The True Story of “Christmas” Bombing, N. Vietnam 1972 The True Story of “Christmas” Bombing, N. Vietnam 1972 The Christmas Bombings of Hanoi, North Vietnam. During the Vietnam War on December 11, 1972 Anniversary Tours, a Communist Party-USA owned travel agency, booked Scandinavian Airlines, SAS, flights out of JFK Airport bound for Hanoi, North Vietnam. Among its passengers were folksinger Joan Baez, the Episcopal Rev. Michael Allen of Yale Divinity, Barry Romo of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and Gen. Telford Taylor, the former chief counsel of the war crimes trials of the Nazis at Nuremberg, Germany. [1] On December 13, 1972 Cora Rubin Weiss, Hanoi’s chosen liasion for POW mail and more, held a press conference and introduced Baez, Allen, Taylor and Romo as departing for Hanoi. Baez said she wanted to meet North Vietnamese and to witness war damage.

Allen said they had 500 pieces of mail for American POWs carried by Hanoi approved Committee of Liaison with Families of Servicemen Detained in North Vietnam, COLIFAM. Weiss said this was COLIFAM’s 36th mail trip. ABC, NBC, CBS, AP and UPI covered this pro-Hanoi press conference. [2] Such favorable coverage of the enemy in war was common during the war. A study of CBS by the Institute for American Strategy showed that 83.33 % of stories about the government of South Vietnam were critical while 57.3% of stories about the Communist enemy in Hanoi were favorable. [3] The media coverage of “Christmas bombings” is a case study not only of media bias, but media support for the enmy in war. The bombings were also a success story for America in the Cold War. A success later squandered, but that is another story. Nixon’s vigorous prosecution of the war, ‘Peace with Honor,” was an election mandate, a landslide, forty-nine state, victory over the single issue, anti-war candidate, George McGovern.

McGovern had met secretly with Hanoi officials in Paris to seek political advantage against Nixon failing miserably to do so. So, in an effort to force the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table, resoundingly reelected President Nixon escalated the bombing of targets previously off-limits in North Vietnam. The bombings ocurred December 18-29 — the so-called Christmas Bombings despite a 36 hour bombing pause at Christmas. [4] There was no Christmas bombing. Since Communists do not celebrate Christmas or any other religious holiday, their outrage over bombings on a Christian holy day was feigned. The bombings, none of which occurred on Christmas day, were dubbed the Christmas bombings for maximum propaganda value in the USA where a majority were Christians. The bombings were to provide “maximum destruction …of military targets” and to “inflict the utmost civilian distress.” Admiral Moorer said, “I want the people of Hanoi to hear the bombs.” Bombing of the 5-railroad track Long Bien Bridge across the Red River into Hanoi was only two miles from the Metropole Hotel. Surrounded by beautiful women and good food, the Baez group was well cared for at the Metropole.

There they met other internationalists such as Jean Thoroval of Agence France Press, a Cuban, an Indian and others. The Americans were shown films of deformed children, dying caged animals and “an American soldier shooting fire from a hose.” They were taken to a bombsite. Joan Baez remembers very telling details, “We came to what looked like a large expensive movie set of a piece of the moon. …Men [were] shouting out the number of dead…in the hundreds. …Here was a shoe… a half-buried little sweater, a piece of broken dish… a book lying open, its damp pages stuck together. The press was there with their cameras.” Nearby a women “hobbled back and forth” singing, ‘My son. My son. Where are you now?” Twas a movie set, which Baez, a professional entertainer, recognized, but she somehow failed to identify as a propaganda show too well staged to be true. Telford Taylor astutely asked if the bombed sites were recent or left over from bombing in June. [5] Ultimately, Nixon’s idea was to destroy the North’s will to fight. [6] “Wet His Pants” Nixon’s strategy worked.

As Nixon and Kissinger first claimed, American POW’s later confirmed and the North Vietnamese admit today, the December bombings were terrifying. Truong Nhu Tang remembered, “I had been caught in the Apocalypse. The terror was complete. One lost control bodily functions as the mind screamed incomprehensible orders to get out.” [8] One POW saw his prison guard “trembling like a leaf, drop his rifle, and wet his pants.” [9] Joan Baez in the Metropole’s bomb shelter with Rev. Michael Allen of Yale Divinity, Barry Romo of VVAW and Telford Taylor sang Christmas Carols. Close by in the “Hanoi Hilton” the POWs cheered. The Vietnamese trembled. [7] POW and Admiral James Stockdale, remembers: “At dawn, the streets of Hanoi were absolutely silent. …Patriotic wakeup music was missing, …street sounds, the horns, all gone. Our interrogators and guards (were solicitous)… morning coffee was delivered…Any Vietnamese officer’s face . . . telegraphed… hopelessness, remorse, fear. …[O]ur enemy’s will was broken.

[10] POW Michael O’Connor: “When we heard them crying in the streets, we knew it would soon be over.” [11] POW Lt. Col. Frank Lewis remembers: “I … danced around my cell like a fool, yelling, and cheering … I cried with pleasure.” [12] The POW’s cheered. The North Vietnamese had never experienced anything like it in decades of an American limited war strategy calibrated to send signals of resolve with minimal provocations of either the enemy or his Soviet and Chinese Communist allies. During thirteen days in Hanoi, the Vietnamese gave propaganda talking points to the Americans–support the 9 Point Peace Plan, stop bombing and free South Vietnamese political prisoners. Baez sang to a group of twelve POWs.

[13] Baez told a Japanese reporter, Tsuyoshi Doki, “Nixon is nothing but a madman… When I return home, I will do my utmost so that the antiwar movement can be unified and become more powerful.” [14] Some 42,000 bombs fell seeking “maximum destruction of selected military targets.” Hanoi’s 1,242 SAM missiles and artillery shells fired at American aircraft fell back down amongst the civilians remaining in Hanoi. [15] VVAW’s Barry Romo claimed the bombing was never to destroy military targets, but to terrorize and demoralize the Vietnamese people. Bombs falling on nonmilitary targets were not errors. The same homes and shops were hit several times, Romo claimed. [16] Yet the actual orders from Washington were to “exercise precaution to minimize risk of civilian casualties…” [17] Aircrews were ordered to maintain straight and level flight to “maximize aiming time” and to “reduce the chances of civilian damage.” [18] These orders increased crew exposure to the world’s best antiaircraft defenses.

Although not the nuclear holocaust the left frequently accused the US of planning—whenever the U.S. showed even diplomatic firmness to Communist aggression–the new smart bombs fell with great accuracy. The New York Times claimed carpet bombing of square miles of densely populated areas. Joseph Kraft wrote of “senseless terror” bombing. Dan Rather: “large scale terror bombing.” The Washington Post quested Nixon’s sanity. Anthony Lewis called the President a “maddened tyrant.” [19] Aerial photos showed that there was no indiscriminate carpet-bombing and no terror attacks upon civilians. [20] Walter Cronkite uncritically cited the Soviet News Agency Tass and Radio Hanoi as credible news sources about the alleged massive scale of the damages to civilian homes and the President’s mental condition. [21] Still on December 29, 1972 Nhan Dan reported excerpts from a statement of Lieutenant Colonel Luis (SIC) Henry Bernasconi, navigator of a B-52 shot down on December 22. Now a POW Bernasconi said, “We are taught that B-52s are used to bomb targets …tens of square miles. Such targets do not exist in Vietnam.

