at certain targets, certain coordinates that were given to us in the morning. We spent about two hours in the morning, plus or minus an hour, sometimes all day, looking at targets, and also just before sundown we would do this. During the day we were on call for any ground units that got into contact. I was told by the other pilots in the unit how to tell a VC from a civilian--if they were running, they were VC. If they were standing there, they were well-disciplined VC, and shoot 'em anyhow. They also told me that when we were flying over a village, or near a village, if people started to leave the village, civilians, it was a good sign that there were VCs in the area, that they were expecting a fight. While speaking with my hootch-mate (I had it pretty good over there in Vietnam, I had a mate) she says, "When American helicopters come through, people run. They think they're going to be killed."

So you put these two things together, and you see civilians are in a kind of bad spot. Recon by fire has been mentioned--I've seen this happen many times. I couldn't even begin to count. It was a perfectly normal, standard operating procedure for my unit and many other units, to recon by fire. It's done with a mini-gun which fires (I can't remember exactly what it is) three or four thousand rounds a minute. It was done using CS grenades; it was done using 27 5-inch rockets, with either ten or seventeen pound warheads of various combinations. As far as clearance to fire went, my first three months I never heard of the term clearance to fire. If there was somebody that we thought might be VC by his actions, by running or hiding, he was a dead man.

Ninth Division were people that we supported mainly when I first got to Vietnam. We had pretty much our own show. We didn't have to ask anybody what to shoot. We didn't have to ask for clearance. After that we worked closer to Saigon. We worked probably within a thirty or forty mile radius of Saigon in all directions, and we had extreme trouble receiving clearance to fire. An Air Force Forward Controller, who coordinates air strikes from jets, told me one time, "If you have trouble obtaining clearance to fire, just holler out that you're receiving fire, and we'll send jets in to bomb the hell out of the place, whether or not you actually receive fire or whether or not there are any weapons in the area at all." Free fire zones--I worked in many free fire zones.

It's kind of hard to number them because almost every day, someplace, we'd come in contact with a free fire zone. I've seen hootches burned down which were not proven to be military targets. I've seen hootches CS'ed to drive people out. When the people were driven out, naturally running away (who wants to hang around and breathe the CS for an hour), they were killed. There was one night at Tan An, which is south of Saigon, I believe in Long An Province, February 23rd of 1969. It was about midnight and somebody detected some movement out on the perimeter. Somebody climbed on top of a hootch to see what it was. Well, actually what they were doing, was shooting at them. Somebody was trying to get them out. It was a high ranking officer. We played around with them for a while. They didn't get anywhere, so they sent our firefly ship up, which is Hue Vuey with a cluster of seven landing lights to light up the ground, brighter than the sun, especially at night when you're looking right up at it. They sent the firefly ship up.

The Viet Cong had set up some rockets right outside the perimeter, rockets, BPGs, things like this. So they scrambled, the gunships off and through the rest of the night, for approximately six hours, there were, I would say, at least ten full loads of armament expended from Cobras in that area, plus several loaches. We scrambled the whole unit from Di An, which is my home base. Di An was my home; they scrambled our whole unit to come down to Tan An and to work on this area.

The next morning, the reports were that there were many civilians killed. This was the village on the south end of Tan An, there were many civilians killed. There were reports of Americans killed by this attack. I believe there was one injury. This is from the report that I got. In the same general area, probably within one or two blocks of the same exact location, several months later we were working on a canal. We were just looking around, doing a recon with the firefly and one Cobra. The firefly ship saw a man in a sampan. He was an old man with a bunch of nipa palm leaves in the sampan. Because he was out after dark, he was killed by the door gunner of the Huey. I have seen a prisoner beaten. He was in a cold area; no fire was received from this area. This was to the northwest of Saigon, to the south of Cu Chi. I can't remember the exact location. We'd been called out to do a recon in this area. It's quite desolate. It was at least a couple of kilometers from any real village, any settlement. Along this canal line, this man was hiding. I do not know whether or not he was armed. But I know that there was no fire received in that area from any enemy soldiers. They flushed this guy out. They tied his hands behind his back.

The water was approximately a foot deep in this rice paddy where they were working him over. I was watching from approximately 500 feet. He was kicked. He was beaten in many ways. Kneeling in this water, with his hands behind his back, I don't know if he was blindfolded or not. Being repeatedly knocked down into the water, set back upright, hit again, and knocked down. Concerning 50 caliber machine guns, many, many times, I have seen them mounted on the doors of Hueys, specifically to be used against ground troops. That's what you go up for is to kill ground troops. Go up in conjunction with firefly ships used at night, used at day, and this is fairly well known among us. I have seen, several times, C-123 aircraft working to the west of Saigon. There's a large river that's to the west of Saigon, runs roughly north and south.

I can't remember the name of it at the moment, but beyond this river there is absolutely nothing left. There were hundreds and hundreds of villages, marked on the map that I had with me, all kinds of names on the map, but you get over that area and there's nothing there at all. It's all been wiped out long ago. Now the C-123s are going out to that area with defoliant. I don't know exactly what chemical it was. I've seen formations of six C-123s out there, low level spraying with Air Force jets providing cover for them. And, I believe there was one time we were to be on stand-by for these people; in fact, I'm sure of it.

There was one time we were to be on stand-by for these people in that general area in case they ran into any ground fire. I have seen a herd of water buffalo CS'ed, because nothing was going on, the pilot flying the loach was getting bored and saw the water buffalo; he dropped one or two CS grenades on them and they stampeded. They crashed into a bunch of foliage next to the river and they went head over heels into the river, you know; it just completely drove them crazy. I don't know what happened to them after that. I don't know if water buffalo can swim or not. I never saw any of them swimming.

MODERATOR. We are running short on time and we do have a couple of things we wanted to do. One was to throw the panel open to a couple of questions, but before we did that, many of the vets, particularly the vets participating in this panel, have expressed the fact that they could go on and on for a long time, talking about various instances of brutality, torture, rape, everything that's been talked about here for the last two days. But one thing they felt was very important and which hasn't, in a sense, been done by many of the veterans was to say why this happened. What happens to them that this happens and how these things came about. Steve Pitkin in particular felt the need to try and express something about how these men become animals in a sense. I know several of the other vets on the panel want to mention it very briefly. So Steve why don't you start off.

PITKIN. I've sort of got a little hassle by the idea of coming up here, sitting down and telling basically war stories to everybody, because I'm sure, besides the FBI agents that we have in here, most of you people are against the war. Most of you people know atrocities have been committed. The thing I sort of wanted to impress was that there are different sorts of atrocities being committed. It doesn't necessarily have to be in Vietnam, although those are the ones that get the most attention. But, I'm sort of directing this one at the present because I think one of the most atrocious things about Vietnam is the way it was covered in the press. I guess it's sort of like you shouldn't have news reporters over there; you ought to have sports writers, box scores and everything. I guess the war's winding down, because this week we only lost 27 men and because Richard Nixon said so.

But ask any one of those 27 men if the war's winding down. Bet you won't get an answer, you know. Well, what I'm trying to say is one of the saddest experiences I had is when I returned from Southeast Asia and I was waiting to catch a plane from Frisco Airport to Baltimore. It's like two o'clock in the morning or something and four long-haired people came in. And, you know, it's okay with me, but they laughed at me and in a sense I really had to fight back tears, I didn't say anything. I tried not to let it phase me that much, but we're not tin soldiers, we're people; the people they sent over to Vietnam are blacks; they sent a lot of college graduates and college students over there. I don't know if this is a form of genocide, but believe me, if you look up the definition, it sort of hints to it.

I feel that if people knew more the human part of the American soldier in Vietnam and about the enormous underground and how well organized it is over there, they might have some second thoughts before they called me a pig or before they called me a tin soldier, laughed at me. I figured before I went over to Nam I had a choice of either going to jail or to Canada or making it over there. I figured that I was doing more in a capacity to attack it over there in Vietnam, where the problem was actually happening, than I would be sitting in jail. Although, believe me, anybody who does go to jail or does go to Canada, has my full support. I think it's an atrocity on the part of the United States Army (I don't know about the Marines, Navy, or anything else) to allow eight weeks of basic training, nine weeks of advanced infantry training, and then to send you against an enemy that's been fighting in his own backyard for twenty-five years. The training that they gave us, the infantry, really amounted to nothing but familiarization with the small-arms weapons and the explosives you would use once you got over there. We attacked a mock Vietnamese village in the snow at Fort Dix. An interesting point: a lot of times when we were put on line to attack a point of something, you were told not to fire until your left foot hit the ground. I remember asking a drill sergeant, "Do they really do this in Nam?" "Yeah, you know."

When I got to Nam it was like black had turned into white because I was totally unprepared. I was put into a recon unit operating in the Mekong Delta. I hadn't been taught anything about the weather, the terrain. I had been taught a little bit about booby traps, but that's really up to the guy who lays them; they can just be anything. It was just a hit and miss thing. You go over there with that limited amount of training and knowledge of the culture you're up against and you're scared. You're so scared that you'll shoot anything, that you'll look at your enemy and these people that you're sort of a visitor to. You'll look at them as animals and at the same time you're just turning yourself into an animal, too.

I'd say that's got my head spinning a little right now. The fact that I was actually at one time sort of animal and that now I have to come back and be civil again and people sort of expect a purpose and expect you just to have a definite purpose. You know, you're going to school, yeah, you're going to work, yeah. But there's like more and more veterans now that are just finding that there's no purpose, because nobody's ever given us one. The only purpose I had was surviving and getting the hell out.

QUESTION. One of the things I really wanted to say, and I feel is really important, and points up that not only are they using GIs to kill our sisters and brothers over in Asia, but they use GIs to police our ghettos and to scab in labor disputes. They use GIs on campuses to put down dissenters and the main reason that they are able to do this is because there's this huge isolation between civilians and GIs. GIs hate the way they look, I mean it's amazing the ends they go to to disguise the fact that they're GIs. Wigs, God; and it's because people, civilians, don't relate to them. A short- haired dude hitch-hiking they don't pick him up. They don't do anything and that's the way the military operates; they isolate you from the people; they isolate you from each other; they just build on this isolation and your fear. Like I said before, the only way that I think this war is going to be over is for active duty GIs to say that they're not going to fight this war; not go over to Vietnam and not fight that war.

PITKIN. I'd say that the government, and a lot of the people who sort of run this nation, have been telling a lot of GIs that the biggest detriment to our morale has been the long-haired, protesting, pinko sympathizer-type, but I think the biggest lift for my morale came when I was lying in Okinawa in the hospital there and a girl wrote me about a place called Woodstock, where 500,000 people had come together and it was so beautiful. It was the first time I smiled in a long time.

PANELIST. I wanted to say something also. A funny thing happened when I was in basic training. They had this flick about what is a communist and, it was pretty cool. They showed, you know, the dictatorship of the poletariat, socialized means of production and the people relate on a socialist basis and they're trying to get rid of the government. Wow, that sounds pretty cool, so I went up there, I went up to the guy, and I asked him, "Well, what's wrong with communism?" And he goes, "What are you? A communist?" I said, "No, I just watched your movie and I think I'm beginning to understand what a communist is." And they sent me on to somebody else and I was getting into trouble with that, so I cooled it. I went over to Vietnam and I found out that the Viet Cong and the National Liberation Front are called communists because they're fighting for people. I came back to the States, and got out, and I find out now that I have to fight for people. And I'm called a communist. Well, _____ it, I am one.

