Bui Tin Former People ' s Army of Vietnam Colonel Bùi Tín ( born 1927 ) is a Vietnamese dissident . Biography . Bùi Tín was born near Hanoi in 1927 , and was educated in Huế . During the August Revolution in 1945 , he became an active supporter to politically pressure the government of France to cede Vietnam its independence . He later joined the Việt Minh along with Hồ Chí Minh and General Võ Nguyên Giáp . He would fight on two sides of the line , using both weapons and his skills as a journalist for the Vietnam People ' s Army newspaper . He enlisted in the Vietnamese People ' s Army at age 18 . He was wounded during the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu . He would serve on the general staff of the North Vietnam ese army . During the Vietnam War , he had authority from Defense Minister Võ Nguyên Giáp to visit any of the camps where American POWs were held , meet with the camp officers , look at the POW files , and interview the POWs . During at least one such occasion , he was involved in an interrogation of John McCain . During the 1975 fall of Saigon , he was with the first tank unit to smash through the gates of the Presidential Palace . He accepted the surrender from the last South Vietnamese leader , Dương Văn Minh , thus marking the end of the war . When Duong told him that he had been waiting to transfer power to the People ' s Revolutionary Government , Bui curtly replied , " There is no question of your transferring power . Your power has crumbled . You cannot give up what you do not have . " He went on to serve as the Vice Chief Editor of the " People ' s Daily " ( " Nhân Dân " , the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Vietnam ) , responsible for the " Sunday People ' s " ( " Nhân Dân Chủ Nhật " ) . He became disillusioned in the mid - 1980s with postwar corruption and the continuing isolation of Vietnam . In 1990 , Bùi Tín decided to leave Vietnam and live in exile in Paris to express his growing dissatisfaction with Vietnam ' s Communist leadership and their political system . In November 1991 , became involved in the Vietnam War POW / MIA issue when he appeared before hearings of the United States Senate Select Committee on POW / MIA Affairs . He stated that , " I can say that I know as well as any top leader in Vietnam and , in my opinion , I state categorically that there is not any American prisoner alive in Vietnam . " After his testimony , he and John McCain embraced , which produced a flurry of " Former Enemies Embrace " - style headlines . Tin ' s testimony was the subject of anticipation : when he had arrived at Dulles International Airport three weeks earlier , former U . S . Congressman Bill Hendon and a staff assistant to committee vice - chair Robert C . Smith confronted Tin and tried to convince him that there " were " live prisoners in Vietnam ; Tin felt it was an intimidation attempt . Tin subsequently published two books , " Following Ho Chi Minh : The Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel " ( University of Hawaii Press , 1995 ) and " From Enemy To Friend : A North Vietnamese Perspective on the War " ( U . S . Naval Institute Press , 2002 ) . In a 2000 PBS " American Experience " forum , he maintained that no American POWs had been tortured during their captivity in North Vietnam during the war .