…B-52 bombing in densely [SIC] populated areas is to kill more and more people to generate pressure.” [22] Once released Bernasconi did not repeat such wild claims about B-52 target sizes and intents to kill. As the North Vietnamese now admit, their radar was successfully blinded, making their SAM missiles ineffective. [23] Stanley Karnow’s first hand observations were that populations had evacuated, damage in Hanoi and Haiphong was minimal, civilians were spared and the bombing was accurately placed upon military targets. [24] Back on the homefront on Christmas Eve, a small contingent of the members of VVAW, Brown Berets, and Venceremos Brigade marched to the Veterans Administration Cemetery in Los Angeles. They distribute leaflets titled “SIX MILLION VICTIMS—THE HUMAN COST OF THE INDOCHINA WAR UNDER PRESIDENT NIXON.” [25] Six million was an outrageous number. In contrast in South Vietnam when villagers moved to safer areas under government control the Communists routinely mortared, bombed and mined markets and roads for no military purpose whatsoever.

Between 1968 and 1972, “roughly thirty thousand civilians a year went to GVN hospitals with injuries from mines and mortars…wounds [which] …greatly exceeded…those…by Allied shelling and bombing.” [26] Unlike the communists raining artillery and mortar fire directly upon fleeing South Vietnamese civilians, U.S. B-52s did not bomb people evacuating Hanoi. Outrage Over “Carpet” Bombings of Hanoi Le Monde compared the American attacks to the horrific bombing of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War, a leftist symbol of Fascist brutality against heroic Communist revolutionaries. Like Pavlov’s dogs, the progressive media salivated on cue. Friends of the Vietnamese communists, including the American media, were spitting mad and hysterically outraged—not over the endless Viet Cong atrocities, but the bombing of Hanoi. CBS’s Dan Rather called the bombing “(unrestricted) large scale terror bombing.” Radio Hanoi told him and he parroted claims of “extermination raids on many populous areas.” CBS’s Walter Cronkite quoted as sources of fact the Soviet News Agency, Tass, “U.S.

bombers destroyed thousands of homes,” and Radio Hanoi, “Nixon has taken leave of his senses.” Henry Kissinger in his White House Years quoted the newspaper editorial headlines after the bombings: “New Madness in Viet Nam” (St. Louis Post Dispatch, December 19); “The Rain of Death Continues” (Boston Globe, December 20); “Terror From the Skies” (New York Times, December 26); “Terror Bombing in the Name of Peace” (Washington Post, December 28); “Beyond All Reasons” (Los Angeles Times, December 28). [27] “Frighteningly callous to consequences,” Mary McCarthy wrote upon learning a bomb had killed the French Chief of Mission, [28] presumably an unconscionable assault utopian high intellect and culture. Privately Nixon called it “media fueled hysteria,” but to his critics such the coverage “reasonable.” [29] On the whole Nixon was silent to outrageously false claims of immorality, barbarism and butchery, fearing he later said, of driving Hanoi away from peace talks in Paris.

Stanley Karnow says American newspapers, television, and radio had uncritically carried a French reporter’s claims [in Le Monde] of “carpet bombing” of downtown Haiphong and Hanoi. Malcolm Browne of The New York Times, a war critic, said this was “grossly overstated.” Indeed, even Tran Duy Hung, mayor of Hanoi denied such false claims. Karnow says, “American antiwar activists…during the attacks urged the mayor to claim a death toll of ten thousand.” The suspects for such an intentional fabrication, a lie, would have been Joan Baez, Barry Romo, Michael Allen, and Telford Taylor. Mayor Tran refused to bump the numbers because “his government’s credibility was at stake.” The North Vietnamese counted 1,318 civilian fatalities in Hanoi and 305 in Haiphong—a pittance of the 85,000 killed in the real carpet firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945. [30] Earlier in 1972 the North Vietnamese had turned artillery upon civilians fleeing Quang Tri and An Loc killing at least 15,000.

There was neither discernable media nor “peace” pilgrim outrage to this slaughter of the purely innocent. And upon her return Joan Baez accurately estimated the casualties at 2,000. [31] Parks says the civilian deaths in the Hanoi count were not entirely innocent. Civilians worked at lawful military targets. Some were human shields. And still other civilians were killed by “North Vietnamese SAMs or AAA projectiles…plummeted to the ground.” Since “Hanoi fired more than 1,000 SAMs…[M]any of the 1,318 civilian deaths can be attributed to these North Vietnamese defenses. …Measured against …the law of war…Linebacker II is unprecedented in its minimization… of collateral civilian casualties when compared with the intensity of effort against legitimate targets.” That during the most intense bombing of the entire war Hanoi counted far less than 2,000 people dead is “persuasive evidence (that)… the United States sought to avoid collateral damage… so too had [the earlier] Rolling Thunder been “one of the most constrained military campaigns in history.” That the U.S.

spent $100,000 for every truck destroyed [32] was a measure of neither indiscriminate bombing nor economic waste, but of the value Americans placed on innocent human life. Bach Mai Hospital and Kham Thien Street The few civilian targets hit loomed very large in propaganda about American bombing — the Bach Mai hospital and Kham Thien Street, a residential area. The North Vietnamese and their American friends said these were bombed intentionally. Telford Taylor said Bach Mai hospital had been totally destroyed [For the 1,000th time?] and Baez claimed the bombing had injured POWs in the Hanoi Hilton. The hospital was never targeted, but the area around Bach Mai was target rich with legitimate military objectives. It was only 1,000 meter from the Bach Mai Military Airfield and 200 yards from a POL fuel storage facility. [33] Also air defenses and Radio Hanoi. The prime target was clear.

“The overall control of the NVA air defenses … one of the best … in the world … was directed by an air defense command and control center located at (less than 500 meters away at) Bach Mai airfield.” This air defense system commanded and controlled from Bach Mai airfield allowed targeting of U.S. aircraft from ground level to 19 miles up. [34] Moreover, air defenses were located among civilians and patients at Bach Mai. Only a laser-guided bomb finally hit Radio Hanoi, which was at Bach Mai protected by a concrete revetment. In the event photos prove that only the corner of one wing of the hospital, not its center, was accidentally destroyed killing 28. [35] The hospital was hit in a tragic accident. Col. John Yuill lost control of his aircraft at the very moment of his bomb release as two SAM missiles exploded above and below him spewing his bomb train off target and onto a portion of the hospital.

[36] Though captions of photos in one war museum claim the hospital was “destroyed” [37] and in another museum only “damaged, [38] a careful analysis of photos shows a corner of the hospital hit and a big bomb crater off to the side of the hospital. [39] Views of remodeled hospital today [40] seems to confirm that the left front part of hospital was hit, probably accidentally as Col. John Yuill described it thereafter. Similarly, on December 26, 1972 SAM attacks on another aircraft diverted a B-52 bomb train to residential Kham Thien Street [41] where it was claimed that 287 were killed and 290 injured. [42] Upon her return to Hanoi in early January Joan Baez would report that $400,000 had been raised to rebuild Bach Mai Hospital. [43] The CPUSA’s Young Workers’ Liberation League had created the tax exempt Bach Mai Hospital Relief Fund. [44] April 8-15, 1973 was Bach Mai Week during which local peace organizations canvassed dor to door and sold pancake breakfasts.

