[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 117 (Friday, August 2, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H9912-H9918]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                AMERICA ON THE BRINK OF SELF-DESTRUCTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, I do not know why it has turned out this way 
in the last few periods before we went on a long district work period. 
It turned out that I would be the last speaker and adjourn the House. 
And I think this is more exciting than most periods because both of our 
two major parties are going to have their big conventions, one in San 
Diego for the Democrats; it is a return to Chicago from a scene that I 
covered as a television talk show host and news reporter, the madness 
of that week in Chicago in 1968, which overlapped the ugly and last, 
until Chechnya, Soviet invasion with tanks of a nation, in this case 
the sovereign nation of what was once the sovereign nation and is now 
the sovereign nation of Czechoslovakia.
  In this last moment before we adjourn and when we come back in 
September, it will be to finish up our work in the fastest two years of 
my life, the 104th Congress. And 94 days from today, we will determine 
whether this country continues on its road toward self-destruction. 
That is the description of Reverend Billy Graham in our Rotunda when 
this Chamber and the other body awarded him unanimously the 
Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award of this Congress. 
And we do not make awards to military people, although we have founded 
them and authorized them. They are made by the military itself up to 
the Commander in Chief. And it is a tough process that people go 
through to win a Medal of Honor, loosely but wrongly called the 
Congressional Medal of Honor and other high designations, Air Force 
Cross, Navy Cross, and the preeminent Army, because of its older 
existence, the Distinguished Service Cross. But the highest award we 
can give anybody, any civilian is the Congressional Gold Medal. And we 
gave it to both Billy Graham and his wife. Struck the beautiful image 
of Ruth Graham, his wife of 53 years at his side through all of his 
ministry to spread the good news of our savior Jesus Christ, and at his 
acceptance speech in the Rotunda on May 22d, he said this is a Nation 
on the brink of self-destruction.
  Now, have we averted that path in the 104th Congress? Can we do 
anything to turn that disastrous path around in the month of September 
and two or three days in October before we adjourn sine die without any 
more days in the 104th Congress? Well, hardly. Will we do much to turn 
it around in the 105th Congress? It is all on the line in 94 days.
  If we elect an administration that I believe to be utterly and 
thoroughly morally corrupt and financially corrupt, then we may be 
approaching the point of no return. Another four years of Clinton, and 
I do not know how we are going to turn it around once we are a year 
into the 21st century.
  Now, I come to the floor with as much sadness tonight as I have ever 
felt about a betrayal of American middle-class families, the families 
who sent our young men, their sons, we were not sending daughters into 
combat and into the violence of the battlefield in those days of Korea 
and Vietnam, but middle-class families sent their young people just a 
half a decade after World War II, the second great cataclysm to make 
the world safe for democracy, but it seemed to make the world stronger 
for communism, we sent our young men, mostly farm kids but a lot of 
college kids and young professionals that were called away from their 
careers because we did activate the Reserve and the National Guard and 
the Air National Guard, we sent them to the Choson Peninsula, the 
Korean Peninsula, a place many of them had never thought of other than 
a passing reference in high school or grade school geography.

  We did teach about such faraway places when I was in high school and 
college. And they died in those filthy human manure ditches in the 
freezing cold of Ch'osan Reservoir or the baking hot of the Korean 
summers of 1951, 1952, and 1953, and we left behind, Mr. Speaker, 
thousands of live Americans in their prison system. Some may be alive 
even to this day.
  There was our first no win war. We had rejected MacArthur's battle 
cry, ``There is no substitute for victory,'' and we relived this 
nightmare with an even worse outcome in the Vietnam war. At least in 
the Korean War we kept a ragged, much changed but general outline of 
the 38th Parallel on a different angular river and rugged course. We 
kept the southern half of that peninsula free, but in Vietnam we 
forsook our allies. We left them to the cruel agonies of the communist 
government out of Hanoi.
  Some Senators and a few Congressmen licked the boots of the likes of 
war criminals like General Giap to this day, the architect of only the 
successful battle of Dien Bien Phu that was fought about honor until 
the ignoble disgrace of holding back thousands of French and French 
Moroccan and other foreign legion troops for years, until many died or 
they were traded for money or traded in their bones, what we are doing 
disgracefully now. In Vietnam we walked away from one war and betrayed 
our allies in Laos and Cambodia and South Vietnam to concentration 
camps euphemistically referred to as reeducation camps. 60,000 were 
executed, almost three-quarters of a million died on the high seas, and 
the communist killers are entrenched in Hanoi to this day.
  I find out this afternoon that in the foreign ops portion of our 
appropriation process there is a section involved that we are going to 
take our taxpayer dollars from our farm and working families and lower 
middle-class families and their grandchildren, my grandchildren, many 
they have not even earned yet, and we are going to give it to Vietnam 
to rewrite their trade rules and their code so that we can start 
funneling next year foreign aid with borrowed money to the communist 
conquerers out of Hanoi.
  Absurd. What brings me here sadly is, I want to say inadvertently, 
but a 7-year POW Congressman Sam Johnson from Texas and this Member 
from California gave people warnings for two weeks that we were 
betraying last night the POW-MIA families by voting for a defense 
authorization bill, all in all a fine bill with some shortcomings, hard 
trading with the Senate, but we passed it with only 36 Republicans 
saying no and some of them for different reasons, even though Sam 
Johnson of Texas had sent around what I thought was to me the saddest 
handout during a vote that I had ever encountered on this floor.
  It says, ``A plea from former POW Sam Johnson. Support our MIA/POWs 
and their families. Vote no on fiscal year 1997 defense authorization 
conference report.''
  Now, I have said many times that I was going to read excerpts from 
Sam's book on this House floor to let the 86 Members of the freshman 
class know just the caliber of unqualified hero that Sam Johnson of 
Dallas was that they were serving with. And now I find out that people 
on the payroll at the defense missing persons office have tried to 
obfuscate the horror and the terror of Cuban, Cuban involvement with 
the torture to death of some of our prisoners in the prison system in 
and around Hanoi from 1963 to February and March of 1973. Unbelievable 
story.