MODERATOR. Apart from the suggestions which have been made now and we've been making in the past, I wonder if one or two of you who did express a desire to say something about this earlier want to say something more about how you actually went through a transition and about what it did to you. Particularly if you were against the war and went over, or express your feelings as to how this came about and then we would like to take some questions.

DONNER. It wasn't till OCS that I started realizing some of the things that were being done to me. One of the things that we found out after we had been in OCS for a while was that there was a purpose for all the Mickey Mouse harassment which we were put under. We were put under immense physical strain, running several miles, several tens of miles each day. We were put under, what is for the Army, at least, the intense mental strain, the studies there, but they weren't that tough. We were put under intense emotional strain, being away from everybody, being not allowed to leave the barracks for about five months. And we were told later that the purpose of this was sort of a Pavlov's dog type thing. That after a person is put under immediate strain for a long period of time that he sooner or later snaps. After that snap occurs, he becomes much more receptive any ideas which are given him and that was the entire purpose of all the harassment. Well I started looking back and putting that together with AIT and basic.

The same forces were operating there. They shave your head. They make you lose your entire sense of identity. Instead of reacting as the individual, you are reacting as a group. The group, honorary eliteness, that's not quite the word, but it's forced upon you. You must react together or you're all punished. This continues and continues and continues. I was lucky in the sense that when I was at OCS, Dr. Howard Levy was on trial, and Dr. Levy changed my thinking for me in a very large fashion. He at least made some of the others think. I don't know what else I can say except for that. I'd like to also point out that GIs are a repressed minority which should be able to relate with the black movement more than anybody else in that each time you walk off that post and into the next Leesville, or Fleasville, or whatever the name of the town is offpost, you're charged more money for anything you buy. You're hated more by the civilians, there. You live in your own sort of ghetto which you usually escape from by going further out and growing long hair. Unfortunately, our black brothers can't escape.

QUESTION. I'd like to ask one question of anybody on the panel, and that is did anybody here try at any point when he was in Vietnam to fight the policy which called on him to do these things and if he did, what happened? Or if he didn't, why didn't he?

MODERATOR. Does anyone want to tackle that?

PITKIN. You were so contained in how much liberty and how much mobility of thought that you were allowed in Vietnam, while you were serving there, and due to the circumstances no matter where your head's at, you were under somebody. If you're being fired at by the enemy, he really doesn't care who you are and you really don't care who he is. I think one of the biggest ways the guys fought the army, or any policy, was through lingering or shamming. We had a lot of guys who would use a P-38, which was something you open C-rations with, a can opener. They would cut their legs, take a cotton ball and soak it with lighter fluid, tape it to these cuts, walk around in it, and some beautiful sores would appear. Any way you could damage yourself.

The first time I walked into my unit, I walked in and a brother was laying on a bed, stoned out of his mind. Another brother came down with a bat on his leg, broke it right in front of me and like, you know, I asked what's happening, and he says, "Why don't you go out and hunt bush for a while and you'll find out!" That was about the only way you could do it unless you fragged any of the officers or NCOs or got them out in the field or else beat the _____ out of them. But a lot of times we found that we were such strangers to this game, and you had a captain and a lieutenant who knew how to call in really good artillery; who could get your _____ out of a tight bind. You'd sort of, you wouldn't want to frag him. But, the CID, which is over there, they tried busting a unit of grunts, who had just come out of the field for a rest period; four of them were killed, this is before I got there, and they went to bust my unit when we got out of the field, too. Five of them walked in with my captain, my lieutenant, and a lieutenant from Bravo Company and the first one in line says, "You gentlemen are smoking the wrong cigarettes, I suggest you put them out." His eyes lit up, he turned out and walked off with everybody. I turned around and every _____ guy in my platoon had his gun raised and I guess he sort of got the message. I guess the idea behind that was that if we were out there and we didn't know if we were going to be alive from day to day, I didn't want a man with spit shine jungle boots and starched fatigues coming in and tell me he's going to put me away in LBJ for smoking a harmless weed.

MCCUSKER. I'm going to try and lead to it. It's going to be hard to articulate, in a way, because it's very complex. The atmosphere of the military is definitely a repressed minority. It not only operates on, but it feeds on fear. The unity that is pounded into you is yet a separate unity, because each is afraid of the other. Each is supposed to police each other and keep the other from doing anything extreme which might get the unit in trouble because they're punished similarly together.

If one man does something, the whole outfit pays for it. So this form of unity is one yet built to separate you from each other. Each man is supposed to know his way around a little bit. He gets to know how to get around regulations for his own personal safety or he learns how to operate where he can keep some form of freedom for himself, however minor. It could be the way he wears his clothes at particular times or what he does on the base. Like a young woman Marine I was talking to on the airplane last night. She was telling me about these medics that she knows at Camp Pendleton who, when many lifers come up for discharge, the medics can't find their medical records so these lifers are put on a medical hold. They just say the records are somewhere in Japan and they can hang on for one or two years.

So there's many small ways in which you can try to screw up the brass and the lifers; from record books all the way to fragging the guy and that happens many, many times. Now, within your own conscience, in the spectrum of war, that whole Vietnam thing is based on fear. You're scared to death all the way over there.

You're told continually that you're going to die if you don't do this, if you don't do that. That every Vietnamese is going to kill you; that booby-trapped babies are going to be sent against you and old grandmothers are coming to throw bombs at you, which can be very, very true and in many instances is true, but the question is not asked why that old grandmother wants to throw a bomb at you. That's the part of the discussion that doesn't occur. But even in Nam, as many atrocities as there were and as many people committed atrocities, there were many, many who did not and tried to prevent them in their own small ways. You could tell a man, "Hey, don't fire that hut or don't ding that round," and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't work. Men went on their own to not do those things.

They're having a problem in Vietnam right now, at least the military's having a problem in Vietnam; a lot of guys aren't firing their guns. It's like World War II again. In the last parts of the war, they said maybe one out of seven were firing their rifles. I think the average now might be one out of ten. Because now, like when I went over to Nam, there wasn't really much political dissent. What political dissent there was, was squelched. So we didn't have too much to guide by.

The captain over there right now has had five years of a very strong anti-war movement that reached every level of society and he knows what's going on. He's been pretty well educated outside the military education. So though he's over there right now, he knows what to do and what not to do and what steps to take to prevent atrocities. So it comes down to an individual consciousness and discipline of action, and when I say discipline, I killed men because I wanted to survive. I didn't question why I should survive over the men I killed. I killed so that I could feel the guilts and question myself as to why I wanted to survive and that's a bind in which we were all put.

Some men exceeded the self-defense and did a lot of things they would be locked up for doing here in the United States. Vietnam has been pictured as a good football game; it's been pictured as a legal rumble. For a lot of people, it's been that way. In the streets I learned how to feel like a Vietnamese, I've been clubbed; I've been maced. Now I have a little bit of feeling and I needed that and maybe most of us need it. As a matter of fact, Portland, Oregon, itself, finally got clubbed back in the spring and a lot of the white kids, middle-class white kids learned how to feel like a black man in this country and like a Vietnamese in Vietnam.

There is only one real true way, unfortunately of learning something to your bones, and that's to have something try and break them. Okay, so now many, many vets are out in the streets. The soldiers that they send against us are clubbing down veterans who are trying to prevent them from going to Vietnam. These soldiers are clubbing us down so they can have the privilege of going to Vietnam. The soldiers themselves don't consider it a privilege, of course, but I find that a great tragedy. Because as more and more vets get out into the street and the soldiers are used against those vets, that to me is a very great tragedy.

PANELIST. Yeah, but the soldiers that are used against vets in this country are enlisted reserve and National Guard and they aren't going to go anyplace except to a meeting once a month and to summer camp every summer. Those are the real cowards in this whole mess.
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Re: Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veter

Postby admin » Mon Jun 06, 2016 4:05 am

11. THIRD WORLD PANEL

MODERATOR. Can I have your attention? The black veterans are coming up to speak on the black experience with racism in Vietnam and we'd like for you to give your attention, if possible. Any Third World people, you know, people of color, all of us. Do you think the minority groups could have some water, please?

Excuse me, is this the bulk of the press that's going to be covering this panel? You're not even from the press, so the press is not even covering this, right? Can somebody on the staff go see about the press?

AUDIENCE. We're here and we're important. We'll pass the word right on.

MODERATOR. Say, people, isn't this typical racism for the press? Okay, we're ready to deal. My name is Donald P. Williams. I spent eight years in the service. My unit was alerted to go to Vietnam in March of 1968. They went to Saigon, but I went to Stockholm. When I got to Stockholm, I sent my commanding officer a big picture postcard and told him good luck. I want to make an opening statement, and then we're going to have the brothers from the Third World give an opening statement. Then we'll give it to the panel.

We, the black veterans of the Vietnam war, are expressing our experience with racism in Vietnam. We intend to show by our testimony that the war in Vietnam is nothing more than an extension of the racist policies as practiced here in the United States. Racism is the motivating factor in determining America's genocidal policy against non-whites. The overwhelming majority of people killed or maimed in Vietnam are non-whites, whether they are Vietnamese, Viet Cong, or American blacks. Whites' statistics say that blacks constitute only ten percent of the total population in the United States, yet they represent at least forty percent of the fighting forces in Vietnam, and, in many cases, due to racism, blacks are the overwhelming majority in the combat areas. The statement you will hear this afternoon reflects the reality of American society's attitudes towards non- whites. This attitude emanates from years and years of oppression based on the refusal of American people to eliminate racism. At this time I'll turn you over to the brothers from the Third World and they're going to make an opening statement.

SHIMABUKURO. My name is Scott Shimabukuro and I'm representing the Asian brothers and sisters, not only in the United States and veterans, but also in Asia. Now this tribunal, or investigation, is into the treatment of Asians, and I'm relating this not only to Asians in Vietnam but to Asians all over the world. The United States has a policy of racism that in Vietnam is only an extension of this, and we feel that since this gathering is to bring these things out, we think there should have been a bigger representation from not only the Asian people in this community and in this United States, but of all Third World people, because we are the people who are receiving all these crimes against us and we feel we should be heard. We've been quiet too long.

ROMO. My name is Barry Romo. I represent, supposedly, the Chicano community, which isn't hard to do, because I'm the only one here. Chicanos constitute the largest percentage of deaths of any minorities, which is way out of proportion to their numbers. It's because of language and culture. This thing has turned into a horror show. All it has been has been the atrocities that have been committed and not the reasons why. And it boils down to one thing, and that's racism. The people dying are Third World and the people getting hurt are Third World, and that has to be brought out.

HANEY. My name is Evan Haney. I'm an Oklahoma Indian, and I would like to say that I am probably the only one here who is an Indian, and there should have been more here, but we have our own fights to do in our own communities. And, I represent the Indian community all over the United States and I would like to say that I hope to convey the feeling that you know that we are out fighting and not in a position where...well, I don't know what to say right now, but I represent the Indian community across the United States.