[45] Despite the monetary contributions of many other Americans to the relief fund, e.g. through Bill Zimmerman’s fund raising for Medical Aid to Vietnam; Bach Mai would remain unrepaired for nine years. To the “humane” Vietnamese Communists Bach Mai was worth far more as a war trophy and as cash flow than it was as a functioning hospital. For those who dismissed official American sources, such as Pentagon aerial photos showing minimal damage to Hanoi, the Baez contingency had brought back North Vietnamese Government film. The COLIFAM delegation used NBC film. [46] CBS would forevermore simply report Hanoi’s numbers and never covered Hanoi’s subsequent repudiation of the claim of extensive casualties at Bach Mai, which had been evacuated long before the bombing. [47] After the signing of the Paris Accord Henry Kissinger visited Hanoi and shared his observations with Nixon and Haldeman, “It was absolutely amazing in Hanoi how remarkably precise the American bombing had been. There’s virtually no destruction in the city of Hanoi of anything except military targets, the railway yard is completely wiped out, but all the other buildings and facilities still stand.

Large storage areas have been demolished, but virtually nothing adjacent to them.” And “Henry feels that it is…a total repudiation of the attacks on the P(resident) for his so-called carpet bombing….” [48] POW James Kasler soon told a Congressional committee, “The Americans who came to Hanoi…[reported] Hanoi… lying in shambles.” Yet “the city was barely touched as has been proven by unbiased photographers who visited there after our [POW] release” some 90 days later. Kasler insisted, American travelers “distorted the truth about the bombing of civilian targets…because they wanted the North Vietnamese to win and they were willing to betray their own country to attain that goal.” [49] In contrast to Hanoi’s death toll of 1,318 civilians in December 1972, during its Easter offensive during the spring of 1972 Hanoi’s invading armies had turned its artillery and rockets upon the civilian populations of An Loc, Hue, Quang Tri and other cities.

During the battles of April 1972 the North Vietnamese had rained artillery upon tens of thousands of civilian refugees fleeing on roads running south from battles in Quang Tri and in An Loc. Some 15,000 or so civilians were slaughtered on the escape routes Highways 1 and Highway 13 respectively. About this indiscriminate slaughter of helpless civilians in South Vietnam there was silence among the self-anointed humanitarians and pacifists within the peace movement. Against all evidence they persisted in claiming that all the barbarism of war came from one side, the American side. By late that July President Nixon had reported 860,000 refugees, 45,000 casualties (15,000 dead). Such was the “liberation” (during the Easter Offensive) of Quang Tri, Hue, An Loc, Binh Dinh province and other areas benefiting from the humanitarian policies of the North. December’s bombings gave the Americans the moral high ground, if there is such a thing in the accidental killing of civilians in war.

Of course, Hanoi’s franchised peace movement usurped the high ground by declaring Hanoi’s death toll of 1,318 civilians was indiscriminate carpet bombing of many square miles of North Vietnam. For the first time in the war Hanoi was shaken. The communists had angered the mad man Nixon. America could at long last negotiate from a position of strength. Visiting at the invitation of her Vietnamese friends at Choisy-le-Roi, Mary McCarthy and Mr. Phan and Vy discussed the antiwar movement. Barbara Deming’s letter wanted American women to go to Hanoi to work under the bombs. Mary McCarthy suggested a group of big names go to Hanoi to risk their lives. Phan said, “The place to be effective had been America.” From Paris NFL representative Phan Thanh Nam secretly ran Hanoi’s intelligence operations in the USA, in part by meeting “freindly” Americans like Mary McCarthy. McCarthy says, “About the failure of Americans at home to rise in protest against the bombing he was bitter.” Mary McCarthy doubted the value of another demonstration particularly during Christmas. She said the antiwar people were tired, alone and discouraged.

Among McCarthy’s handwritten list of notables to ask to go to Hanoi during bombings there had been no takers: [Roger] Hilsman, Wald + Luris, Gene McCarthy, Ramsey Clark, F[rances] Fitzgerald, Norman Mailer, Francine Gray, Tom Wicker, Francis Plympton, Tom Finletter, Bishop Moore, John Kerry, McGovern, Father Hesburg, Abraham Herchel, Waldheim, Mayor Lindsey, Al Lowenstein, Rene Dubos, James Baldwin, Roy Wilkins, Coretta King, Gary Wills, Margaret Mead, Robert Lowell, James Jones, Wm. Styron, John Knowles, Andrew Young, Ron Dellums, Arthur Schlesinger, Bennington Moore. [50] Maybe Vietnam twasn’t radical chic any more. The Christmas bombings had all but won the war and the gas had run out of the antiwar movement. Or so it seemed. The Christmas bombings of Hanoi in December 1972 had outraged Hanoi, the American press and Hanoi’s allies on the Second Front in the USA, a “peace” movement largely seeking a Viet Cong victory. That December the U.S.

opportunity to negotiate from a position of strength had never been better. The enemy’s will and capability to wage war had been challenged as never before. Yet Henry Kissinger would negotiate a betrayal of South Vietnam and a “bugout” and declare it peace. John Negroponte, a member of the Kissinger negotiating team later said, “We bombed them into accepting our compromises.” The antiwar movement’s influence on domestic politics, specifically upon Congress, provided an explanation for this strange surrender moments before a final victory seemed in clear sight. “One With You in Struggle,” Tom and Jane Tell Communists In December 1972, “I’m Viet Cong” Tom Hayden, founder of Students for a Democratic Society, frequent flyer to Hanoi and its messenger to the antiwar movement, was in Norway with actress Jane Fonda, notorious propagandist for Hanoi and patron of both Vietnam Veterans Against the War and John Kerry’s “Winter Soldier” charges of U.S. war crimes. Fonda was filming “A Doll House” [1] for “progressive Marxist” Robert Losey. Hayden and Fonda learned of the December bombings of Hanoi and the port of Haiphong in a theatre in Paris.

They marched off to the Vietnamese mission to see some old friends, Nguyen Minh Vy and Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, to ask them what to do. Jane flew to a Stockholm rally to denounce the “escalation of killing.” Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda telegraphed North Vietnam. On December 26, 1972, Radio Hanoi broadcast the text of the Hayden-Fonda message to Hanoi: “HAYDEN-FONDA MESSAGE–here is a message from Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden to the Vietnamese people: [Word indistinct] Vietnamese will long live in people’s memory. Defeat of B-52’s shows that our spirit and resistance is stronger than technological power of any kind. We are one with you in struggle. There will come [words indistinct]. We are organizing international campaign for Nixon to sign the [“Hanoi-NLF”] agreement.” Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden.