  Mr. Speaker, I do not know how to warn children away from the 
television screens, assuming that children too young to not be 
frightened and absorb torture stories, why they would be watching C-
SPAN anyway, I do not know unless they are watching with their parents, 
but I would recommend to any mother and father they owe it to the men 
who died for our liberty and freedom of speech to stay with us a few 
moments this evening, but tell the children to go outside and play.
  Here is this book that I promised to read excerpts from in a last 
special order. ``POW,'' by John G. Hubble in association with Andrew 
Jones and Kenneth Y. Tomlinson. Subtitle: ``A Definitive History of the 
American Prisoner of War Experience in Vietnam: 1964 to 1973.''
  When I read these words, Mr. Speaker, I hope people will wonder why 
this body and the other Chamber have

[[Page H9913]]

Members so anxious to lift trade restrictions, then under a triple 
draft dodger normalize relations, then after that to remove the combat 
status, just a few weeks ago that existed. So if we found a live 
American and could target with all of the technological sophistication 
available to our secret agencies and our military today, that if we 
could pull off a rescue mission, we could have done it in a matter of 
minutes up until a few weeks ago, when Clinton signed an order saying 
there is no longer a combat situation existing between us and the 
communist powers of Vietnam.
  Now the drive is on to get Most Favored Nation status for this 
communist country, one of the last four left in the world, to make the 
same mistake we made with China and then to drive toward taking our 
borrowed tax dollars, lumping it upon the deficit and helping them 
rewrite their trade code so that 30 pieces of silver can be extracted 
for a few foolish business men and women with all the opportunities 
around the world.

                              {time}  1815

  They are going in there with blood on their hands to deal with these 
people that may still have Americans locked up. One Senator calls 
speeches like mine on the House floor hobbyist speeches. What a 
disgraceful challenge to me, particularly after what I just read about 
honor in the Wall Street Journal today.
  Chapter 25 of POW, Fidel, Kassler and the faker. Fidel was the name 
given to a tall, some prisoners thought he was from Argentina he was so 
tall, and Castillian as a Cuban, but he is a Cuban, Fidel was the 
nickname they gave this torture master. Kassler is a hero from both 
wars, an unparalleled hero from both wars, like our Sam Johnson, Jim 
Kassler, shot down 8 Mig's in the Korean war and then led the first 
major strike against Hanoi on the Air Force side against the petroleum 
oil and lubricant storage areas of North Vietnam to stop them from this 
slaughtering people in South Vietnam. It was written up big in Time 
Magazine.
  Then his fate was to be captured a few weeks later and to be severely 
tortured because they knew they had their hands on an American war 
hero.
  What they called a criminal and an air pirate and the faker is a man 
that, when this book was written, his identity was uncovered by the 
author, John Hubbell. Now we know his remains have been returned, 
showing the horror of what he had gone through, even in just the bones 
that remained. It was major Earl Cobeal. This pain is known to his 
family. I am not revealing anything on the House floor tonight.
  My fellow Americans and Mr. Speaker, listen to this: At the zoo in 
Hanoi, that is an annex, part of the Hanoi prison system, the one whom 
the prisoners believed to be Cuban and whom they called Fidel had been 
very busy. Footnote, we knew who this brigadier general was of Cuban 
intelligence. He was in New York in 1977 and 1978. My 2 years in this 
House, if only God had let me know he was there, I personally would 
have made a citizen's arrest on him. Our intelligence people failed 
miserably under Jimmy Carter to arrest this man as a war criminal, the 
way we had done in World War II at Nuremberg and at the Japanese trials 
where we hung people for this type of war crime.
  He was allowed to dine in New York restaurants for 2 years, known to 
our intelligence people, known to Admiral Stansfield Turner, head of 
the CIA, and allowed to go back to Cuba. I wish I knew where we could 
get our hands on him today. I believe his name is Fernandez.