ROSE. My name is Earl Rose, and I'm a representative from the West Coast. I'd like to talk about the miseducation and how they take Third World people and through miseducation and using the word Cong as a symbol of killing, instead of using the words, "Go out and kill Vietnamese people," how the word "Cong" is used against Third World people to manipulate and to kill them. That's all.

MODERATOR. At this time, I'd like to introduce the co- moderator, Allen Akers, and he's going to introduce the rest of the members of the panel.

AKERS. Yes, my name is Allen Akers. I was a Pfc. in the United States Marine Corps. I was attached to Echo Company, Second Battalion, Fourth Marines. I was in Vietnam from 1965 to 1966 in the Chu Lai area. I was an infantryman and the bulk of my duties was search and destroy missions.

MODERATOR. Steve?

STEPHENS. My name is Pfc. Charles--ex-Pfc. Charles N. Stephens. I was in the 101st Airborne Division, First Brigade, and I was a Medic from December 1965 to February 1967

LIGHT. My name is William Light. I served in the Americal Division of the 1/6, E Company, Echo Recon. I was a grunt.

CAREY. My name is Orville Carey. I was in First Logistics Command in Pleiku. I was a postal clerk.

BROOKS. My name is Larry D. Brooks. I served with the First Marine Division, Second Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment. I served in Vietnam from July of '69 to January of '70.

LLOYD. My name is Murphy Lloyd. I was in the 173rd Airborne Brigade, Separate. My MOS was 11 F, Recon Intelligence, and I worked from the Saigon area all the way up to Dak To in the Northern region.

MODERATOR. Okay, thank you very much, Larry.

NAKAYAMO. My name is Mike Nakayamo. I was in the First Marine Division, First Battalion, Fifth Marines.

SHIMABUKURO. My name is Scott Shimabukuro. I was in the Third Marine Division, Charlies Battery, 13th Marines, at Khe Sanh.

ROMO. Barry Romo, former First Lieutenant, Americal Division, 196 and the 11th Infantry Brigade.

HANEY. My name is Evan Haney. I served with the United States Navy in Da Nang, NSA, Naval Support Activity, Da Nang.

ROSE. My name is Earl Rose, Third Marine Division, U.S. Marine Corps.

AKERS. Okay, thank you very much, Mr. Rose. At this point we would like to get into the testimony of some of the personal experiences. Myself, I'll start off and then we'll stem from there. I'm sure if you've been watching some of the news media on television you would have seen some of these mercy missions that are sent out into the Vietnamese villages to help the people there. Now, the hospital ship, Hope, that is docked just outside the three-mile zone in Vietnam, will transport nurses in their, you know, clean white smocks, and everything, and send them into villages to help Vietnamese children, you know, if they're sick or if they have any ailments or diseases. Now this is the picture that they'll portray, you know, the white man coming in with his doctor bag and he's going to help you out with your sick and ailing. Now any time they want to portray the black man to the Vietnamese, they will have us situated so that on search and reconnoiter missions, we would be the first ones into the village, shooting and hunting through the huts for Viet Cong.

Consequently, very seldom do you run into a village where there are any men at all. There are usually just women and children, so you can imagine the picture that these villagers see when they look outside their little homemade bomb shelters and see big heavy-set black dudes with rifles aimed hip-high and grenades in one hand, shooting and firing. So consequently this here is one of the mental tactics that is used over there to keep the black man from identifying with the Vietnamese people--because for all intents and purposes we are one and the same. There are many relationships between the Vietnamese and the black man as far as skin tone and a lot of cultural things, for that matter.

Another thing I would like to talk on is the psychological effect of tactics that is used on black troops. What they would do is they would pull us in to a barrack-like situation and keep us there for about a month at a time. And, consequently, when you're sitting there in garrison, doing nothing but smoldering in the hot sun, you begin to build up friction among the troops. And your white troops might be playing their country and western music and you have your black troops who will be playing our soul music and that'll get to going back and forth and if we can get hold of any liquor or anything, this builds to the animosity among the groups.

So consequently they get to fighting amongst each other, and the higher brass knows, well, it's about time to cut these guys loose on some villages somewhere. So they check back on some of their old recon reports where they have heard of some Viet Cong suspects being in the area and they just route them out to these particular and cut loose with them. They give them an ambiguous order, like something to the extent of, "All right, you're going into an area where there are known Viet Cong, so you are to reconnoiter by fire." So that when you get there, anything that moves you're going to fire on. So this is one of the mind-taxing things that he does to make you want to attack somebody even though you know that you don't want to kill another Vietnamese because you feel that he might be, in fact, your brother.

STEPHENS. When I arrived at the base camp of the 101st First Brigade, in Phan Raang, in December, I was told never to go to "B" Company, because "B" Company, that's boo-boo company. They're always getting ambushed. They're always getting a lot of guys killed. They're always under strength. What I wasn't told about "B" Company was that "B" Company was all black.

The only thing in "B" Company that was white was the officers and the platoon leaders, rather, the officers and the platoon sergeant. Also, when I was fortunate to get sick and go to the hospital, I went downtown one day. I went to a bar, and I asked for an orange soda. But they didn't have any orange soda. So I asked for a Coke, but they didn't have any Coke. And the guy next to me, he ordered a Coke and he got the Coke. So I asked the girl, I says, "Well, I thought you said you don't have any Cokes." She says, "Well, you no same same me. Me number one, you number ten." And I was also told that I have a tail. Where?

LIGHT. I'm going to start off with racism on a personal basis. For reasons of my own, I chose not to go over to Vietnam. Behind this, I was railroaded, and handcuffed, and taken under guard to Vietnam. They forwarded orders to my company commander of my background when I was in basic and AIT, relevant to my behavior. From the jump, he discriminated against me. I was commonly referred to as a "field nigger." I was on an operation. We were under attack by a regiment of VC. The outcome was like seven to eight guys out of about thirty-five left. The first thing my first sergeant did when he called in was to find out if I was dead or not. The majority of my company consists of white guys, but the majority of brothers are in the field. The ratio is like sixty to forty and most brothers, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans, have to walk point to more or less prove their manhood, on an individual basis, that they are just as much man as the next guy. Consequently, there were all forms of racism.

I was in the stockade in Long Bin for three months. I saw a brother fed rat poison because he chose not to do some of the things that the racist MPs asked him to do. A lot of brothers were beaten, handcuffed, and gagged, and thrown into solitary confinement without food. My first meal in solitary confinement was mashed potatoes and coffee grounds. That was it. You'd be surprised at the things that happen over there. I came home, and I tried to apply for some money from the VA. They told me, "Well, look, you wait two weeks or a month. Come back, you know, later on when we get the chance." I came back in two weeks. I had to fill out more forms, more paperwork, I kept getting the runaround, etc. Since I've been home, I can relate this to a lot of guys, white and black. It's hard to find employment for veterans. Dig it. I don't understand what the big thing is. All the guys are coming home from Vietnam and can't find work. Like, it should be some type of system where a brother or somebody coming home from Vietnam is guaranteed employment. I went back to my old job and the guy told me, he says, "Good, when do you want to start, today or tomorrow? "

So I says, "Well, I'll start tomorrow." And he looks on my DD-214, which is my Army discharge files, and then he saw I was in Vietnam and he said, "What did you do?" and I said, "Infantry." And he says, "Oh, wait a minute." He came back two minutes later and told me he didn't need me. I took a test with a hundred and fifty guys and only twenty passed, and just because I had a general discharge, I wasn't accepted at that particular corporation. That's all I got to say. Thank you.

CAREY. Well, I was in administrative service for most of my time in the service. Most administrative service is about ninety percent white, maybe ten percent black, and I originally was in Germany. I volunteered to go to Vietnam, to get away from what I considered overt racism that was going on over there. We had Klansmen, white hats, and this was more or less accepted as policy. Nobody worried about cross burnings or stuff. I probably could have stood it generally a little bit better if I had been maybe in a field company with more blacks, but it was only about four blacks in a company of about maybe seventy people, seventy or a hundred people and four blacks, and it was just a little bit too much. There was no chance for a promotion. You were handed out all the vile details, and in general we got a lot of practical jokes and pranks pulled on us. The only way I could get out of Germany was to volunteer to go to Vietnam. Upon arriving in Vietnam, I found out that the situation in the rear echelon companies is much the same. There are very few blacks in rear echelon companies, mostly whites. The excuse was, I believe, that there weren't enough blacks qualified to work in things like finance, personnel, and the other backup companies. Okay, thank you.

BROOKS. As I said before, my name is Larry Brooks. I'd like to relate to the people how the racist system over there deals with brothers that was more or less a mental destruction. Like they had their own ways of dealing with brothers that talked up. If a brother talked up and what he was talking about, didn't know what he was talking about, he was given time in the brig, or off his hours, or fined some money. Like brothers that knew what they were talking about or knew where they were coming from, they would deal with them by giving them good jobs.

I was in the First Marine Division and they like had put out the Third Marine Division. They sent all the brothers from the Third Marine Division and they sent all the whites back to Okinawa and back to the States. And then after I got to rapping and telling them how it was, well, they told me, we think something is wrong with you, and they pulled me in the rear and put me in the kitchen. So I worked my way from bottom mess man to chief mess man. Actually, I played on Whitey. I knew that I wanted to get out of the field, so I played on Whitey to get a good job and after I got the job I rapped again. So, officially, the captain came to me to say, "Well, something just ain't right, son." So he pulls me in and said, "If you don't start acting right we're going to send you to the psychiatrist." So, boom they sent me to the psychiatrist, and I asked him what his problem was, you dig? After a while, the dude sure enough thought that I was ready to dance, so they sent me back. They put me back in the kitchen and I started washing pots. So officially I was head of all the brothers in the mess section, and so I started organizing a meeting in the mess hall every night.

So they sent me up to the colonel and he checked my temperature and sent me back to the psychiatrist again. I asked him, "You got to let me see somebody." So they thought maybe they'd give me a three-day leave, and I went to Bangkok, Thailand, and stayed for six days.

I came back and it seemed like all the brothers that I had on mess duty with me were going back to the field, so I ran down and asked my first sergeant what happened, and he told me, "Be cool, you'll be leaving here in seven days." This was right up my alley, because I had over half a year left.

Up until today, now (I got out in January '70), I have a discharge here, I don't even know what I got it for. It doesn't state a reason why I was discharged from the military. This is a good discharge; I didn't do all my time, you understand, I didn't get hurt, and yet here I am. Like when I apply for a job, they ask what did you get out for. So I scratch my head. I say, "Well, really, I can't tell you."

They state on your discharge why you were discharged. Mine is just a blank. I don't have no bad record. I wasn't no hero. You see, I don't know what the deal was. So these are some of my personal experiences in Vietnam. If the press were here, I wish they'd write the government and tell me what I'm doing out of the service. My expiration date wasn't but two days ago, and I've been out a year.