[2] In an Indochina Peace Campaign, IPC, brochure, Tom and Jane joined a broad coalition of pro-Hanoi antiwar groups in escalating their claims of genocide in South Vietnam from four million [3] to “six million.” After the widely described horrendous Christmas bombings, Hanoi, despite the urging of Americans “peace” activists housed in the luxurious French colonial Metropole hotel, curiously made no official claims of genocide in the Hanoi bombings. Hanoi alleged only 1,600 dead in the “carpet bombing” of a city of a million people. A real carpet-bombing of Tokyo in WWII took 85,000 souls. 1972 had closed with Fonda and Hayden telling fellow Americans they wanted to defeat the U.S. forces– proclaiming their desire for a Communist victory. Though an American peace would soon be at hand with North Vietnam, Tom and Jane, joined by many other individuals and groups, would continue through the next two and a half years to work tirelessly for a North Vietnamese Communist victory over the people of South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

Among those Hanoi front groups on the Viet Cong team after the Paris Peace Accords were: America Friends Service Committee, AFSC/NARMIC, Clergy And Laity Concerned, Women Strike for Peace, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, War Resisters League, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice, Fellowship of Reconciliation, SANE, Episcopal Peace Fellowship, Medical Aid for Indochina, Indochina Resource Center, Don Luce’s Indochina Mobile [tiger cage] Education Project, church affiliated International Committee to Free South Vietnamese Prisoners from Detention, Torture and Death [4] . There was the small, but more than symbolic Union of Vietnamese in the U.S.A. [5] which attributed “the historic victory of our Vietnamese nation” to the wise and clear sighted leadership of the party Central Committee.” [6] The Union was a front for Hanoi intelligence and influence operations in the USA. Hanoi’s American operation included Nguyen Thi Ngoc Thoa in Washington, D.C., Nguyen Van Luy in SanFrancisco and later Dinh Ba Chi in New York at the United Nations.

[1] Both Luy and Thoa were active in the American antiwar movement, in Berkeley and in Hayden-Fonda’s IPC respectively. Hanoi would be forever appreciative of the anti-war movement as revealed in annual public statements on the April 30 anniversary dates and in displays in its many war museums. Major Thomas Bibby writes; “The outrageous reports of indiscriminate U.S. bombings of North Vietnam in December 1972 by the Western news media were extremely successful in substantially hardening public and Congressional opinions against continued American involvement in the war and forcing the Nixon Administration to stop the bombing.” In halting the bombing when it did, the U.S. failed to destroy North Vietnam’s war sustaining capabilities just at the most opportune moment when Hanoi’s air defenses [7] were almost completely annihilated and U.S. aircraft could have virtually roamed free over the skies of North Vietnam. [8] “ It had been quite a turn around from communists’ military losses on the battlefields and loss of popular support in the hamlets and villages of South Vietnam. Anticipating a final defeat by the end of 1972, some 40,000 North Vietnamese soldiers had deserted to the South.

[9] The antiwar movement had helped mightily in translating the 1972 battlefield defeats into a political victory in the USA. [1] Yung Krall, A Thousand Tears Falling. [1] FBI, Acting Director to President, COLIFAM, internal Security-Revolutionary Activities, 6:05AM December 12, 1972 [2] FBI, New York to Acting Director, COLIFAM, IS-RA, TELETYPE, 1125 PM December 13, 1972. [3] Bruce Herschensohn, An American Amnesia: How the U.S. Congress Forced the Surrenders of South Vietnam and Cambodia, New York: Beaufort Books, 2010, 9-10. [4] Bruce Herschensohn, An American Amnesia: How the U.S. Congress Forced the Surrenders of South Vietnam and Cambodia, New York: Beaufort Books, 2010, 6.

[5] Joan Baez, And a Song to Sing With, New York: Plume Trademark, 1987, 201-202 209-210, 218 cited on December 25, 2004 at thecommonills.blogspot.com/2004/12where-are-you-now-my-son.html. Jane Fonda A.K.A. Hanoi Jane Hanoi Jane Several requests from students and other visitors have asked if the photos depicting Jane Fonda sitting on an NVA anti-aircraft gun were really her or not. The answer to this question is YES. Jane Fonda has expressed her regrets for having her picture taken while sitting on the anti-aircraft gun and for the pain that her action has caused many American Veterans. Jane Fonda sitting on a seat of an anti-aircraft gun Jane Fonda looking admiringly at an NVA gun crew Jane Fonda applauding an NVA anti-aircraft gun crew. These guns were used to shoot down American planes and contributed to the deaths of American Airmen.

Notice the anti-aircraft shells that are ready to be used to shoot down American planes by Jane Fonda's foot Jane Fonda smiling with NVA gun crew Jane Fonda laughing with an NVA gun crew Another student had requested the transcript of Jane Fonda's radio address which she had broadcast in North Vietnam. This transcription, dated August 22, 1972 was made from her Hotel Especen broadcast in Hanoi at 7:11 p.m. The following was submitted in the U.S. Congress House Committee on Internal Security, Travel to Hostile Areas. [HR16742, 19-25 September 1972, page 761] [Broadcast] This is Jane Fonda. During my two week visit in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, I've had the opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a large number of people from all walks of life- workers, peasants, students, artists and dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses, soldiers, militia girls, members of the women's union, writers. I visited the (Dam Xuac) agricultural coop, where the silk worms are also raised and thread is made.

I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The beautiful Temple of Literature was where I saw traditional dances and heard songs of resistance. I also saw unforgettable ballet about the guerrillas training bees in the south to attack enemy soldiers. The bees were danced by women, and they did their job well. In the shadow of the Temple of Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and actresses perform the second act of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons, and this was very moving to me- the fact that artists here are translating and performing American plays while US imperialists are bombing their country. I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam- these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters. I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation, offered me, an American, their best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by. The daughter and I, in fact, shared the shelter wrapped in each others arms, cheek against cheek.

It was on the road back from Nam Dinh, where I had witnessed the systematic destruction of civilian targets- schools, hospitals, pagodas, the factories, houses, and the dike system. As I left the United States two weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the American people that he was winding down the war, but in the rubble- strewn streets of Nam Dinh, his words echoed with sinister (words indistinct) of a true killer. And like the young Vietnamese woman I held in my arms clinging to me tightly- and I pressed my cheek against hers- I thought, this is a war against Vietnam perhaps, but the tragedy is America's. One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he'll never be able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo- colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to resist.

I've spoken to many peasants who talked about the days when their parents had to sell themselves to landlords as virtually slaves, when there were very few schools and much illiteracy, inadequate medical care, when they were not masters of their own lives. But now, despite the bombs, despite the crimes being created- being committed against them by Richard Nixon, these people own their own land, build their own schools- the children learning, literacy- illiteracy is being wiped out, there is no more prostitution as there was during the time when this was a French colony. In other words, the people have taken power into their own hands, and they are controlling their own lives. And after 4,000 years of struggling against nature and foreign invaders- and the last 25 years, prior to the revolution, of struggling against French colonialism- I don't think that the people of Vietnam are about to compromise in any way, shape or form about the freedom and independence of their country, and I think Richard Nixon would do well to read Vietnamese history, particularly their poetry, and particularly the poetry written by Ho Chi Minh. [recording ends] Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda being interviewed after their return from North Vietnam.

Jane Fonda tells the world press that the American Prisoners of War were being well treated and not tortured. Background of Jane Fonda's Anti-War Activities While American Soldiers were fighting and dying in the Vietnam War, Jane Fonda, the daughter of Henry Fonda, was using her money and influence at colleges and universities to gather support to advocate communism and encourage rebellion and anarchy against the United States Government. On November 21, 1970 she told a University of Michigan audience of some two thousand students, "If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become communist." At Duke University in North Carolina she repeated what she had said in Michigan, adding "I, a socialist, think that we should strive toward a socialist society, all the way to communism. " Washington Times July 7, 2000 Jane Fonda began her participation in anti-war activities around 1967, allegedly after meeting with Communists while in France and with American citizens who were revolutionaries. Her activities included active participation in demonstrations, rallies, radio broadcasts and plays. Jane Fonda also helped in the organization of a production group called the F.T.A. (F*** The Army).

