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Posted on 10/02/2002 7:45:31 PM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
On the heels of Rep. "Baghdad" Jim McDermott's denunciation of President Bush from Saddam Hussein's backyard, new allegations are about to surface against McDermott's peacenik predecessor, "Hanoi Jane" Fonda.
Set for release next week, a new biography of Arizona Sen. John McCain quotes several of his fellow Vietnam POWs who say the celebrated actress caused them to suffer severe beatings at the hands of their North Vietnamese captors. According to one source, the brutal beatings actually killed one hero-pilot.
In "Man of the People: The Life of John McCain," author Paul Alexander recounts Fonda's notorious July 1972 visit to Hanoi, where she was famously photographed sitting atop a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gunnery installation, posing as if ready to shoot down U.S. pilots.
The image still haunts the fading movie star. However, what happened next was far worse.
A galley of the McCain bio obtained exclusively by NewsMax contains the account of one of the Arizona senator's fellow airmen, William Haynes, who describes "Hanoi Jane's" meeting with seven POW pilots a few days later.
"They were lined up and they knew they would be meeting Jane Fonda," recalled Haynes. "So they got together and decided, 'Hey we've got to do something. Some of our families don't even know we're here.'
"They came up with the scheme that they would have tiny little slips of paper with their social security numbers written on them. They figured they'd try and get them to Fonda because they didn't believe she was really in support of North Vietnam.
"When she went down the line and shook their hands, they gave her these little slips of paper in the handshake, and she promptly palmed them. At the end of the whole thing, and this is in the photo-op, of course - when all the cameras were off, she calmly walked over to the head of the North Vietnamese delegation, handed him the papers, and said, 'This is what these people did.'
"The POWs couldn't believe it," remembers Haynes. "They absolutely couldn't believe it. They were beaten severely. The story I heard - and I was told this from guys who were present - is that one guy died from the beating."
While others interviewed for the book dispute the fatality, all corroborate the brutal punishment suffered by the seven POWs at the hands of Fonda's North Vietnamese friends after she ratted them out.
A few days after she turned on the American heroes, Fonda actually sought a meeting with McCain, then the ranking officer at the Hanoi Hilton prison camp. He refused, reports Alexander.
"Baghdad" Jim McDermott would do well to avail himself of a copy of "The Life of John McCain," if only to read the chapter on his predecessor's reckless behavior - before he gives any more aid and comfort to an enemy nation that may soon have American POWs of its own.
"Man of the People: The Life of John McCain" will be in bookstores Oct. 11.
I'm not Fonda Jane, however, the myth of the slips of paper have been dispelled.
Well, at least McCain did something right ... something I can respect.
This has been one hell of a humpday.
The most serious accusations in the piece quoted above -- that Fonda turned over slips of paper furtively given her by American POWS to the North Vietnamese and that several POWs were beaten to death as a result -- are proveably untrue. Those named in the inflammatory e-mail categorically deny the events they supposedly were part of.
"The most serious accusations in the piece quoted above -- that Fonda turned over slips of paper furtively given her by American POWS to the North Vietnamese and that several POWs were beaten to death as a result -- are proveably untrue. Those named in the inflammatory e-mail categorically deny the events they supposedly were part of."
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