LLOYD. My name is Murphy Lloyd, and right here before me I have two discharges. Yeah, well, I went in twice. I went in in '61 to '63. And something funny happened. Around '66 I got patriotic because the President said he needed men to fight in Vietnam and at the time I really believed that I had just as much to fight for as anybody else in Vietnam regardless of what color he was. I just felt that this was my country too. But upon arriving in Vietnam, I found a different story altogether. For the first thing, I arrived in Vietnam on a Saturday, and Sunday morning I had been awarded the CIB. That's the Combat Infantry Badge, a star. After receiving this, things just started that I didn't want to believe were actually happening. I had been hearing about how racist the Army was, but I didn't want to believe this because I judge a man not by his color but by him being a man, regardless of what he is. But I started finding out; that in the field, I went over there, as a communications specialist, and while receiving my gear the man told me, "I'm sorry, we don't need a communications specialist, we need a grunt."

He got to issuing me Claymore mines and things I didn't know anything about. And when I got out in the field, I noticed that ninety percent of the outfit out there were from minority groups. They weren't just blacks, they were Chicanos, Indians, anything else you want to name. We were there. Quite naturally we couldn't complain about rank, because we were getting all the rank because there wasn't anyone else out there to get the rank but us because we were in the leadership position. This is true; I wouldn't lie to you. You know, it's funny when you look back at it. Like I just jumped up and said, "Well, boom, my country needs me." And I went over there to fight, and come back home to this thing here that they call freedom. And last night while on the way home, after leaving the meeting, over on Emerson Street, the police stopped me. So I go in my pocket to give the policeman my license and he happened to see this (Vietnam Veterans Against the War button). And he made a statement about Miss Fonda, I wouldn't like to repeat the words here, but, wow, it was pretty deep. So like I told him I was doing what I feel I had to do. So there I go down to jail. So I spent the night in jail last night. If you see me nod every now and then, it's from that. I could say some more things, but I think I'll pass it on to my man here.

MODERATOR. I just got a message here. Michael Oliver, a Vietnam veteran, has a statement to read regarding something very important. So where's Mike?

OLIVER. Sisters and brothers, we have just received word from Detroit that United States Senator George McGovern [Democrat, South Dakota] and Representative John Conyers [Democrat, Michigan] called today for immediate investigation by the United States...[Applause drowns him out]...immediate investigation by the United States Senate and the House of Representatives of allegations arising from testimony given by a group of honorably discharged United States veterans of war in Vietnam at the three-day Winter Soldier investigation being conducted in Detroit.

Chief amongst these charges are reports that the United States committed ground troops action inside Laos as long ago as February 1969, contrary to affirmations by government officials that no such incursions had occurred. Senator McGovern charged that the Winter Soldier Investigation testimony provides evidence of the administration's growing credibility gap in Indochina military affairs. "Last week," McGovern said, "we were told by Defense Secretary Melvin Laird that our combat troops have not operated outside Vietnam. A few days ago we learned that some of our servicemen were on the ground in Cambodia. Now there are reports invasions into Laos as long ago as early 1969. These are serious charges which require immediate and intensive review. The American people must know all the facts about our military policy in Vietnam.

Congressman Conyers recalled similar reports he received during his 1969 tour of Vietnam. "The charges that our command office sanctioned interrogation by torture and other brutal acts, the occurrence of atrocities without investigation or punishment, and that racism still pervades our Armed Forces require complete disclosure. I shall ask for the full transcript of the Winter Soldier Investigation hearings and I will propose that these veterans be brought to Washington to deliver their testimony before the appropriate Congressional authorities."

During the first day of public hearings, thirty-five veterans of Vietnam service described a wide variety of atrocities and war crimes in which they participated or which they witnessed during their tours of duty, often in the presence or with the approval of their officers. The veterans' testimony included charges of killing of unarmed women, children, and elderly peasants; the use of torture to elicit information from captured prisoners; the shooting of enemy soldiers attempting to surrender; and the wanton burning of Vietnam villages. Veterans who served with the First Marine Division in Quang Nam Province of South Vietnam told of an American ambush executed on Christmas Eve 1969, during what was to have been a cease-fire for U.S. ground troops. The witness said, "Twenty-five Vietnamese were killed, but only one weapon was actually found. An officer then gathered previously captured weapons from other units in the area to justify the labeling of the new kills as enemy soldiers."

The Detroit Free Press confirmed this incident from another Marine who had been present in Vietnam at that time but was unaware of the Winter Soldier Investigation. His recollection was that there had been thirty-one persons killed in the ambush.

AUDIENCE. Let's go to Washington and tell the world about it! How about it?

PANELIST. Okay, ladies and gentlemen. I think I might throw a monkey wrench into the fine working machine for a second here. For the last couple of days you have been receiving testimony from the war of injustices to non-whites over in Vietnam. Now, if these injustices and these here genocides are perpetrated against the non-whites in Vietnam, the Vietnamese soldiers, and they are solely admitted since yesterday, Sunday, on television, and this morning, what do you think they've been doing to the black soldier they've been serving along with? Just think about that.

WILLIAMS. I'd like to pose a number of questions to the panel here, and then we want to open it up for some questions from the audience.

AUDIENCE. Let's let our brothers speak. Our brothers from the Third World, minority groups, all of us are called underdogs, masterminds of the world; rap, brothers...

NAKAYAMO. My name is Mike. I wanted to rap about racism directed against Asians in the military and in Vietnam. First of all, I felt quite a bit of racism before I joined the service, okay, that's understood. When I got into the service I experienced amplified racism. As soon as I got off the bus at my boot camp, I was referred to as Ho Chi Minh, which, you know, was...

AUDIENCE. A compliment!

AUDIENCE. Right on! Right on!

NAKAYAMO. Yeah! I can dig it. I was referred to as "Jap" and "gook" constantly through my training. Then I knew I was going to go overseas to fight for this country. I can rap about quite a few instances, right in boot camp, but I'll just move on to my experiences in Vietnam. While on Vietnam, I was in the infantry, but a few times they let you come back to the rear. Most Marines are allowed to go into PXs without showing an ID, and I was not allowed to go into the PX on a number of occasions with an ID because I was yellow. I was constantly referred to as "gook" in Vietnam also, and, relating this back to the United States, I know a number of my Asian brothers and sisters who are being referred to as "gooks" by returning servicemen, by American people in the Los Angeles area.

The thing that bothered me about this investigation is that it seemed as though people were trying to cover up the issue of racism, which I believe is one of the definite reasons why we are in Vietnam. We talked a lot about atrocities, but the systematic and deliberate genocide of all Asian people through the use of racism cannot be allowed any longer.

AUDIENCE. Take your time, man, you're doing good. You're telling the truth.

NAKAYAMO. I'm sure I don't have to go into detail about the racism and atrocities being committed against Asians, because you've been hearing that all week, or since Sunday. But the things that the brothers are relating have been happening in the United States since the Third World people have lived here. Now there's been a thing on relocation of Vietnamese from their homes to relocation camps. That strikes home pretty close, because my parents and grandparents, who were supposed to be American citizens, were relocated during the Second World War, and that just amplifies the racism that has been coming down in this country. And also, you know about the Indian brothers that this country belongs to. When Evan speaks, he can go into that, how they were robbed. But I want to go into the atrocities against the people here, because the people have been telling you how they treat the Asian brothers and sisters. Now they bring this home with them, and this has a great effect on the Asians here in the United States.

Just to bring this a little more personal, two personal friends of mine were hitch-hiking through Ohio and on the road a few of these people (I think they were people) got out of the thing and called them Vietnamese gooks and beat them so bad they were in the hospital for six months. Now things like this should also be investigated, because this is crimes that are committed here, too, against all people, working class and Third World people in the United States. And I feel some of the crimes here should be investigated in Washington because these are just as great in magnitude if not greater, because we are supposed to be free. I haven't felt free, because I guess I haven't been. Now you've heard of instances of genocide and murder in Vietnam.

I'd like to relate a few that have happened in the United States. Now you all know what happened in Chicago. The only black brother on the Chicago Eight was thrown in jail and they're going to try to keep that brother there. I said they're going to TRY to keep him there. Now this is just racism. Now this brother was trying to speak up for his rights and because he was black, he was treated worse than even the white radicals. Now there's got to be wrong there. You know they've been ripping off the Panthers all over the United States. For what? For their right to be free. That's just like the Vietnamese, they're fighting for their right to be free, so the military is oppressing all liberation struggles all over the world and here in the United States. Now this has to stop. We've been hearing about trying to get this war over, investigations and such into genocide. I'd like the people to get behind trying to end the genocide here and get behind some people like Angela Davis and free ourselves over here. I'd like to say Free Angela, and All Power to the People.

MODERATOR. I'd like to pose some questions to the panel. Anyone can answer them. I would like to know, were those black men who were considered troublemakers forced to the front before other men more qualified.

ROMO. If I can say one word before you go on, just one word about the Chicano, the Puerto Rican, the brown. If it's all right, thank you. The brown people, the Puerto Rican, the Chicano, suffer from a problem in America, not only of racism, but of a language and a cultural difference. The ghettoizing that goes on in his early life, his economic background of relegation to farm work, etc., puts him in position that when he goes in the service, the only thing the service feels he's qualified for is the front line and infantry duty. As a consequence, when he gets to the field, he cannot relate to his officers or NCOs. He can't understand the language and he can't understand the culture behind it. As I said before, the Chicano, the brown, the Puerto Rican, suffers statistically more casualties than any other minority and the white. I think this has to be brought out and it has to be stopped.

HANEY. My name is Evan Haney, and I would like to point out that if you took the Vietnamese war, of the American war, as it is, and compared it to the Indian wars a hundred years ago, it would be the same thing. All the massacres were the same. Nowadays they use chemical warfare; back then they put smallpox in the blankets and gave them to the Indians. You could just go right on down the line and name them out and they would be the same thing. One thing I would like to bring up about racism is that I have grown up with it all my life, and when I was small I was exposed to this, and I kept growing and learning. But it was so much that when I watched TV or something and watched the Indians and the cavalry, I would cheer for the cavalry. That's how bad it was. Right now a lot of Indian people are...they're not going back to the old ways, but they're thinking about the old ways. You can take any culture of these people up here on the panel, any culture of you out there, and if you look back into it deep, they had something good. Way back, they had it. And then people started getting into a money bag, and that's when it all happened. When we made treaties long ago, it was for as long as the grass shall grow and as long as the rivers shall flow. The way things are going now, one of these days the grass isn't going to grow...and the rivers aren't going to flow...

ROSE. I guess most of it's been said. All the brothers said real beautiful, all the Asian brothers, and my Indian brother here. I have been in the Marine Corps for ten years, ten long years in the Marine Corps. Went to Vietnam twice. When I looked around me in those ten years I found out who was really fighting this war, and all I've seen was Third World people and poor whites fighting this war. Most of the poor whites in the war were in the positions of power, more or less the sergeants and officers.

People can say, how Third World people go in the service and fight? All through the years we've been miseducated, all through high school, elementary school, and then we have one more choice left, and that's the military. To make this great big American splash, like in Hitler youth, we got to make our name in the sky. So we go into the service. My brother was there in 1965; he felt like it was his patriotic duty. I did the same thing in '65. "I'm going to wipe them all out, really do it, get my medals, really make it on the scene." Then you go out and they keep using words like Cong and slopehead and slanteyes. I said, "Hey, those are the same words they use in the States against me, against Third World people." They dehumanize these people so much that it's easy to go out and kill them or blow them away, because they are dehumanized, and it becomes in your mind, they become more dehuman to you. But as you go on, you've got to realize that this is foolish, you're killing our own brothers. So that out of ten years this is what I got out of it and it makes me very bitter. A lot I'd like to say, and I'm not going to say, because the rest is going to be practice. I have no more time to talk.