This group helped to set up coffee houses near military bases where they would perform anti-war derogatory-type sketches for the visiting soldiers. The coffee-house sketches were intended to counterpoint the U.S.O. shows, such as Bob Hope and other U.S.O. sponsored performers whose performances increased morale and gave positive support to American soldiers. Some of the F.T.A. coffee house employees would mingle with the soldiers to help them to "relax and unwind", while encouraging the soldiers to desert. Some soldiers alleged that they were promised jobs and money by the F.T.A. if they deserted. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War Organization received major financial support from Jane Fonda. Jane Fonda's F.T.A. coffee houses helped in recruiting soldiers and veterans for the Vietnam Veterans Against The War Organization. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War Organization membership was approximately 7,000 at it's highest. The Organization's membership number was comparatively low, when you consider that more than 2 1/2 million Americans served during the Vietnam war. Jane Fonda personally sought out returning American soldiers from Vietnam to solicit them to publicly speak out against American atrocities against Vietnamese women and children during her broadcasts. North Vietnamese officials based in Canada allegedly coordinated her broadcasts.

In 1972 Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden and others traveled to North Vietnam to give their support to the North Vietnamese's Government. When she returned to the United States, she advised the news media that all of the American Prisoners of War were being well treated and were not being tortured. As the American POWs returned home in 1973, they spoke out about the inhumane treatment and torture they had suffered as prisoners of war. Their stories directly contradicted Jane Fonda's earlier statements of 1972. Some of the American POWs such as Senator John McCain, a former Presidential candidate, stated that he was tortured by his guards for refusing to meet with groups such as Jane Fonda's. Jane Fonda, in her response to these new allegations, referred to the returning POWs as being "hypocrites and liars." The Wall Street Journal (August 3, 1995) published an interview with Bui Tin who served on the General Staff of the North Vietnam Army and received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. During the interview Mr. Tin was asked if the American antiwar movement was important to Hanoi's victory. Mr.

Tin responded "It was essential to our strategy" referring to the war being fought on two fronts, the Vietnam battlefield and back home in America through the antiwar movement on college campuses and in the city streets. He further stated the North Vietnamese leadership listened to the American evening news broadcasts "to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement." Visits to Hanoi made by persons such as Jane Fonda, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and various church ministers "gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses." Mr. Tin surmised that "America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win." Mr. Tin further advised that General Vo Nguyen Giap (Commanding General of the North Vietnam Army) said the 1968 Tet Offensive was a defeat. The military defeat of North Vietnam after the Tet Offensive of 1968 became a political victory for North Vietnam because of anti-war demonstrations and the sensationalism of the news media. The North Vietnamese interpreted the U.S. reaction to these events as the weakening of America's resolve to win the war. The North Vietnamese believed that victory could be theirs, if they stayed their course.

From 1969 until the end of the war, over 20,000 American soldiers lost their lives in a war that the United States did not have the resolve to win. The sensationalism by the American news media and the anti-war protests following the 1968 Tet Offensive gave hope to Communist North Vietnam, strengthening their belief that their will to succeed was greater than ours. Instead of seeking a successful resolution at the Paris Peace Conference following the disastrous defeat of the 1968 Tet Offensive, they employed delay tactics as another tool to inflame U.S. politics. This delaying tactic spurned further anti-war demonstrations. Those who sensationalized their reporting of the war and those who supported anti-war demonstrations are guilty of giving our enemy hope. Because of their actions, they must share partial responsibility for those 20,000 + Americans deaths. We won the war on the battlefield but lost it back home on the college campuses and in the city streets. Americans must realize that there are agents* operating in this Country attempting to undermine our Country and it's leadership through our democratic principles in an effort to achieve a foreign country's goal.

A prime example of such a person during the Vietnam War was Jane Fonda, an admitted Socialist, who blatantly supported North Vietnam. * Agent - Any person who works to obtain the goals of another nation either for money or for their own political beliefs. A valuable lesson was taught by North Vietnam to other nations on how the United States may be defeated by fighting a two front war - the battlefield and the American home front. We must be aware of this vulnerability. In 1975, after the fall of the South Vietnam Government, Jane Fonda returned to Hanoi with her newborn son Troy for a celebration in her honor for the work she had done for North Vietnam. During the celebration, her son was christened after a Viet Cong hero, Nguyen Van Troi. Troi had attempted to assassinate Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara while on his visit to South Vietnam in 1963. The South Vietnam Government executed Troi for this attempted assassination. I have heard and read that some people believe that Jane Fonda was simply young and impressionable. Jane Fonda was born on December 21, 1937.

She was 34 years old when she made her infamous trip to North Vietnam and was in her 30's when she participated in anti-war demonstrations and rallies. During this same time period a large number of young American soldiers, who had not yet reached their 21st birthday, were fighting the war in Vietnam and were held accountable for all of their actions. These same young soldiers were, upon their return to the United States, still not of legal age to vote or buy alcoholic beverages. Jane Fonda was an adult when she made these conscious decisions and actions, and as such, she is responsible and should be held accountable. The Vietnam Memorial Wall contains the names of 25,493 American soldiers who served their Country and paid the ultimate price for freedom who were under the age of 21 ( Casualty Statistics ). Many Veterans would have enjoyed seeing the following mug shot of Jane Fonda taken for her treasonous acts, instead of the bogus drug charge which was later dropped.

Jane Fonda’s War | The New Press Jane Fonda’s War Mary Hershberger An antidote to the “Hanoi Jane” myth, the first account of the celebrated actress’s antiwar activism “Jane Fonda is important because she is a celebrity, and unimportant because she is a celebrity. She is a revolutionary who happens to be an actress, and a movie star who happens to be a revolutionary.” —Rolling Stone, 1972 As the recent presidential campaign revealed, the Vietnam War remains a political lightning rod. In the 1980s, even as a Gallup poll listed Fonda as one of the most admired women in the country, “Hanoi Jane” had become a reviled figure among conservatives for her highly publicized trip to North Vietnam in 1972. Today, according to a recent poll, millions of Americans continue to link Fonda’s name to Vietnam—yet the true history of her antiwar work has been largely obscured. One of the most popular movie actresses of the 1960s and 1970s, Fonda was also among the most committed and visible antiwar activists of the era.

Coming on the heels of Jane Fonda’s own memoir, this is the first book to document one of the most interesting (and least known) chapters in Fonda’s life—including the first comprehensive account of her controversial trips to Hanoi, as well as her extensive efforts on behalf of American GIs. Based on unprecedented access to Fonda’s twenty-foot-thick FBI files, interviews with the former POWs Fonda met with in Hanoi in 1972, and a broad range of contemporary press reports, Jane Fonda’s War is a fascinating and little-understood chapter in the extraordinary life of an American icon. Topics: Hanoi Jane | University of Massachusetts Press University of Massachusetts Press Hanoi Jane War, Sex, and Fantasies of Betrayal A provocative analysis of how and why Jane Fonda the person became Hanoi Jane the myth Jerry Lembcke Details Description From Aristophanes’ Lysistrata to the notorious Mata Hari and the legendary Tokyo Rose, stories of female betrayal during wartime have recurred throughout human history. The myth of Hanoi Jane, Jerry Lembcke argues, is simply the latest variation on this enduring theme.