  He had been very busy. The prisoners were never to be certain of the 
Latin's mission, but they generally were in agreement that it was to 
teach the North Vietnamese how to handle captured American military men 
and how to learn as much as possible on the same subject on behalf of 
their own Government, Cuba, whatever it was.
  Fidel had selected a dozen or so American prisoners and dealt with 
them one by one. He attempted to browbeat the men into yielding 
military information and cooperating in Hanoi's propaganda campaign. It 
seems clear at first that he did not want to brutalize the men, perhaps 
Hanoi's mysterious ally wanted to demonstrate that mind and will games 
were more effective than hell cuffs and torture ropes that the men had 
been undergoing, this horrible torture for, at this point, 3 years or 
more with them dying under torture and another 100, as Kassler told me 
himself, executed in the villages before they made it into the prison 
system.
  In any event, the prisoners judged this to be the case and one by one 
set their own minds and wills to frustrate Fidel. And he thus proved 
unable to show his host, the Vietnamese Communists, any results. 
Defeated, furious, he turned to savagery, directing horrendous torture 
and beatings. So intense was the mistreatment that each prisoner had 
finally acquiesced to Fidel's enraged demand to surrender. He broke 
each one of the 11 and some never came home.
  Now, there is a man named Robert Destat, who has worked for years in 
and out of the Pentagon's missing Americans office. He had the gall, 
the effrontery, the treachery to put in writing recently that these men 
were interpreters only. It is a plausible Cuban story, he says. I am 
going to attempt to bring this man up on charges under the law that 
when Clinton signs it will be stripped out of the books soon over the 
next few weeks while it is on the books. It is only 5 months old, since 
February 10. I am going to bring him up on charges for willfully and 
knowingly lying to our families, and I understand he owns property in 
Hanoi, that he is marrying into that system over there, and that he has 
been allowed for years to disgracefully manipulate and psychologically 
torture the families of these men that were tortured by these three 
Cubans, nicknamed Fidel, Pancho, and Chico.
  But he did not break them unconditionally. For example, the senior 
ranking officer of the group, Air Force Major Jack Bomar, a navigator, 
when asked to write on the Doppler method of navigating our aircraft, 
produced two pages of spurious biography on the system's inventor, a 
German named Erich von Doppler who used to listen to trains. Fidel 
insisted--actually the Doppler effect was discovered by Christian 
Johann Doppler, a 19th century Austrian physicist. So the Americans are 
trying to mislead and fight back in this horrible deadly chess game of 
pitting our wills as the most pathetic of all people.
  Christ points this out, the Pope pointed it out to me, Pope Paul VI, 
when I had eight POW wives in his presence alone, just the Holy Father, 
Bob Dornan, a young radio TV talk show host and the eight wives that I 
had raised money to take around the world in January of 1970.
  We are on our way to Hanoi--to Moscow. Clinton is already there, 
young student, being thanked for his leading and organizing, 
treacherous help for Hanoi, encouragement, sustenance, assistance, all 
the words of synonyms for comfort or other words like aid because you 
get in a little debate on what words you can use out of the 
Constitution of the United States.
  I took four of those wives to Moscow, a few days after we met with 
the Pope, and we were arrested at the airport on fake document charges, 
put in a hotel with no heating, 26 degrees below zero. One strong wife 
did not get sick, and I and the other three wives got near pneumonia. 
Pope Paul VI, in good English said, never have wives traveled to the 
battlefields just simply asking, are our men alive or dead. Some of 
these wives did not know their men were alive and going through this 
type of medieval torture.
  Fidel insisted that the American criminals become more self-
sufficient. Therefore, he said they would raise their own fish. They 
were made to dig two breeding ponds, each about 10 feet long and 4 feet 
wide. When each hole was filled with water, Fidel produced a supply of 
approximately 350 tiny fish, each perhaps an inch and a half long. 
These fish, Fidel explained, would grow to a length of 3 feet and would 
weigh 12 pounds.
  When Fidel finished speaking, someone noticed that in the water the 
ponds were so muddied that the fish could not swim. They were 
clustering at the surface dying. At Fidel's frantic commands, the 
prisoners tried to use mosquito nets to lift the fish out of their 
muddy mud bath vats. It did not work. The netting engulfed the fish in 
sticky mud and there soon was mud over all the prisoners, the guards, 
Fidel and the

[[Page H9914]]

yards. Wash tubs were brought out. The prisoners descended in the mud 
pits with pails and bailed out the mud. They picked fish out of the 
mud, cleaned them off, threw them into the wash tubs and about 120 fish 
were salvaged. Like the American prisoners whom the fish were 
eventually supposed to nourish, the fish were soon to find themselves 
occupied mainly with survival. They were to do none of the spectacular 
growing Fidel predicted, and no American was ever to taste any of the 
fish.