MODERATOR. I'd like to pose a number of questions to the panel and then we're going to open it up for discussion from the audience. I'd like to ask: Were the black soldiers, considered as troublemakers, ever forced to go to the field and qualified people were kept back?

LIGHT. They had their ways. Whitey would play this game. He'd have us ready to go in to the field before we even got over there. We were trained to go to the field back in the States so Whitey gets the typewriter, you get the rifle. That's the way it went down. You couldn't beat the game.

MODERATOR. I'd like to know, how did you think the Vietnamese looked upon you as people of color?

LLOYD. I had a few experiences, you know. I met quite a few Vietnamese, old women and children and to me they looked up to the black man--those that had been oriented properly-- looked up to the black man something like for help more or less. Most of the time we'd go in the village, we'd go in there with food or candy or clothes if we had it and the little kids were always around us and then some of them would come up and look for a tail and different things. When they run it down to you, they try to make you understand that you are part of them by being black in your blood line. We have the same blood that they have, something like, you know, it's just like about that. We related to them and why should we be fighting them and we're the same color? This is what it boils down to.

PANELIST. I'd like to speak to that just two seconds-- about how we feel. We went over in Vietnam the first time in 1965. Vietnamese people, because of the economic factor (and that most of the GIs over there, say more or less white, went into town and spent all the money)--the Vietnamese people in the towns looked at us more or less black people as down on because we were more or less discriminated against. White GIs discriminated against black GIs, who in the towns we had our own little section. We were outsiders, let's say. We were more or less discriminated against and when we went to buy something, they always would try to refuse it, or say what the brother said about our tails supposed to be growing, and always asking us if our tails were going to come out at 12 o'clock and all this kind of thing. And towards the end, the second time I went over in 1969, the most beautiful thing I ever seen when we was driving a truck come by a village and the Vietnamese people gave the power sign for black people. That was outasight.

AKERS. Something that's food for thought, when we went into Chu Lai, Vietnam, we did a lot of relocating Vietnamese villages after we had destroyed their original homes. Consequently, along with the homes we had destroyed their way of life. Their own crops were destroyed and, as you know, their religion calls for them not to eat cows or water buffalo or beef, for that matter, so consequently the animals that they depended upon for meat such as dogs and wild animals out in the forest were ran off by our constant bombing and heavy artillery fire. So consequently they became dependent upon the United States dollar to exist. We had changed their way of normal living. They were content to live the way they were, off the land, growing their rice and worshipping their God, and then when we come over there we destroyed their means of obtaining food.

We have destroyed their means of sustaining themselves whereas they had to figure out ways of getting money from us or getting food from us. It would get to the point where they would actually raid our garbage trucks, our dumps, and I don't believe no human being should have to stoop that low under any circumstances. This is the type of genocide that is brought down upon the Vietnamese people in Vietnam and what makes it so bad is the black man is given these details to dump garbage. So who is the Vietnamese looking at to get their garbage from? None other than the black man. That conscientious mind-psyching, psychological warfare thing is still ever so present in that regards.

MODERATOR. Okay, what we're going to do now, we're going to open up questions from the audience, so just raise your hand. The question was, were you ever forced into doing something that made you look bad in front of the Vietnamese people as a black man?

LIGHT. There were a number of these degrading things that they did. Like a number of blacks in the rear, they had jobs assigned to them like KP. And getting trash, etc., things like that there. And the viewpoint, you know, like from the eyes of the Vietnamese, like, this is the type of thing a degrading person would do. It was very few whites that had anything to do with this type of detail and like they're destroying our culture and the Vietnamese culture. Now the Vietnamese, like, this is the type of thing a ture at it was. Mostly they had black guards degrading person would do. It was very few whites that had anything to do with this to serve the rest of his time. More or less the black guys there were more harder than the white ones.

NAKAYAMO. I would like to add another point. What's happening in the stockades with the GIs is not only happening there, it's happening in the prisons in America also. And, if you know, that's where most of the revolutionaries come from.

AKERS. It was brought up before we came up here that there was quite a few of the veterans who wanted to say something about the way this is all run and the way things have been brought up and if there are any veterans out there that have something to say, raise your hand, or come up here, and say it, you know.

QUESTION. (Inaudible)

MODERATOR. Did you all hear the question? How does the USO serve the black GIs?

PANELIST. Like, the USO, they come over with a bunch of _____ like every other, out of every ten shows, you'll see one sister and chances are her background is not of being a Negro, you understand, like there's discrimination there too. What I'm trying to say, like, they supposed to be serving by coming over, you know, playing games with us, you know, and more or less, there's more or less a teasing factor to me 'cause they don't serve any purpose at all. Maybe one other brother can answer better than I can.

MODERATOR. Okay, this brother here.

STEPHENS. When all the USO shows came over, I was with the 101st, we stayed in the field. None of those shows ever came to us. The only time we saw it was in the papers and that's it. Don't know anything about it. I never even heard the USO overseas.

MODERATOR. Okay.

LLOYD. For one complete while I was in Vietnam I saw practically fifteen minutes on one USO show, and that happened to be a black group, the Dixie Cups, if anybody remembers, and that had to be a long time ago. But now, when we did come out of the field what did they have for us? Country and western. Yeah, country and western well, look, you, yeah, you can listen to any type of music but that is the only black show I know that has been in Vietnam while I was there and that was the Dixie Cups and we didn't get but fifteen minutes of that because we had to move out into the field. Now, if you want to see a good USO show, be in the rear echelon, go to Saigon, somewhere an infantry troop is not welcome until after they took over the embassy there. Then an infantry troop was welcome in Saigon. If the MPs would catch you in Saigon and find out that you was in the infantry, they would write you a DR.

MODERATOR. A ticket, a disciplinary report. Okay, I'll call on this gentleman...the question was, how does the black person feel after fighting in Vietnam, then returning to the States and the situation, racism, is still running rampant here.

BROOKS. Well, like, when I came back from Vietnam, we arrived in California; I expected a brass band or a parade or something when I got off the plane, but the first instructions were that when you flew, officers come off first, then the sergeants, then the lower sections, well, the minority really. I was surprised. I expected a parade, somebody putting a medal on me, you understand? But he told me, he said, "You're on a working party, to carry suitcases, you understand?" So this was my experience, after coming back from fighting a war, you understand, like this is the way they greet us with a working party.

LLOYD. In coming back, if you're a peon, as he put it, you're lucky to get back, because if it's an officer that has to come back and there's one man on the manifest (that's the shipping list) too many, now that officer because he wants to go home, he's going to knock one of those privates or peons off where he can come home but yet you don't want to come home bad as an officer.

QUESTION. Are you saying that if you being an enlisted man if it's your turn to go home and the officer is supposed to come home at the same time, and there's only one space that's left...

LLOYD. That's right. What they call it in the army is RHIP--rank has its privileges.

MODERATOR. Okay, thank you very much.

QUESTION. I think we're trying to find out what can the white community do to help the black man in the draft.

WILLIAMS. I think, you know, that draft counseling is a very big disappointment. I think one thing, we don't have the legal aid and another thing is information. This information has to be a concerted effort to get this information out to draftable young people, and this is one thing we as veterans are going to rap about while we're here in Detroit. How can we use the knowledge that we have about the military, about being drafted, to assist people in our community.

PERRY. I have a comment on that. Sometimes in the service, being drafted in the service, is preferable to a lot of black cats to standing out on the streets, 'cause it's pretty rough out here for them, you know. The service is sometimes the way out, like keep you out of jail, keep you from starving to death, but it's preferable to being on the streets at times.

QUESTION. Is there a religious conflict between the North Vietnamese who are mostly Buddhists, and the South Vietnamese who are...

SHIMABUKURO. Religious differences play no difference in the conflict, because they're all the same people. They don't care about the religion. They're not like people over here, you know, they don't fight over that petty stuff.

MODERATOR. The people in Vietnam are fighting for something very important to them and that's their liberation and unification, self-determination of their country. This comes first, so these differences haven't even come into effect because they haven't even been given a chance to get unified yet because we're still over there.

QUESTION. When I was in Vietnam, I [PIECE MISSING]
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Re: Winter Soldier Investigation, Sponsored by Vietnam Veter

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Part 1 of 2

12. "WHAT ARE WE DOING TO VIETNAM?"

MODERATOR. I'm Wilbur Forrester, former 1st Lt. in the United States Marine Corps. During my 13 months in Vietnam, I spent five months as a Civil Affairs Officer on the regimental level. The topic of our panel tonight will be "What We Are Doing to Vietnam." Certainly testimony that we've had previously in this Winter Soldier Invetigation has shown very well the effects to the ecology, the land, and the atrocities performed on the people, physically. We will not go into that type of testimony on this panel: we will focus our attention primarily on the cultural aspects. I'd like at this time for the panel to introduce themselves and give you a brief background.

SPELLMAN. My name is J.W. Spellman, and I'm a teacher.

CLARK. My name is Jim Clark. I was in Vietnam from 1966 through 1969. I was there originally with the Agency for International Development. I resigned from that organization 1968 and took a position with Catholic Relief Services. I coordinated a project dealing with social welfare and the training of social workers in Vietnam under that. With AID I was a refugee officer for a year on the central coast and I spent a little over a year in Saigon as a special assistant for voluntary agencies. The remarks I will make will be primarily related to refugees and the problems associated with the generation of large numbers of refugees in Vietnam.

EMENY. My name is Mary Emeny. I was in Vietnam in 1967-68 with the American Friends Service Committee. Home was a Buddhist orphanage in Da Nang and after the Tet offensive, or the Tet whatever-you-call-it in 1968, I spent a large amount of time in Hue, some in Quang Tri and Cam Lo in refugee camps and mostly working with refugees and Buddhists in Central Vietnam.

CRAVEN. I'm J. Craven. I'm a student at Boston University and I was recently on a student delegation to Vietnam. I was in North Vietnam between December 4th and December 20th just this past year.

MODERATOR. Okay, we'll open the panel with Dr. Spellman.

SPELLMAN. I should begin by saying that I make no claim to any special expertise in the field of Vietnamese studies. I may have some knowledge of Asian societies in a more general context and it is in this regard that I speak. The United States presence in Vietnam is only one aspect of American involvement in Southeast Asia which is related, in my judgment, to its cultural imperialism throughout most of the traditional societies of the world. At no time in previous human history has the cultural integrity of so many millions of people of the world been threatened as it is today by the United States. This issue this evening touches not merely questions of national self-determination or the right to decide one's own self interest, it involves, if I may say so, matters of the gravest importance regarding the quality and the quantity of the life of this species. We are not very old as far as a species goes.

By our own proclamation, we are the most intelligent, the most powerful, the most creative, and the best of all life that this planet has seen. Indeed, the Book of Genesis tells us that after creating this world, with its apex as man, God gave man dominion over it. Now, we have been around for approximately two million years and our future is reasonably uncertain. Even the dinosaurs, whom we classify as rather dumb creatures, managed to survive for about 12 million years. There are many who question the likelihood of this species surviving for that long a period. The experiments of Darwin on the Galapagos Islands and the work of other scholars have shown that adaptation to environment is crucial to survival.