Like most of the iconic femmes fatales who came before, it is based on a real person, Jane Fonda. And also like its predecessors, it combines traces of fact with heavy doses of fiction to create a potent symbol of feminine perfidy—part erotic warrior-woman Barbarella, part savvy antiwar activist, and part powerful entrepreneur. Hanoi Jane, the book, deconstructs Hanoi Jane, the myth, to locate its origins in the need of Americans to explain defeat in Vietnam through fantasies of home-front betrayal and the emasculation of the national will-to-war. Lembcke shows that the expression “Hanoi Jane” did not reach the eyes and ears of most Americans until five or six years after the end of the war in Vietnam. By then, anxieties about America’s declining global status and deteriorating economy were fueling a populist reaction that pointed to the loss of the war as the taproot of those problems. Blaming the antiwar movement for undermining the military’s resolve, many found in the imaginary Hanoi Jane the personification of their stab-in-the- back theories. Ground zero of the myth was the city of Hanoi itself, which Jane Fonda had visited as a peace activist in July 1972.

Rumors surrounding Fonda’s visits with U.S. POWs and radio broadcasts to troops combined to conjure allegations of treason that had cost American lives. That such tales were more imagined than real did not prevent them from insinuating themselves into public memory, where they have continued to infect American politics and culture. Hanoi Jane is a book about the making of Hanoi Jane by those who saw a formidable threat in the Jane Fonda who supported soldiers and veterans opposed to the war they fought, in the postcolonial struggle of the Vietnamese people to make their own future, and in the movements of women everywhere for gender equality. Reviews "This is not a narrowly focused effort to compare the ‘real’ Jane Fonda to the image of ‘Hanoi Jane.’ Rather, Lembcke shows how Fonda’s demonization played an important part in a powerful right-wing campaign to attribute American defeat in Vietnam to left-wing scapegoats and to reconstitute U.S. power as well as the ideal of aggressive masculinity."—Christian G. Appy, author of Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides "Pulsing with brilliant insights and invaluable scholarship, Hanoi Jane is much more than a biography of a single myth.

It is an exploration of some of the tangled cultural, psychological, and historical strands that constitute American memory of the Vietnam War, memory with profound influence on American culture and behavior in the last quarter of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first."—H. Bruce Franklin, author of Vietnam and Other American Fantasies "As Lembcke tackles the question of where the moniker Hanoi Jane first appeared, he offers fascinating anecedotal evidence of the fervent beliefs that continue to fuel the betrayal myth in the twenty-first century. . . . In this provocative study, Lembcke probes the way in which political dissent combined with American anxieties about class, gender, and celebrity to vilify a woman who followed her political conscience."—Women's Review of Books "Lembke argues that popular perception of Jane Fonda's trip to North Vietnam as representative of left-wing subversive anti-Americanism is a part of right-wing myth making. Recommended [for] general readers and undergraduate students."—Choice "In his provocative book, Lembcke, a Vietnam veteran, challenges many of the conventional wisdoms surrounding the Vietnam War. . . .

[It] is crucial that we carefully examine the work of Lembcke and exorcise some of the ghosts of Vietnam and their contemporary political manipulation in support of war and militarism."—The Journal of American Culture "Hanoi Jane is an important contribution to scholarship on American public memory-making of the Vietnam War and our efforts to consolidate Vietnam with the Gulf wars through the use of a political trope. It is a well-researched book that explores the national identity, the politics of war narratives, gendered constructions and anxieties during the post-wartime, public memory, and the power of myth-making."—Journal of Vietnamese Studies Author Jerry Lembcke is professor of sociology at The College of the Holy Cross and author of The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam. Traitor: "Hanoi Jane" Fonda — The Patriot Post Looking for Target With Tom Hayden back from Hanoi Read the transcript of Hanoi Jane's propaganda radio broadcast delivered in Hanoi, North Vietnam on August 22, 1972. As for the success of anti-democracy protests by radical protagonists like Fonda, John Kerry and others, Hanoi could not have been more pleased.

General Vo Nguyen Giap, supreme leader of the North Vietnamese Army, told CBS in a 1989 interview: "We paid a high price [during the Tet offensive] but so did you [Americans] ... not only in lives and materiel. Do not forget the war was brought into the living rooms of the American people. ... The most important result of the Tet offensive was it made you de-escalate the bombing, and it brought you to the negotiation table. It was, therefore, a victory.... The war was fought on many fronts. At that time the most important one was American public opinion. " More to the point, in a 1995 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Bui Tin, a communist contemporary of Giap and Ho Chi Minh, who was serving as an NVA colonel assigned to the general staff at the time Saigon fell, had this to say about the Leftmedia and Soviet puppets like "Hanoi" Jane Fonda and John Kerry : "[They were] essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement.

Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses." Bui stated further, "Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win." Most notably, Bui observed, that the 1968 Tet Offensive was "to weaken American resolve during a presidential-election year. We had the impression that American commanders had their hands tied by political factors. Your generals could never deploy a maximum force for greatest military effect." Sixteen years later, under enormous pressure after Ronald Reagan had restored the honorable social standing of military service, Fonda admitted to former American POWs and their families that she regretted the pain she caused them. Few accepted her apology. Fonda Power In a 2005 interview with CBS, Fonda reiterated that she had no regrets about her trip to North Vietnam in 1972. "There are hundreds of American delegations that had met with the POWs.

Both sides were using the POWs for propaganda... It's not something that I will apologize for." Peace More Peace Fonda with last in husband line, Ted Turner , Village drunk and self-appointed ambassador to North Korea, who observed recently, "Obviously, I don’t like to see nuclear proliferation, and I’m very upset about [the North Korean test]," as opposed to his earlier position being "absolutely convinced that the North Koreans are absolutely sincere" about not developing nuclear weapons. What a life Jane Fonda Betrayed American POWs : snopes.com Jane Fonda Betrayed American POWs Hanoi'd with Jane The long-standing claim that Jane Fonda turned smuggled messages from U.S. POWs over to their North Vietnamese captors is false. - - Claim: During a trip to North Vietnam, Jane Fonda turned smuggled messages from U.S. POWs over to their captors. false Example: [Collected via e-mail, 1999] "There are few things I have strong visceral reactions to, but Jane Fonda's participation in what I believe to be blatant treason, is one of them. Part of my conviction comes from exposure to those who suffered her attentions.

"In 1978, the Commandant of the USAF Survival School, a colonel, was a former POW in Ho Lo Prison — the Hanoi Hilton. Dragged from a stinking cesspit of a cell, cleaned, fed, and dressed in clean PJs, he was ordered to describe for a visiting American 'Peace Activist' the 'lenient and humane treatment' he'd received. He spat at Ms. Fonda, was clubbed, and dragged away. During the subsequent beating, he fell forward upon the camp Commandant's feet, accidentally pulling the man's shoe off — which sent that officer berserk. "In '78, the AF colonel still suffered from double vision — permanently grounding him — from the Vietnamese officer's frenzied application of a wooden baton. "From 1983-85, Col. Larry Carrigan was 347FW/DO (F-4Es). He'd spent 6 [product] years in the Hilton — the first three of which he was listed as MIA. His wife lived on faith that he was still alive. His group, too, got the cleaned/fed/clothed routine in preparation for a 'peace delegation' visit.