  Fidel was full of ideas for prisoners self-sufficiency. He decided 
that the inmates should build a bakery and bake their own bread. Two of 
his criminals, Norman Dautry, who told me some of these stories in my 
office way back in the 1970's, and Ed Hubbard immediately represented 
themselves as bakery building experts and were placed in charge of 
construction. The project consumed two months.
  A sort of mud adobe oven was built with a chimney about 8 feet high.
  He goes on to tell the story of how the strange Fidel went through 
all of these processes of trying to build a prison system, not knowing 
that he came from Cuba where prisoners had already been held by this 
time in solitary confinement for better than a decade, stark naked, in 
totally darkened rooms with spatial disorientation, and what he was 
trying to do here they never figured out with the ovens and the fishes 
and all these things.
  Finally he begins to get deadly. One day, Fidel, clearly frustrated, 
turned to Colonel Jack Bomar. Every time you want to talk about 
something important, you talk secret. Everything else is loud. For the 
most important, life with Fidel was more than grim. Once the prisoners 
were divided into small groups and taken off to different work 
projects, Bomar and Dautry found themselves listening to the sounds of 
awful beatings being administered outside a stall in a small bath area.
  It went on and on, amid shrieks of unrestrained rage and sounds of 
fists and other things smashing against flesh and bone. The noise 
chilled the blood and spirit.
  After a time, Fidel emerged from the stall and spotting Bomar 
shouted, we have got a, the F word, that is faking. Nobody is going to 
fake and get away with it.
  The Latin launched on a lengthy tirade describing how the prisoner 
had pretended illness and injury to avoid interrogation and work. I am 
going to teach you all a lesson, he vowed. I am going to break this guy 
in a million pieces. He is going to eat. He is going to bow. He is 
going to work. He is going to do everything we say. He is going to 
surrender like all of you surrendered.
  A Vietnamese guard brought the man from the stall. The sight of the 
prisoner stunned Colonel Bomar. He stood transfixed, trying to make 
himself believe that human beings could so batter another human being. 
Bob Destat, on your payroll, as taxpayers, says this is all lying. I 
want this Destat by subpoena in front of my committee. I want him in a 
court of law.
  The man could barely walk. He shuffled slowly, painfully, his 
clothing was torn to shreds. He was bleeding everywhere, terribly 
swollen, and a dirty, yellowish, black and purple from head to toe. The 
man's head was down. He made no attempt to look at anyone.
  He was taken into the cell the Fidel prisoner shared, and Fidel 
grabbed Bomar by the arm and hustled him in, ordering him, shake hands 
with your comrade. Bomar introduced himself, offering his hand. The man 
did not react. He stood unmoving, head down.
  Fidel smashed a fist into the man's face, driving him against the 
wall. Then he was brought to the center of the room and made to get 
down on his knees. Screaming in rage, Fidel took a length of black 
rubber hose from a guard and lashed it as hard as he could into the 
man's face. The prisoner did not react.
  He did not cry out or even blink an eye. His failure to react seemed 
to fuel Fidel's rage and again he whipped the rubber hose across the 
man's face. Bomar was nearly physically ill at what he saw happening, 
and he was helpless to stop it.
  Again and again, a dozen times Fidel smashed the man's face with the 
hose. Not once did the fearsome abuse elicit the slightest response 
from this Air Force major. Bomar began to realize that the man was not 
really there, that somehow his brain had turned out the pain and the 
damage and everything else. At last Fidel ordered, take him down and 
clean him up.
  Bomar helped the battered pilot to a bath stall. In the stall was a 
concrete tank containing some dirty water and a pale. Bomar got some 
soap. He undressed the man and found that he had been through much more 
than the day's beatings. His body was ripped and torn everywhere. Hell 
cuffs appeared to have severed the wrist; strap marks still wound 
around the arms all the way to the shoulders. Slivers of bamboo were 
embedded in the bloodied shins, and there were what appeared to be 
treadmarks from the hose across the chest, the back, the legs.
  Horrified, Bomar was afraid to touch him for fear of causing him more 
pain. He spoke softly, trying to comfort the man, to let him know that 
he was now in friendly hands and that he wanted to help him and make 
him comfortable. The man did not react. He did not open his eyes or say 
anything. He simply sat, head down. Gently, Bomar cleaned him as best 
he could.

                              {time}  1830

  Then suddenly Fidel burst into the stall, grabbed Bomar, slammed him 
out of the place, out of the way, and began beating the man again. He 
kept driving his fist into his face, slamming him against the wall, 
down on to his knees. Then he stalked away, leaving Bomar to get them 
both back to the cell.
  The other Fidel prisoners returned from their work detail. And one of 
them, Norlan Daughtrey, told me in my office--and as he began to recall 
these memories, tears streamed down his face as he relived it--the way 
you will see a rape victim or a family member from a murder on the 
witness stand, and you can see the visceral images flood into what 
Shakespeare called our mind's eye and then the tears begin to flow. 
This is what happened to Norlan in my office, reliving. He witnessed 
these beatings also of other men, including Colonel Bomar, but also of 
Major Early Kobeal, only identified in this great work of history as 
the Faker.
  The other Fidel prisoners came back from the detail. As Bomar 
described what had happened, the new man remained mute, his head down, 
his eyes closed, his teeth clenched tightly together. It was as though 
he was alone in a world of his own. None of the others knew him or 
anything about him. All that was known was that he was an Amercian, 
that unspeakable horrors had been done to him and that he needed all 
the solace and help he could get. Conaboy, Trowbridge, distraught 
people on our payroll denying this type of ugly history, of our chained 
eagles being destroyed.
  His belongings were delivered. His blankets and clothing were soaked 
with dried blood, puss, and waste matter. A bed was made for him and he 
was made to lie down. The others discussed what to do. Somehow he had 
to be brought back from wherever it was that Fidel and his colleagues 
had driven him. He needed to be kept clean, to be fed, and to be nursed 
back to physical and mental health.
  The bowing program was in full swing, meaning breaking men to bow in 
front of these stupid, uneducated guards. Guards were opening cells 
dozens of times daily just for the pleasure of seeing the Americans bow 
to them. The Fidel prisoners lost no time coming to their feet and 
bending to obedience, because of their torture, but the new arrival 
would not so much as acknowledge that the cell door had opened. 
Unfailingly, an offended guard would stride to his bunk, grab him by 
the neck of his shirt, pull him up, and slap him hard across the face. 
The others winced with every blow; some muttered fears for their own 
sanity if the assault on the man continued. If they stepped in the way, 
they would be tortured to death.
  The man would say nothing and do nothing. The others took turns 
feeding him, talking to him, soothing him, and offering him 
encouragement. He ate, and at length he opened his eyes. But he kept 
his head down, staring blankly, and kept his silence, keeping his teeth 
clenched tightly when he was not eating.
  Then, suddenly, he spoke. Somehow, someone had come by a banana and 
proposed to feed it to him. Through teeth that remained clenched, he 
said,

[[Page H9915]]