As I understand these lessons, they mean that each society has its own integrity, physical and cultural. As a consequence of its adaptation, according to its past experiences, its judgment and self-interest, values which may be desirable for one society, cause the gravest physical and mental harm when imposed on another. And it is in this light that I wish to view what we are doing to Vietnam. The bulk of Western values are based on the historical experiences of the Judaic-Christian and Greco-Roman cultures. Of prime importance in that value system has been the role assigned to the importance of belief, and this concept of belief occupies a cardinal role, particularly in Christianity.

Unless, we are told, you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you shall not have eternal life. And in this sense I wish to contrast that statement with the statement of the Lord Krishna and the Bhagavad Gita, the sacred Hindu text: "Whatsoever divine form any devotee with faith seek to worship, that same is divine." But the beliefs of Christianity were understood as exclusive and excluding beliefs. And it was part of our heritage, and it is part of our heritage to this day, that what is good for us ought to be universal and it ought to be good for everyone.

Earlier in our history we found that those who held a different perspective than we did on religion, and we made our ultimatum very clear, after we had poured scorn and ridicule on these people, calling them heathens and pagans and superstitious polytheists, we then killed them in the name of our religion. And the Crusades and witchcraft and the religious persecutions followed. Later (and this continues today), we felt that we had the righteous responsibility to condemn those who believed in political systems (rather than religious systems) that were different from our own. Thus it became quite legitimate to kill Communists and others simply because they were Communists, and because they believed in a different form of government from ours. There are still those today who believe with all the fervor that righteousness often summons, that we ought to continue on this path of killing those who disagree with us. I believe that we are now on the threshold of a new killing crusade.

Having killed for religious beliefs and then political beliefs, I believe we are now on the threshold of killing for economic beliefs. It takes no prophet to predict that there will be destruction and riots and killings in the name of economic creeds in the future. And that these will seem just as valid as religion and politics have seemed to our predecessors historically. Such values as these are alien to Asian society. Neither Hinduism nor Buddhism, Confucianism nor Taoism have ever engaged in religious crusades because of their beliefs. Indeed, both Hinduism and Buddhism advocate non-injury as among the highest of values.

Truth, Hinduism states, is like a great diamond with many facets, and no person, no government, no institution can see all of the facets of the great diamond of truth. There are not merely two sides, but inherently truth is multi- dimensional. In that area known as Indochina, the great civilizations of India and China and the values of those societies have been merged with the beliefs of life that were held by the peoples of Southeast Asia. How Vietnam is culturally related to the civilization of China. The impact of Confucianism and Taoism is still strong in Vietnamese values, and the Buddhism which arose from India won the hearts of much of Asia as it was adopted to the various cultures of the area.

The Confucian orthodoxy assumed that there was nothing evil or inherently evil in human nature, including, it held, the barbarian nature. But if the barbarian could be reformed by education, then tolerance and kindness were the basis, it held, of a sound foreign policy. Prince Kung enjoined his fellow countrymen to hate the evil that a barbarian might do, but not the barbarian himself; to be kind to men from afar in accordance with the classics, to the end that myriad nations might be tranquilized, that China might flourish, and that not government, but virtue, might prevail throughout the world. Mencius, the great Chinese philosopher, said that all men might have a sense of commiseration. When a commiserating government is conducted from a commiserating heart, then one can rule a whole empire as if one were turning it on one's palm. I say all men have a sense of commiseration; here is a man who suddenly notices a child about to fall into a well. Invariably he will feel a sense of alarm and compassion, and this is not for the purpose of gaining the favor of the child's parents or seeking the approbation of his neighbors and friends, or from fear of blame should he fall to rescue it.

Thus we see that no man is without a sense of right and wrong. And Mencius went on: "The sense of compassion is the beginning of humanity. The sense of shame is the beginning of righteousness. The sense of courtesy is the beginning of decorum, and the sense of right and wrong is the beginning of wisdom. Let every man but attend to expanding and developing these four beginnings that are in our very being, and they will issue forth like a conflagration being kindled and a spring being opened out." To those who will listen, the greatness of the civilization of China speaks far more eloquently than I, or I think anyone else ever could about it.

European travelers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were lavish in their praise. Duhald, whose famous description of China may well be regarded as the synthesis of seventeenth and early eighteenth century works on China, said of Chinese commerce, "The riches peculiar to each province and the facility of conveying merchandise by means of rivers and canals, have rendered the domestic trade of the Empire always very flourishing. The inland trade of China is so great that the commerce of all Europe is not to be compared therewith; the provinces being like so many kingdoms which communicate to each other their respective production. This tends to unite the several inhabitants among themselves and make plenty reign in all the cities."

But I think more to the point was a very classic reply given by the Emperor of China to King George III, when the King asked the Emperor for trade and enclaves in China. (And perhaps some may regret that Western imperialism and colonialism were too strong for this well-mannered society.) The Emperor replied to the King as follows:

Yesterday your ambassador petitioned my ministers to memorialize me regarding your trade with China. But his proposal is not consistent with our dynastic usage and cannot be entertained. Hitherto, all European nations, including your own country's barbarian merchants, have carried on their trade with our celestial Empire at Canton. Such has been the procedure for many years. Our celestial Empire possessed all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its borders. There was, therefore, no need to import the manufacture of outside barbarians in exchange for our own produce. But as the tea, silk, and porcelain, which the celestial Empire produces, are absolute necessities to European nations and yourselves, we have permitted, as a single mark of favor, that foreign hongs or business associations should be established at Canton so that your wants might be supplied and your country thus participate in our beneficence. But your ambassador has now put forward new requests which completely fail to recognize the throne's principles to treat strangers from afar with indulgence, and to exercise a pacifying control over barbarian tribes the world over. Your England is not the only nation trading at Canton. If other nations, following your bad example, wrongfully importune nay ear with further impossible requests, how will it be possible for me to treat them with easy indulgence? Nevertheless, I do not forget the lonely remoteness of your island cut off from the world by intervening wastes of sea. Nor do I overlook your excusable ignorance of the usages of our celestial Empire. I have consequently commanded by ministers to enlighten your ambassadors on this subject, and have ordered the departure of this mission.
It is regrettable that subsequent leaders of the societies of Asia were not able to speak as forthrightly or have the ability, as the Emperor did in this reply. When we impose our values on traditional societies it is well that we ask what they get for these losses. Thich Nhat Hanh had described some of the cultural impacts as a direct consequence of this war. "Sporadically," he writes, "during the course of the war, there have been expressions of interest in the idea of strategic hamlets."

These were intended to draw people together in an area of some protection, and to make available to them such social services as would improve their lives and introduce the concept of cooperative efforts. On paper they look good. In practice, like every other promise of social improvement in the history of the South Vietnamese government, they turned out to be another device related to the military effort of that government. People were herded into villages against their wills, and the total concept of the village became a military concept. Peasants were forced to leave villages that had been the homes of the families for generations, and in leaving them, to leave behind not only the graves of their ancestors, but many relics and mementoes, including family altars which perished in the same flames which consumed the village. Thus, they went to the new strategic hamlets in a frame of mind to create a new society.

The hamlets were created to keep out the Viet Cong so that the villagers could live in them and not be intoxicated by the Viet Cong. But the fact is that the Viet Cong themselves lived in many of the villages among their fellow Vietnamese. Since the war has become the national preoccupation of Vietnam, the numerous professions serving the war have become numerous and profitable. Literally hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese work at various services for the Americans at their bases, on airfields, in their headquarter buildings, and in many other ways. Landlords are constantly seeking to evict their Vietnamese tenants so they may rent their premises to Americans at prices that are ten or twenty times as high as the Vietnamese are paying. It is almost impossible for Vietnamese to find housing since there are almost no Vietnamese who can afford such prices.

Taxi and pedicab drivers avoid Vietnamese customers for the far more profitable Americans. They do not charge according to the taxi-meter any longer. Americans, accustomed to the costs in their own country, pay ten times as much as the normal rate for such a ride, and in so doing, of course, increase the pressure on the normal Vietnamese person. Profit. In addition, taxi drivers frequently operate a profitable sideline in taking foreigners, especially American soldiers, to girls of "friendly disposition," who will compensate the driver in addition to what he receives from his passenger. Bars, dance halls, and rest halls catering to foreigners, thrive. The number of prostitutes increases daily and at a frightening rate. For many it is the only way in which they can support themselves and their family.

The tradesmen and businessmen working with Americans earn large sums of money, while the majority of their fellow countrymen are going through a major economic crisis. Inflation that occurs from the hoarding of scarce goods for profit, the pouring in of American dollars, and the spending of great sums on non-productive war enterprises--all this means that the Vietnamese, without access to these American funds, are in an increasingly desperate plight. Another large group in the cities are the peasants who fled from their ancestral homes, leaving their possessions and their farms behind. They fled not only from the actual dangers of the war, but from the frustration of a situation in which crops may be grown only to be destroyed by one side or the other as a measure of war to keep the other side from getting them.

Planes of the United States and South Vietnamese Air Forces drop napalm bombs on these crops so that they may be burned rather than fall into the hands of the Viet Cong. In such circumstances, priests and nuns cannot go on preaching morality. The war has destroyed not only human lives, but human values as well. It undermines all government structures and systems of societies, destroys the very foundations of democracy, freedom, and all human systems of values. Its shame is not just the shame of the Vietnamese, but of the whole world. The whole family of mankind will share the guilt if they do not stop this war. It is not possible in this land of thirty million people, 90% of whom are engaged in agriculture, to ignore the terrible destruction that has been brought to the land and families.

Now, when one considers that 80% of the people live on approximately 20% of the land (which was so fertile that Vietnam was known as the "Rice Bowl" of Asia), then that tragedy is heightened. When one considers the great skills of artisans that were handed from father to son as guarded secrets, that now lie somewhere hidden amongst the body count figures, then the loss to the world of art is, I suggest, also not insignificant. When one considers the waters which provided over three hundred kinds of fish along the nine- hundred-mile coastline of Vietnam, which fed much of the population, and the bombs and the chemicals now destroying that form of life, no cease-fire or truce or withdrawal will end the effects of those ravages, which will be felt for generations. But it will not be the Vietnamese alone who will bear this burden or who will suffer this evil, although undoubtedly their burden will be the greatest.

The Buddha has said, and I believe correctly, "Think not lightly of evil, spying it will not come to me. Even a waterpod is filled by the falling of drops; likewise the fool gathering little by little fills himself with evil. Whosoever offends an innocent person, pure and guiltless his evil comes back on himself like fine dust thrown against the wind, and as rust sprung from iron eats itself away when arisen. Even so the deeds and his own deeds leads the transgressor to the states of woe." The fifteen hundred species of wooded plants, of the tropical forest of Vietnam, that provide cover for numberless wild animals, that have been bombed, may appear only a casual consequence of this war. But the ecological toll to Vietnam will be counted there too.