"They, however, had time and devised a plan to get word to the world that they still survived. Each man secreted a tiny piece of paper, with his Social Security number on it, in the palm of his hand. When paraded before Ms. Fonda and a cameraman, she walked the line, shaking each man's hand and asking little encouraging snippets like, 'Aren't you sorry you bombed babies?' and, 'Are you grateful for the humane treatment from your benevolent captors?'" "Believing this HAD to be an act, they each palmed her their sliver of paper. She took them all without missing a beat. At the end of the line and once the camera stopped rolling, to the shocked disbelief of the POWs, she turned to the officer in charge ... and handed him the little pile of notes. "Three men died from the subsequent beatings. Col. Carrigan "For years after their release, a group of determined former POWs, including Col. Carrigan, tried to bring Ms. Fonda and others up on charges of treason.

I don't know that they used it, but the charge of 'Negligent Homicide due to Depraved Indifference' would also seem appropriate. Her obvious 'granting of aid and comfort to the enemy' alone should've been sufficient for the treason count. However, to date, Jane Fonda has never been formally charged with anything and continues to enjoy the privileged life of the rich and famous. "I, personally, think that this is shame on us, the American Citizenry. "Part of our shortfall is ignorance: Most don't know such actions ever took place. "The only addition I might add to these sentiments is to remember the satisfaction of relieving myself into the urinal at some air base or another where 'zaps' of Hanoi Jane's face had been applied." Origin:It is perhaps indicative of the divisive nature of U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s that one of the persons most commonly associated with the war was neither a world leader nor a politician, neither a general nor a soldier, neither a participant nor a casualty of the war, but an American actress.

And in ironic fashion, that actress is most notorious for something she didn't do in Vietnam rather than all the things she did do. In July 1972, during the waning days of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, actress Jane Fonda incurred the enmity of untold thousands of Vietnam veterans and their families (as well as service members for generations to come) when she arrived in Hanoi, North Vietnam, and began a two-week tour of the country. Fonda visited North Vietnamese villages, hospitals, schools, and factories damaged in the war, weaving her comments about what she observed at those sites with denunciations of U.S. military policy in recordings broadcast as propaganda to U.S. servicemen via Radio Hanoi; met with international visitors and reporters who were also in North Vietnam; spent about an hour chatting with seven U.S. POWs at a meeting arranged by her North Vietnamese guides; and posed for photographs at an antiaircraft emplacement set up in a rural area just outside Hanoi.

Although Fonda's actions in visiting North Vietnam were sufficient to earn her the wrath of many Americans, in the years since those events took place they have been embellished to the point that the one tale most commonly associated with her Vietnam trip is an incident that never took place: a tale about U.S. POWs who furtively slipped messages to Fonda while she was meeting with them and whom Fonda promptly betrayed by turning those messages over to the POWs' North Vietnamese captors (resulting in several of those prisoners' being beaten, tortured, or killed). The fact is that while in North Vietnam, Fonda met with only a single group of seven U.S POWs: all seven of those POWs agreed to meet with her, no POWs were tortured for declining to meet with her (or for behaving inappropriately during the meeting), and no POWs secretly slipped Fonda messages which she turned over to the North Vietnamese. The persons named in inflammatory claims about this alleged incident have repeatedly and categorically denied the events they supposedly were part of.

First of all, the whole premise on which this tale is based is contradicted by the plain reality of the situation: none of the POWs Jane Fonda met needed to furtively hand her messages encoding their identities in order to "get word to the world that they still survived." Fonda spent about an hour talking with a single group of seven POWs whose names she had ample opportunity to learn during that time; the POWs didn't need to sneak Fonda pieces of paper with their Social Security numbers written on them, as she could simply have remembered their names and repeated them once she returned home. Plus, there was no reason for the POWs' identities to have been kept a secret in the first place — since the North Vietnamese arranged the meeting between Fonda and the POWs for its propaganda value, they very much wanted the American public and the world at large to know exactly whom she'd met with. The POWs also had no need to rely on Fonda to secretly relay other messages from them to the outside world. After politics disrupted the delivery of letters to and from American POWs in North Vietnam via U.S.

Mail, many visitors who traveled to Hanoi during the war years (such as members of the group Women Strike for Peace) regularly brought POWs letters from their families and took letters from POWs back to the United States with them. Jane Fonda was no exception: she brought mail for imprisoned U.S. servicemen with her to Hanoi, and she returned to the U.S. carrying 241 letters from American POWs back to their families. (Fonda even called the wives of some of the men she met with to provide them with updates about their husbands.) None of the POWs who met with Jane Fonda had any need to resort to the form of subterfuge claimed in these Internet rumors in order to get information about themselves carried to friends and family back home. Additionally, no POWs were tortured to coerce them into meeting with Jane Fonda or for refusing to do so. Fonda had only a single meeting with a small group of POWs, and there were plenty of volunteers for the occasion: The seven men who met with [Fonda] were not coerced into the meeting; indeed, many more pilots wanted to meet with her than were able.

"The entire camp that I was in when Jane Fonda visited wanted to see her," former POW Edison Miller said, although he didn't even know who Jane Fonda was. Miller only wanted to see her because he knew she was Henry Fonda's daughter. The seven POWs and Fonda met around a large table surrounded by chairs. It was a typical meeting between international visitors and American airmen: low-key, filled with small talk, inquiries from the airmen about particular bits of news and sports from home, conversations about their families, requests to call them and pass on a message. Despite the claims of hundreds of Vietnam veterans who maintain they were "there" and affirm that accounts like the "smuggled Social Security number betrayal" are true because they supposedly witnessed them, the fact is that Fonda met only seven American POWs while in North Vietnam: Edison Miller, Walter Wilber, James Padgett, David Wesley Hoffman, Kenneth James Fraser, William G. Byrns, and Edward Elias. None of those men reported her sabotaging their attempts to slip her information about themselves, and anyone other than those seven men who asserts he was "there" and witnessed such a scene is simply not telling the truth.

Some of the POWs who actually did meet with Jane Fonda, such as Edison Miller, have spoken out on the record over the years to disclaim the apocryphal stories about her "The whole [e-mail] story about Jane Fonda is just malarkey," said Edison Miller, 73, of California, a former Marine Corps pilot held more than five years. Miller was among seven POWs who met with Fonda in Hanoi. He said he didn't recall her asking any questions other than about their names, if that. He said that he passed her no piece of paper, and that to his knowledge, no other POW in the group did, despite the e-mail's claims. Col. Larry Carrigan, the U.S. serviceman whose name is invoked in the e-mailed reproduced at the head of this article, has affirmed that he neither claimed nor experienced any of what has been attributed to him, and that he never even met Jane Fonda: "It's a figment of somebody's imagination." said Ret. Col. Larry Carrigan, one of the servicemen mentioned in the 'slips of paper' incident.

Carrigan was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 and did spend time in a POW camp. He has no idea why the story was attributed to him, saying, "I never met Jane Fonda." In 2005, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that Carrigan "is so tired of having to repeat that he wasn't beaten after Fonda's visit and that there were no beating deaths at that time that he won't talk to the media anymore." The tale about a defiant serviceman who spit at Jane Fonda and was severely beaten as a result is often attributed to Air Force pilot Jerry Driscoll. He has also repeatedly stated on the record that it did not originate with him: Driscoll said he never met Fonda, as the e-mail claims — and therefore, never spit on her and didn't suffer permanent double vision from a subsequent beating. "Totally false. It did not happen," Driscoll said. "I don't know who came up with [my] name. The trouble that individual has caused me!" he said, referring to the time he has spent repeatedly denying the persistent myth.