``There is a microphone in the banana.''
  The others gathered round, certain that a turning point had been 
reached and that important ground was about to be gained. Eagerly they 
broke the banana open in front of him, showing that there was no 
microphone in it. He refused to accept this, and refused to eat the 
banana. Again he fell silent, unresponsive.
  Days later, he spoke again muttering as if to himself, that the room 
seemed to be full of people who ``look like Americans.''
  ``We are Americans,'' Colonel Bomar assured him. ``We have gone 
through a lot of what you have gone through. We are all in the same 
boat.''
  ``They changed your hands,'' the man replied. ``They changed your 
face. They needed your face and hands. There are gas jets in the 
wall.''
  ``Our hands are all right.''
  ``You are Russians, Russian actors on a stage,'' the man said. ``The 
sun goes too fast. There it goes, across the sky.''
  Now he refused to eat totally. Bomar and the others could get 
nowhere. Only occasionally would this tortured figure say, ``I know 
what you are doing. I know you want my hands. I know you are going to 
kill me. Why won't you go ahead and do it? Kill me.''
  In comes Fidel. ``He's faking.'' The Latin took the man out into the 
porch of the Stable--a prison section name--along with Bomar, to warn 
him that the man had to stop faking. The man would not answer. He 
stared downward, behaved as if Fidel were not present. Fidel's rage 
mounted. He ranted at the man, screaming every obscenity. ``He's 
faking, I know he's faking, and I'm gonna prove it.''
  The man was removed to a hospital.
  The events of March 31--interesting, the very day that LBJ, this 
man's Commander in Chief, throws in the towel and quits the 
presidential race to pursue a solution to the war in Vietnam, more on-
and-off bombing, more treachery, more betrayal of kids. No called up 
reserves or guard or international guard in this war except for 6 F-100 
squadrons, only farm kids, African-American kids, Hispanic and American 
kids, sons of military families like mine, sons of conservative 
families like mine.
  And as I read this to you, my older brother is in heart surgery 
today. He has been in surgery for 5 hours. Half an hour to go. My 
brother, Don.
  If you are listening, you identify with me over this mess. Please 
send prayers for my brother Don, Mr. Speaker.
  The events of March 31, 1968, Johnson bug-out day, the halting of the 
American air campaign against North Vietnam and President Johnson's 
announcement that he would not seek another term in the White House, 
were trumpeted to the American POWs as evidence that Hanoi's Communist 
cause was prevailing. The antiwar movement was succeeding.
  Bill Clinton spoke: We are winning, exceeding beyond expectation. 
There was no secret Soviet money coming into American student groups. 
All they had to do was reward them with occasional trips to Moscow. 
They were ahead of the curve, way ahead of any other student group that 
was pro-Hanoi in Europe.
  Generally, however, the American prisoners interpreted the news 
differently. Most took it for granted that the Communists had come to 
terms with Johnson. Hope springs eternal, I guess, and the torture goes 
on.
  Jack Bomar found himself speaking freely to one whom the prisoners 
called Pancho. Pancho, too, was Latin, average height, but powerfully 
built and with a big, shaggy black beard.
  We have him identified too. He got away with these war crimes. 
Whatever his purpose in Hanoi, he was not an interrogator.
  And Bob, to stop, I want you. Hear me. He was not an interpreter. He 
merely wanted to talk to Americans, and sought Bomar's reaction to the 
bombing halt. General Wald, do something about this act, I beg you. You 
are a war hero, Jim. Do something about these people.
  ``The President didn't stop the bombing without concessions,'' Bomar 
told him. ``There is no doubt in my mind about that. And I don't know 
what the other concessions are but the release of the POW's is 
primary.'' Five more years in this hell hole. ``We'll be out of here 
within 90 days.''
  Fidel entered the room where Pancho and Bomar were talking as the 
American uttered the word ``concessions.'' He grabbed Bomar by the 
shoulder, threw him to the floor, roared furiously, ``Concessions? 
Never. The Vietnamese have absolutely defeated the United States. You 
will never leave here.''
  The next morning Bomar was summoned from his cell. The long stable 
porch was crammed with Vietnamese, armed guards, and men and women who 
worked around the camp. Bomar knew he was in for a brutal session. He 
was made to kneel on the ground, hands in the air. Fidel strode before 
him, delivering a long, angry lecture on ``concessions.'' At last he 
said, ``Now, we are going to teach you what concessions really are.'' 
With that he drove a roundhouse blow straight into Bomar's face, 
sending him sprawling. Guards brought him back up to his knees.
  This is really brave, punching a man with eight guards holding him.
  Again Fidel smashed him in the face.
  Brigadier General Fernandez of Cuba, allowed to dine and wine in New 
York City for 2 years not a decade after this.
  And again the spectators appreciated the show. They laughed, probably 
drooled, shouted encouragement to Fidel.
  Now the Latin stepped behind Bomar--remember this guy is about 6'1'' 
or 6'2''--with the length of a rubber hose and lashed him hard, just 
below the kidneys. Then a second blow. Bomar was down, writhing in the 
dirt, wondering how much of the rubber hose he could stand. He was 
yanked up on to his knees again. Now Fidel was screaming for Norlan 
Daughtrey.
  Daughtrey was made to kneel in the dirt beside Bomar. Fidel smashed 
his fist into his face, guards pulled him back, and Fidel lashed him 
across the back with the hose. Then the Latin stood behind Bomar and 
lashed him with the hose, and screamed for Navy Ens. Charles D. 
``Chuck'' Rice, captured on October 26, 1967.
  What do you know? The same day, the day before John McCain was shot 
down.
  Rice was smashed in the face, lashed with a hose. Then again Fidel 
stood behind Bomar and laid the hose across his back.
  By the way, some Senators put this all behind them. They said, ``Oh 
the freedom bird, the day I left, I put all this war behind me.'' 
Others, like Senator Jeremiah Denton, and like this noble hero we have 
the honor of serving with, Sam Johnson, we do not forget this. We must 
never forget this any more than Simon Weisenthal allows the world to 
forget Nazi torture of prisoners.
  I remember I put my hands on the rack at Auschwitz. The torture rack 
is still there, where they would stretch men across in front of groups 
of 300 and 400, God loved but seemingly forsaken Jewish prisoners, all 
to die in the gas chambers. They would scourge and beat men hundreds of 
times to break their will, not for escape attempts, just for the 
sadistic pleasure of the guards.
  The first time I visited there the Vietnam war was going on. I was a 
newsman heading to Vietnam and I thought to myself, thank God in this 
modern age with a superpower, the United States of America, behind our 
Navy, Marines, and Air Force pilots and our Green Berets and ground 
guys getting captured on the ground, they will all be returned. We are 
not suffering this way in the prison camp of Hanoi. But my brother's 
pilots were suffering this way. It is incredible.

