(Found at the Urban Legends site, URL below.)
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'Hanoi Jane' Rumors Blend Fact and Fiction
(Continued from Page 2)
There's no disputing that Jane Fonda toured North Vietnam, propagandized on behalf of the communists, and participated in an orchestrated "press conference" with American POWs in 1972. There's no denying that she defamed POWs by whitewashing the Viet Cong's treatment of them and later calling them liars when they spoke out.
But how true are the further allegations in the current email rumors? Let's examine their veracity point by point, beginning with the most serious:
Claim: Fonda betrayed POWs by turning over slips of paper they gave her to their captors. POWs were beaten and died as a result.
Status: FALSE.
"It's a figment of somebody's imagination," says Ret. Col. Larry Carrigan, who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967. He has no idea why the story was attributed to him. "I never met Jane Fonda," he told me. It goes without saying he never handed her a secret message.
He confessed that he did see Fonda once while he was a POW - on film.
He recalled a night when he and the rest of the 80 or so men he was interned with were called out into the prison courtyard, "the first time we'd been outside under the stars in 5 or 6 years." As they all stood there wondering what was in store for them, a projector started whirring in the background. Their captors proceeded to show them footage of Jane Fonda's visit to Hanoi.
Claim: A POW spit at Fonda, for which he was brutally beaten.
Status: FALSE.
This story is attributed in the email to former Air Force pilot Jerry Driscoll, who says it's false and did not originate from him. I wasn't able to speak with Driscoll directly, but Mike McGrath and Paul Galanti, fellow officers of the Nam-POWs organization to which Driscoll belongs, told me he unequivocally disavows the story.
[Update: after this commentary was written I received personal confirmation from Jerry Driscoll that the story is bogus - as he put it, "the product of a very vivid imagination."]
Mike McGrath, currently serving as the president of Nam-POWs, has been trying for more than a month to help Driscoll and Carrigan squelch the false rumors circulating under their names.
"They would like to get their names removed but the story seems to have a life of its own," he told me. "There are a lot of folks out there who would love to have a story like that to hang their hat and their hate on."
Claim: POWs were beaten for refusing to cooperate or meet with Fonda during her visit.
Status: TRUE.
The final anecdote in the "Hanoi Jane" message recounts the experience of a POW who agreed to meet with Fonda but announced to his captors that he planned on telling her how horrid conditions in North Vietnamese prison camps really were.
"Because of this," the narrative continues, "I spent three days on a rocky floor on my knees with outstretched arms with a piece of steel placed on my hands, and beaten with a bamboo cane every time my arms dipped."
Those words were written by Michael Benge, a civilian advisor captured by the Viet Cong in 1968 and held as a POW for 5 years. When I contacted him, he confirmed that the story was indeed his, and true.
Benge's original statement, entitled "Shame on Jane," was published in April by the Advocacy and Intelligence Network for POWs and MIAs. The nameless, faceless author of the "Hanoi Jane" message evidently picked it up from a Web page or a newsgroup and combined it with fabricated stories to create the forwarded text. Some versions now circulate with Benge's name appended, others quote his statement anonymously.
"None of us are members of the Jane Fonda Fan Club"
A good cause is never well-served by lies, and that's how all of the ex-POWs I spoke to or corresponded with about the falsehoods in this message felt. Paul Galanti said: "None of us are members of the Jane Fonda Fan Club, but these fabrications are something she just did not do."
No one had an answer to the question "Who made up these stories and why?" but both Carrigan and McGrath expressed doubt that it was a POW.
"She did enough to place her name in the trash bin of history," McGrath explained. "None of us need to make up stories on her."
Jane Fonda could not be reached for comment.
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