Mike McGrath, President of NAM-POWs, has also stepped forward to disclaim the Internet-circulated rumors about Jane Fonda and American POWs: Please excuse the generic response, but I have been swamped with so many e-mails on the subject of the Jane Fonda article (Carrigan, Driscoll, strips of paper, torture and deaths of POWs, etc.) that I have to resort to this pre-scripted rebuttal. The truth is that most of this never happened. This is a hoax story placed on the internet by unknown Fonda haters. No one knows who initiated the story. Please assist by not propagating the story. Fonda did enough bad things to assure her a correct place in the garbage dumps of history. We don't want to be party to false stories, which could be used as an excuse that her real actions didn't really happen either. I have spoken with all the parties named: Carrigan, Driscoll, et al. They all state that this particular internet story is a hoax and they wish to disassociate their names from the false story.

Even Henry Mark Holzer and Erika Holzer, whose 2002 book "Aid and Comfort": Jane Fonda in North Vietnam made the argument that Jane Fonda could have been tried and convicted of treason for her activities in North Vietnam, acknowledged that the "slips of paper" tale was untrue: Let's set the record straight. It has been reported on the Internet in recent years that POWs surreptitiously slipped Fonda messages which she turned over to the North Vietnamese. That story is false. Also untrue is that any POW died for refusing to meet with Fonda. It has been reported in the media and on the Internet that two POWs were tortured in an effort to force them into meeting with Fonda. However, despite considerable effort to find independent corroboration of these stories, we have been unable to do so.

Jane Fonda's inclusion in the 30 April 'Hanoi Jane' Fonda's broadcast from North Vietnam (1972) Search for: ‘Hanoi Jane’ Fonda’s broadcast from North Vietnam (1972) In August 1972 American actress Jane Fonda visited Hanoi as a guest of the North Vietnamese government, inviting criticism and condemnation – and the nickname ‘Hanoi Jane’. She made the following broadcast while in Hanoi: “This is Jane Fonda. During my two week visit in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, I’ve had the opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a large number of people from all walks of life-workers, peasants, students, artists and dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses, soldiers, militia girls, members of the women’s union, writers. I visited the Dam Xuac agricultural coop, where silk worms are also raised and thread is made. I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The beautiful Temple of Literature was where I saw traditional dances and heard songs of resistance. I also saw unforgettable ballet about the guerrillas training bees in the south to attack enemy soldiers. The bees were danced by women, and they did their job well.

In the shadow of the Temple of Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and actresses perform the second act of Arthur Miller’s play All My Sons, and this was very moving to me-the fact that artists here are translating and performing American plays while US imperialists are bombing their country. I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam-these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters. I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation, offered me, an American, their best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by. The daughter and I, in fact, shared the shelter wrapped in each others arms, cheek against cheek. It was on the road back from Nam Dinh, where I had witnessed the systematic destruction of civilian targets-schools, hospitals, pagodas, the factories, houses, and the dike system.

As I left the United States two weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the American people that he was winding down the war, but in the rubble-strewn streets of Nam Dinh, his words echoed with sinister —- of a true killer. And like the young Vietnamese woman I held in my arms clinging to me tightly – and I pressed my cheek against hers – I thought, this is a war against Vietnam perhaps, but the tragedy is America’s. One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I’ve been in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people. He’ll never be able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo-colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to resist. I’ve spoken to many peasants who talked about the days when their parents had to sell themselves to landlords as virtually slaves, when there were very few schools and much illiteracy, inadequate medical care, when they were not masters of their own lives.

But now, despite the bombs, despite the crimes being created-being committed against them by Richard Nixon, these people own their own land, build their own schools … the children learning … illiteracy is being wiped out, there is no more prostitution as there was during the time when this was a French colony. In other words, the people have taken power into their own hands, and they are controlling their own lives. And after 4,000 years of struggling against nature and foreign invaders – and the last 25 years, prior to the revolution, of struggling against French colonialism -I don’t think that the people of Vietnam are about to compromise in any way, shape or form about the freedom and independence of their country.” Jane Fonda in North Vietnam 1972: 'Hanoi' Jane--Text from CNN.com, "Vietnam: Echoes of War, Cultural Timeline" Jane Fonda -- actress, political activist and partner of anti-war protester Tom Hayden -- entered enemy territory for two weeks in November and emerged, in the eyes of many, as a traitor after posing for photographs at the seat of an anti-aircraft cannon and making radio broadcasts urging U.S. airmen to stop bombing North Vietnam.

Fonda told servicemen stationed on aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin that the bombs they were loading into planes were illegal and that using the bombs "makes one a war criminal." In 1988, Fonda went on ABC's "20-20" news program and apologized to Vietnam veterans and their families for her actions. "I was trying tohelp end the killing," Fonda said in an interview with Barbara Walters. "Bu tthere were times I was thoughtless and careless about it and I'm ... very sorrythat I hurt them." Asked about the continued bitterness over something that happenedyears ago -- critics still refer to her as "Hanoi" Jane -- Fonda said, "Thereare still festering wounds and a lot of pain, and for some I've become a lightning rod." Fonda said she didn't realize at the time the effect posing with the anti-aircraft gun would have. "I know the power of images," she said inthe 1988 interview. "To have put myself in a situation like that was a thoughtlessand cruel thing to have done. ... I take fullresponsibility for it." Jane Fonda & activist husband, Tom Hayden, after Fonda's return from Hanoi.

Internet sources on Jane Fonda & the Vietnam War: Warning: Some sites are vicious and graphic in their denunciation of Jane Fonda For a full transcript of Jane Fonda's radio broadcast from Hanoi and some commentary, see: "Jane Fonda in North Vietnam" at: "Hating Jane: The American Military and Jane Fonda." by Peter Brush. An edited version of this article appeared in Vietnam, Vol. 18, No. 6, April 2006. Jane Fonda says Hanoi Jane photo will hurt "to my grave" - Telegraph USA Jane Fonda says Hanoi Jane photo will hurt "to my grave" Actress is still hounded by Vietnam veterans who say they can never forget how she posed with North Vietnamese soldiers in 1972 during an anti-war visit Jane Fonda visits an anti-aircraft position in North Vietnam in July 1972 Photo: AP By Foreign Staff 6:52AM GMT 21 Jan 2015 It isn't the first time Jane Fonda has apologised for the "Hanoi Jane" photograph taken of her posing with North Vietnamese soldiers. And it probably won't be the last.

More than 40 years since it was taken, the actress remains a hate figure for American veterans. Now she has admitted that the picture will hurt her until she dies. Speaking at an event at an arts centre in Maryland, she said: "Whenever possible I try to sit down with vets and talk with them, because I understand and it makes me sad. It hurts me and it will, to my grave, that I made a huge, huge mistake that made a lot of people think I was against the soldiers." The photograph was taken in 1972 when she visited Hanoi on an anti-war trip and shows her sitting on an anti-aircraft gun used to shoot down US planes.

Question: Who was attacked in the American press in 1972 as `Hanoi Jane'?
Answer: Jane Fonda