  So now he begins beating four prisoners at one time.
  One by one, the Fidel prisoners, 12 of them, before the crowd made to 
kneel, smashed in the face, lashed with the rubber hose. Each time 
Bomar was lashed once again.
  So the first guy takes multiple punishments for all the rest.
  At last the punishment ended. The Americans were all on their knees, 
their hands high. Down the steps came Lump--the prisoners' bravado 
nickname for one of these sadistic pigs, the zoo camp commander. He 
walked to Bomar, poked a finger at his face and shouted, ``Jackasses, 
these are your concessions.''
  I wonder what Lyndon, the great Texas boot-wearing tough President, 
would have done if he had known this was happening. We knew by then it 
was

[[Page H9916]]

happening because of the early release programs of the slipperies, the 
slimies, and the sleezies.
  He says the prisoners were kept on their knees for a half hour while 
Fidel harangued them, warned them to put out of their minds any 
thoughts that they might be leaving soon. Then all but Bomar were 
ordered back to their cell. Bomar was treated to additional 
histrionics, and finally Fidel smashed him sprawling one last time and 
ordered him dragged back to his cell.
  After most of 2 weeks, the man whom Fidel said was faking was 
returned from the hospital--kept alive for torture.
  Only the Nazis and the Japanese war criminals of Manchuria did this 
kind of sickly stuff. I now have gotten the top secret documents 
declassified of a Communist-built hospital in North Korea where 
American young farm kids were used as guinea pigs in medical 
experiments in North Korea in the early 1950's, the way that it had 
been done to Australians, British, Americans, hundreds of Soviet 
prisoners and thousands of Chinese prisoners in Harbin in unit 731, 
tortured to death in every conceivable way, using Dr. Mengele's 
playbook from Auschwitz.
  Every conceivable, when-Hell-was-in-session type of torture took 
place in North Korea and our secret agencies in this country did 
nothing to debrief a defecting Czech general of their joint chiefs of 
staff named Senya who told us all this in 1968, the very year this is 
happening, and he was told, ``We are not interested in a hospital built 
in Korea to experiment on captured POW's until they were dead.''
  Nothing like this has ever been discussed on the floor of this House 
or in the other body.
  Within a few weeks many of the group were covered with boils. When 
they brought back the so-called faker he was unkempt, a malodorous 
mess.
  That means stinking to high heavens.
  He had several huge boils on his back and hips. The camp medic, a 
Vietnamese whom the prisoners called Slasher, tore the cores out of the 
boils using some kind of rusty instrument.

                              {time}  1845

  He cut in deeply, drawing blood, ripping off patches of skin, 
draining the pus. The prisoner never even winced. When the medic left, 
the others ground up sulfur pills they had begged and stashed away and 
dusted the powder into his gaping wounds.
  I have to jump here, Mr. Speaker, and tell the listeners, if they 
have suffered through to this point, this man was not returned. He was 
kept back as a live prisoner. When the other people, including some 
Senators-to-be and current Senators and a couple of House Members now, 
all came home on the freedom birds, this man and others like J.J. 
O'Connell, another naval aviator, they were held behind because they 
were zombies. They were beaten until they had lost their senses. They 
were held back.
  Any man who suffered a slight amputation, had any bad head wounds, 
they were held back and allowed to die in camp. Then they were buried 
in the ground, dug up months later, all the fleshy material cut away, 
their bones put in a box, stuck in a warehouse. There are still 200 
boxes of these heroes' remains there at this moment, as I speak on the 
floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
  Then they would, like they did to the French, trade in 30 pieces of 
silver, giving us back our heroes' remains, and we still grovel for our 
heroes' remains, and we still put up money, millions of it, a third of 
it lost to our taxpayers, in this gruesome relived French Vietnam game 
of trafficking in heroes' dust and bones, while ignoring the stories of 
live sightings.
  Good God almighty, what has happened to my country, with this 
corruption in the White House and this lack of focus on justice and 
history?
  The man, Major Cobiel, could not move now. Ed Hubbard had removed 
more than 2,300 boils from the top of his head, from the soles of his 
feet. He was in terrible agony and it worsened when he moved. He could 
not walk, he could not sit, he could not lie down.
  The Cubans are all enjoying this.
  It was causing himself terrible pain. Still he kept moving, helping 
with the cleanup chores, trying to take care of himself.
  Bomar, the Colonel, Air Force Colonel, had 44 boils, including four 
in one armpit, and an especially painful one in one of his fingers; 
using a bamboo self-made needle, he opened this one to drain it. Soon 
angry red streaks painted the arm, signaling blood poisoning.
  Do you know how we panic with our children and grandchildren over one 
infection on their body, one little red line going up an are or leg?
  He became horribly ill. Slasher, the Vietnamese guard, carved into 
the little finger. The poison flew out of it. Amazingly, Larry Spencer, 
who was waiting hand and foot on the faker, developed no boils. He 
scrubbed the major's clothing.
  I am inserting his rank and his name on occasion.
  He bathed and stayed close to him, tending to his every need, but 
remaining free of infection. He kept looking after the man in the face 
of enormous frustration.
  The bowing programs remained in effect and the guards enforced it 
with what the prisoners called fan belts, actually rubber whips cut out 
of old tires. One day the door to Fidel's his special prisoners cell, 
the 12 of them, opened 39 times, requiring 78 bows, one each time a 
guard entered, a second when he indicated he was leaving.
  Imagine, we had college kids, privileged kids dodging the draft, all 
of them demonstrating across this country and calling these men, to use 
Jane Fonda's quotes, liars, hypocrites, and professional killers; men 
fighting for the liberty of a faraway land.