It is difficult for us to understand how great is the feeling for family in Vietnam. Stemming from the principles of Confucianism, the family and not the individual, not the government, was the basic core of society. Through it, honor and loyalty and nobility were expressed. And it was this which was the thread which gave much of the expression of the joy and the warmth and the love for which men live. For it is difficult to understand why it was necessary not only to violate the integrity of the heart of Vietnam in this way, but also to act in such a way that even death was not enough. The decapitations and the body slayings and the other mutilations--which religiously affected the passage of the soul to the next life--even that has not been spared in this war. And when one goes through all of these things and much more in terms of what we are doing to Vietnam, the list becomes enormous--and enormous is a very small word, it seems to me, to describe these things. One asks what are the values that are being imposed on this society; values which we espouse such as efficiency and productivity and urbanization and equality and democracy--values which may indeed be unviable even in our own society.

There is no compelling evidence, certainly no compelling historical evidence, that suggests that democracy necessarily provides a greater degree of justice or happiness than, say, kinship or other forms of government. The evidence with respect to the supporting of the concepts of equality, political equality, has very little philosophic basis to support it, in my judgment. The assumption that illiteracy equals poverty seems to me at best a false assumption. There is a vast degree of difference between our system of education, which is essentially aimed at information for the sake of economic productivity, and that system of education which has been at the heart of Asian education, which is based not on information but on knowledge or on wisdom or enlightenment.

And there is a very considerable difference between wisdom and information, between knowledge and technical ability for productive purposes. And the emphasis on wisdom and knowledge is, I am sorry to say, very little to be found in our own academic system. Now there are some who argue that at least we have been beneficent in terms of what we have done medically--in terms of what we have done in the area of health. Here, too, I think the evidence is not very compelling, particularly if one looks at our own society. There are something like six out of ten adolescents who are supposed to be in need of mental treatment, where there are few people who are not popping one pill or another into themselves, where the competency of physicians in the area of drugs is one of the lowest in the world, where we are, in fact, involved in a gigantic medical vested-interest situation, which under the AMA, the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the physicians, the government, all underwrite a system of chemical medicine that is related to the chemical productivity of the society.

One wonders how the species could have lived for the nearly two million years that it has--before the introduction of chemical medicine. But the great systems of acupuncture, Chinese medicine, the indigenous systems of medicine--of plant and herb medicine, that have been developed in the countries of Asia; all of these are ridiculed as being primitive superstitions, while more and more chemicals in the forms of medicines are imposed not only on a supine and glib American population, but which we now tout to the rest of the world as being their only salvation for the betterment of their health. It would be a nice idea if perhaps we could have adopted the ancient Chinese system where one paid one's physician only so long as one was well. When one was sick, one didn't pay. Under such a situation, it seems to me, we might be disposed to make a very dramatic reappraisal of that system of medicine which we tout to the rest of the world as being absolutely necessary for their lives.

I hold the same view with respect to the concept of Western law, which seems to me one of the most iniquitous systems of law in the world, and I will explain why. I recently reviewed a book by a scholar from the Sorbonne who was complaining that in India there were great problems in getting Western law introduced at the village level. He was pointing out, which is correct, that the traditional law is free, it is flexible, and it is merciful, as opposed to our own system of law, which is _____ expensive, very rigid, and very harsh. He was wondering why the villagers were so adamant to this progressive system of law that we have in the West, which, once again, we think all the world ought to adopt.

This system of law, of which I speak, involves again, as it does in the field of medicine, an extraordinary vested- interest group which handles the whole business. That is to say, the lawyers are the legislators, the lawyers write the laws, the lawyers are the judges and the lawyers are the prosecutors. The lawyers in fact have the entire system sewed up to such a degree that the law, in its relationship to the people, is a vast gap. A gap which does not exist in the traditional societies of Asia. Any mother, I'm sure, will tell you that if you want to treat people justly, you do not treat them equally. And I suggest to you that the greater the degree of equality you have in a society, the lesser the likelihood of justice in society. I go further than this. If you examine some of the traditional lawbooks of these societies you don't find very many laws. And I am almost disposed to put to you a hypothesis which goes something like this: the greater the number of laws in a society, the less the amount of liberty that society will have. For every law is, by definition, a limitation on the ability to exercise options. When you constantly confine these options, as we do in our legal system (and you have this most incredible vested interest enforcing this), then I believe that our system of law and our concept of law in this society is essentially bankrupt. It is morally bankrupt, just as I believe that our system of medicine is bankrupt, just as I believe that our system of education in bankrupt. And why, in the name of any kind of morality or humanity, we should think that we are giving other societies (which we call "underdeveloped," "backward" societies or, less pejoratively, "Third World") we are giving them any kind of a deal by foisting upon them the rot which many of us cannot even stand in our own society, seems to me a most incredible kind of reasoning.

This goes beyond the suggestions that I make here. We have great ideas about employment in our society. I do not recall in history any other society, including the most dominant slave societies, where people worked for 50 weeks out of a year in order to get a two-week holiday. Not even the most thoroughgoing slave societies had the kind of voluntary slavery which seems to be a hallmark of our society. And now it seems that we have conned the blacks and women and all kinds of other groups into feeling that we're offering them a great deal by joining this kind of slavery. I suggest to you that if the indices of well-being would change with simply one word, and instead of employment we used the concept of self-employment, that this would be one of the most underdeveloped societies in the world. Self-employment is creative employment. Self-employment is the kind of thing you see throughout Southeast Asia--whether it's the family running a teashop or a person taking fruits and vegetables down to the railway station--whatever it is, it is self- employment.

It is not the huge, mechanized complex that we have here. Just change that word from employment to self- employment and we will be the "underdeveloped," "primitive" society, and I think it would not be a bad change to understand what the basic values consist of in terms of economic development. But we insist that these nations of Southeast Asia--Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, wherever we go, that we are to industrialize them and we are to put them working on the same kind of mill-value system that we have. I believe that this exchange is unjust. I believe it is unequal. I believe that what we are doing to Vietnam goes far beyond Vietnam; that it goes far beyond Southeast Asia; that it goes beyond this generation; and I believe that it also goes beyond reasonable belief. It goes beyond any concept, any viable concept of humanity. I may say that it is hard, it is difficult for anyone to sum up the truly awful consequences of what this means in terms of the species. For if this species is not diversified, if this world adopts this value system, which we are imposing and exporting to the rest of the world, then the danger becomes far more than rhetorical. We have this big thing on health and on diets we well. How the people of Asia managed to live until our nutritionists told them where they ought to get their protein is also remarkable, a kind of observation that does not seem to occur to our foreign advisers and to their experts. The whole field is just so incredibly immoral, though I know that so many people do this with the best intentions in the world, but with the most damaging and disastrous consequences. I can express my feeling on this perhaps best with a poem, a short poem from Tagore, the great Indian poet, who said this:

Mother, I shall weave a chain of pearls
For thy neck with my tears of sorrow.
The stars have wrought their anklet of light
To deck thy feet.
But mine will hang upon thy breast.
Wealth and fame come from thee
And it is for thee to give or to withhold them
But this, my sorrow, is absolutely mine own,
And when I bring it to thee as my offering
Thou rewardest me with thy grace.


And if there were a prayer that would be appropriate for this situation and for this country, I would, again, take that request from the same poet, who said, "Where the mind is without fear, and the head is held high; where knowledge is free, where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic wars; where words come out from the depths of truth, where tireless striving stretches its arms toward perfection, where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action, into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake."

MODERATOR. I may have a problem with the other panelists, trying to follow this. Thank you, Dr. Spellman, thank you very much. Jim Clark?
CLARK. It's going to be a pretty hard act to follow. I'm reminded of a story that was told about Sam Rayburn one time when a young representative had just addressed the House. He got down and said, "What did you think of what I said?" And Rayburn said, "What you had to say was both new and interesting. But unfortunately, what you had to say that was new, wasn't interesting, and what you had to say that was interesting, wasn't new." And I'm afraid that's the boat I'm in. Before I get into my remarks, just addressing myself shortly to some of the things that Dr. Spellman has said reminds me--when I was in Phu Yen, I was new in the country-- this was back in '66. I went out to a refugee camp. The conditions were really deplorable. There were about 3,000 people living on a sandspit in tin huts with rooms about eight-by-eight with seven people in each room. There was a reception camp with buildings that were about forty feet long, and twenty feet wide with 400 to 500 people in each-- impossible as that sounds, but it was true. I went out there, and I was really depressed about the situation. I thought there must be something we can do. The first thing that struck my mind was that I was going to build some latrines, some outhouses for these people, because I noticed they were defecating out on the side, across the road. So I went off and I got some barrels (because you couldn't dig a hole in the sand) and I put these barrels into the ground. I got some people to help and we built a cement block house with a tin roof on it.

I came back a couple of days later and these places were locked up. I went to the fellow who was in charge of each area, and I said, "Why have you locked up these latrines, these wonderful things that I've built?" And he took me over and he opened them up and there was rice inside. And he said, "You know, you Americans are a strange breed. In the first place, such a fine structure makes a much better place to keep my rice, which is much more important to me than a place where I can defecate. You probably never thought of it, but if you defecate in one place all the time, it's going to smell. And besides that, if you continue it, eventually you're going to have to clean that up. Besides that, the way that you defecate, sitting up like that, it's very uncomfortable. If you squat it's healthier and you'll appreciate it better. In the last place, closing yourself up in a room...it smells, all you look at is a blank wall. At least when I go across the road I can contemplate, I can look across the horizon." I went home and I started thinking about that and I thought, maybe we could get an AID [Agency for International Development] mission to the United States to teach us how to defecate.

The refugee situation in Vietnam is deplorable. Perhaps levity is out of place. But often, when something is this bad, you find yourself reacting in such a way that you have to treat some of the tragedy that you see in this manner to be able to accept it. I'll briefly go over the reasons for the generation of refugees in Vietnam, where they're located, who the refugees are and some of the economic implications that Dr. Spellman has already referred to. One observer of the Asian scene writing in the Southeast Asian Quarterly a while back, referred to Vietnam--American involvement there--as the rape of Vietnam. I contend that perhaps rape is too strong a word. In reality, probably what actually happened (to use a simile) would be that it's more like a young fellow who dated the girl across the tracks. And through a backseat affair, got her pregnant. Later on he decided that she was really quite worthless, a dirty little girl full of corruption and other things. But unfortunately he had got her pregnant, and now he faced the problem of trying to find an honorable way out of his predicament. I don't know what all the errors are in relation to our involvement with Vietnam, but there have been several. And I don't know how we can get out of this problem. Between 1964 and the fall of 1969, the American effort in Vietnam, directly or indirectly, produced an internal generation of refugees, which was on a level probably unknown before in the world. Twenty-five percent, to use some estimates, of the entire population of the country have been displaced.