  Back to the faker.
  Each time all delivered these bows except the faker, Maj. Earl 
Cobiel. Each time he failed to bow the offended guard would punch him, 
slap him, kick him, lash the rubber whip across his face. His face and 
head were ripped bloody, but he never once gave the slightest 
indication that he felt any of these blows. The others kept caring for 
the Major, worrying about him, worrying about their own abilities--he 
was probably a young captain when he was captured--while being forced 
to witness such grizzly treatment and wondering how to stop the slow 
murder.
  SRO--that means the prisoner camp designated leader--Bomar pleaded 
with Fidel time and again to make the Latin believe the truth, the man 
was not faking; that no one who was faking could suffer such a brutally 
insane punishment without reacting. Give up on him, Bomar urged. Let us 
take care of him.
  Fidel would have none of them. ``The F'er is faking,'' and the horror 
continued. Apparently Fidel needed some victories. He remained 
determined to break the faker to win his total surrender.
  Now the story switches to Korean war ace Jim Kasler who had led the 
first strikes against Hanoi's oil depots 2 years earlier, in 1966. He 
studied Spot, another guard who had a big lack of pigment, a spot on 
his cheek. He knew him to be a sadist. He judged him to be a homosexual 
sadist. He hated him with a quiet, intense hatred and knew that the 
feeling was mutual. He wondered Why Spot was attempting to be friendly, 
why the smile and the inane conversation.
  Suddenly Spot, are you listening Bob Destat, are you listening, 
Connaboy, and suddenly Spot announced, ``My major has directed me to 
find a man to meet a delegation and make a TV appearance on the 
occasion of the downing of the 3,000th enemy airplane.''
  That is more fighters than we have on active duty now. But Robert 
Strange, the most morally corrupt man to ever serve in public office in 
my lifetime, this arrogant, conceited, and not as bright as people 
thought, this evil, truly evil man, Robert Strange McNamara, had ground 
up 3,000 of our aircraft, a superpower, into the ground, accomplishing 
very little.
  ``So who should I think of but you, of course, which is an honor for 
you,'' this is Spot, the creepy sadist talking. B.S., Barbara 
Streisand, as Rush Limbaugh would say.
  ``I am not going to see any g-d delegation.''
  Of course, the men are fighting back with small ``g'' blashemies.
  ``You have no choice. You are in our hands now. We have kept you 
alive. Now you owe this to us.''
  I owe you nothing, says this ace pilot, Kasler, terribly ill from 
infections in his legs. Nonetheless, he had

[[Page H9917]]