The estimates run anywhere from two million and on up. The agrarian economic base of the country has been destroyed. The cultural identity factors of the population have been severely strained. Health and welfare problems, totally beyond the experience of the Vietnamese in terms of the extended family and the nature of the people to generally solve their own problems, have been spawned. We're facing a problem now where we're going to leave. We're picking up our toys and we're going home. And we're going to leave this country ravaged. An investigation of the nature of the refugee problem and how the problem affects the economic base of the country may result in a perspective which may be beneficial in evaluating the current state of affairs. Who are the refugees? Where are the refugees from? Where are the refugees currently located? And what may we expect in terms of the refugees in the future? Traditional discussions of Vietnam generally begin with the migration of refugees from the North. In 1954 some 900,000 people did leave; some 700,000 of these people were Catholics. They had the benefits of an educational system; they had money. When they came to South Vietnam, their resettlement was not that difficult a problem. This group also, this original group, is distinguished by the fact that they, unlike the people who would become refugees later, did make a choice. To borrow a popular phrase among propagandists, they voted with their feet. They made a choice and came South.

This cannot be said of the vast majority of the 2.5 million people who were to follow them. The refugee camps and towns in the provincial capitals today are swollen by people who once populated the rural areas of the country. Dan Ronk, an experienced Vietnam observer, wrote recently that the peasant population who left their ancestral homes and livelihood to seek refuge in the cities represent at least 80% of the total number of persons who once populated the farms and rice paddies. Ronk reasoned that this displacement was by the design of the American military. Reasoning that the Chinese revolution serves as a base for revolution in Asia, Mr. Ronk assumed that Mao's dictum regarding the revolutionary forces as a fish in a sea of people, was a determining factor in American military planning. By denying the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese elements the environment to wage war, victory could be achieved. It is doubtful in my mind that American policy makers would admit to such special warfare methods. However, the fact that so much of the war population was displaced, lends credence to this concept. The argument suggested by Mr. Ronk of total premeditation of refugee generation is weakened by the diversity of reasons given by refugees for their eventual migration.

The principal aim of the military was to seek out and destroy the Viet Cong. To achieve this end, the enemy were bombed, shelled, deprived of their supplies of food and medicine, and continually harassed. In the process, many noncombatant civilians were made to suffer; either at the hands of American and allied forces, or at the hands of NLF and North Vietnamese military units. An analysis of the reasons given by the refugees themselves finds that they are divided in their reasons for leaving. The causal agents of movement differed from area to area. The degree of enemy activity and the degree of allied action in response to the activity were important determinants. The pattern which was normally adhered to was an air drop of leaflets encouraging the population in NLF-controlled areas to evacuate. However, an analysis of movement based on refugee interviews would imply that the leaflets served more to ease the conscience of allied forces engaged in future action than to actually result in refugee generation or migration.

Planning for refugee generation may have been unrealistic in expecting persons to leave their homes and livelihood and their extended families for migrations to areas of high unemployment and, in some cases, local hostility. If military leaflet-dropping was unrealistic, as surveys seem to indicate, the resulting deaths and casualties raise some questions as to the morality of allied actions. The assumption that persons not leaving free fire zones were enemies also was a generalization having severe moral implications. The hostility toward refugees by urbanites went beyond urban-rural conflict. Refugees were, in many cases, the families of NLF forces. Assistance to such people was often viewed negatively by Vietnamese government personnel as aid to dependent enemy. I had a conversation with a province chief in Phu Yen one day. He was quite blunt with me and he expressed the opinion, "Why should I help these people, who have sons and fathers out fighting in the countryside and who, if they had the opportunity, would slice my throat?" I tried to convince him, of course, at that time, that if he'd start acting like a decent human being towards these people and accepting them as people, the situation might change around. Persons living in enemy-controlled areas could be encouraged to leave directly or indirectly. A direct movement would result from forced movement, where allied forces would be airlifted into an area, round up residents and airlift them out. Though this was not a common method, it did occur from time to time. Notable examples would be the Iron Triangle Operation of 1967 and several efforts in the DMZ in the North.

Refugees might also be encouraged to leave through heavy military bombardment or artillery. Among refugees in Vinh Long Province in the Delta, about 20% of all families had either experienced wounds or deaths in their families as a result of allied artillery. In Phu Yen Province 18% listed such artillery as reasons for their becoming refugees. Direct intervention resulting in refugee movement would also include instigation of battle or conflict in densely populated areas. Eight percent of the Vinh Long refugees and 4% of the Phu Yen refugees listed family deaths, or deaths of neighbors in such battles, as reasons for their migrations. Approximately one- fourth of the refugees in Phu Yen cited ground military operations as a primary motive for their decision to move. When artillery ground operations and forced movement are added together as causal factors, the total percentage represented is 47.2% Thus about half of all the refugees were generated by direct intervention of American and allied forces. This group cannot be said to have voted with their feet. The indirect generation of refugees results from allied pressure on NLF forces to a level that causes the enemy to increase demands on the local population to a degree which becomes intolerable to some members of the population. The bombing of supply routes and the fire power brought down upon NLF and North Vietnamese forces resulted in shortages of both personnel and supplies.

As tax rates and the drafting of local youth is on the upswing, the potential degree of dissatisfaction with the occupying forces will increase. In Phu Yen, about 30% of the refugees listed coercive activities and general hardships from VC activities as the primary cause for their decision to move. It should be acknowledged that the situation in other provinces would be different in accordance with the variables related to the degree of allied activity, religion and the period of time that any particular faction was in control. The second form of indirect movement would be those persons who migrated to urban areas to take advantage of specialized local economic advantages. In Phu Yen the construction of a large airbase offered high-paying day labor jobs to women and older men. Persons who could only be marginally employed in rural areas found employment in areas where there were large concentrations of allied forces. Prostitution, laundry services, truck and vehicle washing services, and snack bars were primary examples of such new entrepreneur vocations. Seven point two percent of the Phu Yen refugees listed economic and social reasons for their reasons for movement.

The final category of movement cannot be assigned to either direct or indirect allied involvement. In hamlets and villages which were only marginally controlled by the Saigon government there occurred constant reprisals and terror against government and Vietnam officials. School teachers, health officials, and any functionary of the government was endangering himself and his family by remaining in insecure areas. Nighttime assassinations and abductions were quite common. In Phu Yen 16.5% of the refugees could be so classified. The reliability of this data gathered must be questioned to some degree in terms of the faction which was responsible for taking the interviews. A Hawthorne effect, or an effect of people saying what you want them to say, is obviously probably at work here. When we tried the same forms with non-refugees, as to why their neighbors had left the countryside, 95% gave Viet Cong action as the primary reason. Though solid argument in support of Mr. Ronk's theory seems inappropriate, the results in terms of denying food, labor and a tax base to the insurgents, are partially confirmed from our interviews. Fifteen percent of the refugees reported threats by the Viet Cong against them if they were to seek refuge in government areas. There are also on record several refugee hamlets which suffered from attack by the Viet Cong. The reasons for the attack were not always clear. In some cases the reasons were related to the population turning against the Viet Cong infrastructure members. In others, the Viet Cong were attempting to get farmers to resume planting and harvesting rice crops necessary to the food supply. In summary, one can assume that several variables played a contributing factor to refugee generation. Fear of either allied or Viet Cong forces are represented in approximately 90% of the refugee population. It would appear unrealistic to view the refugees as totally committed to either of the contending factions. Their eventual reasons for migration were rooted in their concern for their personal security, not because of political ideology. Persons who became refugees were not all located in government subsidized camps. People with relatives in the cities, with saleable skills, with cash savings often avoided the horrors of camp life and resettled themselves. Conversely, the people who lacked vocational skills, who lacked contacts in urban areas, who possessed no cash savings and, most of all, who had no wage earner in the family, tended to populate the official refugee camp. The persons seeking assistance in the refugee camps (and who would eventually number close to two million persons) were those members of society who would most likely be assigned to the lowest socioeconomic realm of society.

If we look at a breakdown of the age groups of the people who were in these camps, we find that in the age range 20-45, males are outnumbered by females by 50%. The females in the 20-24 age group are underrepresented in terms of the total population. Among children and young people, the males slightly outnumber the females. As a percentage of the total the under twenty-one group represents nearly 50% of the total population. The fact that over 50% of the population is under twenty could be expected from similar studies of other emerging nations. However, the population distribution may be important in terms of the future economic state of the country, and the government expectation related to future refugee conditions. What inference can we make from the demographic make-up of the in-camp population? To begin with, we might note that the large base of children associated with the population pyramid is characteristic of rapidly expanding populations. Past population statistics seem to confirm this trend. The next growth rate of Vietnam has been estimated to be from 1-2%. However, considering the large number of children in refugee camps, we must assume that there is a higher birth rate amongst the refugee camps than outside. Concerning the growth of Vietnam, population-wise, it has grown rather rapidly. In 1937 the population of South Vietnam was only four and a half million people. In 1959 it was 13.8 million. And we can expect from statistical progression ratios that by 1994 the population of Vietnam will approach thirty million people. The distribution of the sexes, combined with our knowledge of their former rural locations, seems to suggest that many of the males remained behind in the rural areas. Presumably, since these areas were controlled by the NLF, many of the persons absent from the population are probably troops with the NLF. Thus, the hostility of many government officials, particularly military officers toward dependent enemy, merits some consideration. An occupation survey among persons in refugee camps in 1967 found 3,000 persons, out of a sample of 62,000 adults, listing their occupation as soldier. If we assume that approximately half are males, we can assume that one in ten males are soldiers; this would be about one-half of the national average. Therefore, the other half must be someplace else. Prior to assuming that all males absent who are not represented in the population are Viet Cong, one could consider that many have been killed in prior allied engagements or artillery bombardments. Such deaths would contribute to the welfare status of in-camp refugees in that there is no wage earner in the family.

The evidence at this point would seem to suggest that the missing male population is either dead, has remained behind to work the family field, has become a fighting member of the NLF, or is part of the government forces. The rural origins of the typical refugee family create the expectation that most former refugees followed a farming vocation. This expectation was confirmed by an occupational survey administered in 1967. Most former refugees followed farming as their primary form of occupation. The survey covered 113,000 people and the results bore out the agricultural emphasis. At the same time that the occupational survey was made, persons interviewed were asked if they desired to learn a new trade. Nine out of ten said they weren't interested in doing that because they wanted to go back to the countryside. Seventy-three percent of those interviewed expressed a desire to return to their original villages. When asked when they would return, they indicated they would return when the war was over or when it was secure and safe from both of the contending factions. Returning to the demographic data mentioned earlier, we can see that the number of family heads, traditionally the elders of the extended families, may not be fully appreciative of contrary desires by younger members of their families. That is, after you've seen Nah Trang, who wants to go back to the farm? With over 50% of the members being young persons, there is reason to believe that many of the people will have no desire to return to the life of the rural areas.

Many of the refugees have been away from their former homes for periods of four years or more. In October of 1965, there were over 700,000 refugees. Studies of rural-urban migration indicate a positive correlation of time in urban participation. The longer one remains in an urban area, particularly after two years, the greater one's involvement and identity with the urban structure. It is unlikely that these people will want to go back and farm the fields. Other factors mitigating against a return of the refugee population to the farming areas are continued insecurity or future insecurity as the allied troop withdrawal continues. In that current land reform measures require that a person receiving title be farming the land, some farmers may return to find that the land they once farmed as tenants now belongs to someone else. These factors which mitigate against the return of refugees to their homes may be crucial to the future of the country. The government policy towards refugees has always been one of assuming that one day the refugees will return and the problem will evaporate. If refugees do not return, or if a substantial number remain in the cities, problems of welfare and urban slums will no doubt continue.
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