been subjected to prolonged brutal torture and beatings. He had almost 
died like McCain in his bail-out with his body savagely ripped apart.
  Only recently Spot had beaten him to a pulp. He kept him on his knees 
the rest of the day allowing him a 5-minute break each hour because of 
his leg infections. This the sadist said was in keeping with the humane 
and lenient treatment. That was their little mantra and chant. You got 
humane and lenient treatment. Spot got up to leave the room. Handing 
Castro an English language paper, the Vietnamese Courier. Kasler read 
of the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy. He tired to digest this 
shocking news when Spot returned to demand his final decision.
  Kasler advised that he had already said it. he would make no 
appearances before people or cameras. Spot clapped him in the Ho Chi 
Minh room; again, bravado, fighting back; designating of rooms and 
brutal torture masters with Americana names. The filthy darkened cell 
in the auditorium.
  The next day he was summoned again to interrogation. This is a 78-
victory ace from Korea. The tables laden with torture paraphernalia, 
ropes, leg irons, three different sets of cuffs in all different sizes. 
``You can torture me, you can drag me before that delegation,'' Kasler 
said, ``but I am not going to say a goddamned word when I get there. 
And I'm not making a TV appearance.''
  Spot supervised the torture. Lump came in to observe, As the guards 
lashed Jim Kasler's arms behind him so that the backs of his wrists 
met, and hell cuffs were ratcheted on down to the bones. then the ropes 
were pulled on, bone tight, from the elbows to the shoulder and his 
arms were pulled tightly together. The prisoner suffered this 
excruciation in silence. Spot kept urging him to put an end to his 
discomfort. All he need do was agree to meet a delegation.
  ``Kasler tried to concentrate on not thinking about the awful pain in 
his wrists. Other prisoners he knew found the pain in the shoulders and 
chest to be the worst. For him, the hell cuffs were the worst. After 
perhaps 45 minutes, the cuffs and reasons were removed and Kasler was 
made to kneel for another beating. Then another smaller set of hell 
cuffs were ratcheted on.''
  I do not think 99 percent of Americans listing tonight out of this 
audience of 100,000 have a clue that this went on, not with the idiocy 
that you hear coming out of this administration, and the groveling to 
Hanoi that goes on today.
  Tbe pain was worse this time. After about an hour it was absolutely 
intolerable. Kasler lost consciousness. When he awakened the cuffs were 
removed. He was allowed 15 minutes rest. Then another beating. Then 
hell cuffs reapplied. This time, somehow the pain intensified. He 
passed out within a few minutes.
  ``Do you surrender? Do you surrender?'' Spot was asking when he 
regained consciousness. Sick, bathed in pain, he could take no more. He 
muttered ``Okay. I surrender.'' Abruptly the torture guards pulled him 
up to his knees, his arms behind him, ratcheted the cuffs back into his 
wrist down to the bones; in other words, not accepting his surrender. 
Again he passed out. When he came to: ``Do you surrender?'' Again, ``I 
surrender,'' but again it was as though he had not spoken. Again he was 
tortured to unconsciousness.
  ``This went on and on. At last the torture guard pulled him up on his 
knees, threw a rope around his neck, and began garotting him to death. 
Unable to breathe, he lost consciousness.'' Are you listening, Bob 
Destat? ``He awakened to find the guards slapping his face, and Spot 
continued to ask, do you surrender? Yes, yes. Finally it ended.'' And 
it goes on and on and on.
  ``Who captured you? Mostly unarmed women and children. And what have 
you observed since you have been in this camp? I have seen hundreds of 
new prisoners arrive in this camp, and it is obvious that our bombing 
has been fruitless because Vietnamese production is up on all fronts. 
We now get fruit, sugar''. They are asking him. They are giving him the 
answers he is supposed to give in this performance. The torture of 
Kasler goes on and on.
  Yes, my friends, Mr. Speaker, listening, I am going to mercifully 
skip through some of Jim's awful torture. In one photograph Kasler 
spotted two elderly gentlemen wearing American Legion caps who had 
worked their way into the middle of the howling antiwar mob. They 
smilingly held up a placard inscribed ``drop the bomb.''
  Grinning, Kasler repeated that he would not be cooperative in any 
appearance he was forced to make, reassured by a couple of World War II 
vets in the middle of these screaming hippies: drug-using, free-sex 
idiots betraying the cause of freedom. There, a little image, months 
before Chicago, someone maybe gave him heart, and he fought back, to be 
tortured some more.
  It goes on and on. Jim got the Air Force cross for this. He should 
have gotten the Medal of Honor like my friend, Bud Day, suffered this 
type of hell, of like Jeremiah Denton or--excuse me, he got the Navy 
Cross, should have gotten the Medal of Honor, Senator Jerry, should 
have. Or like James Bond Stockdale, what a courageous leader. I think 
our guy here, the gentleman from Texas, Sam Johnson, should have gotten 
the Medal of Honor, Jim Gaskin.
  Torture guards stuffing rags, not into his mouth but down his throat. 
He could not cry out, but how many did in torture? The Vietnamese did 
not like it. He kept spitting the rags out on the floor, the guards 
kept stuffing them down his mouth. After a while, he had still not 
screamed, they stopped trying to gag him, so he would hold his screams 
in a natural impulse to torture, because if he did not they would choke 
him to death.
  Why are you doing this, you Mother F? Why won't you cooperate? You 
are not gong to make a traitor out of me, Kasler says. Some guys betray 
their country, like Edison Miller, like Eugene Wilbur, without even 
being yelled at. Other men go through this, and some went through it to 
their death. They died under torture for our freedom in this House, in 
that Senate, in this country. It is all forgotten. As Ronald Reagan 
said, where is our memory for Normandy, Anzio, Guadalcanal, and this 
torture in Hanoi?
  He says ``After a while Fidel ordered the cuffs removed and the 
ropes. He sat Kasler at the table before him. Who knows you have been 
here? The Latin asked. Nobody. Then why are you pulling this shit? You 
don't have to go through this. You will go through this peace 
delegation of scummy American traitors. I refuse, Kasler said. Shifting 
psychological gears, Fidel asked, do you want a drink of water? Yes. 
Having sweated through the tortures, he was completely dehydrated. He 
was probably shedding what is called urea. I learned this in studying 
Jesus' passion, where sweat mixes with bodily fluids and blood that 
comes from places unknown inside your musculature under this horrible 
torture.
  Guards brought the water. Fidel turned on a table fan and Kasler gave 
him a cigarette. OK. When are you going before the delegation? Forget 
it, said Colonel Kasler. I'm not doing anything. Back on your knees. 
More beatings. He recited the Lords' prayer to himself, thinking 
through the meaning of each word. If anybody knows Kasler, Mr. Speaker, 
I hope they are calling him to watch today. Somebody has not forgotten, 
Jim.
  Yes, are you going to surrender? No. Taken out of torture. Back to 
the bath area, cleaned up. You smell like a pig, Fidel says. And then 
he takes the lash across Kasler's buttocks. I skipped two horrible 
paragraphs here. Strike the enemy first before he has a chance to hit 
you, they scream. Another lash. More quotes from various newspapers, 
bringing back Kasler's interviews prior to his capture.
  Lost in pain, he paid no heed to what the torturer was saying. 
Thirty-six lashes, Fidel asked. Are you going to surrender? No. I will 
talk to you tomorrow, you son of a bitch. Kasler's buttocks, lower 
back, and legs hung in shreds. The skin had been completely whipped 
away and the whole area was a bluish, purplish, greenish mass of bloody 
raw meat. Are you listening, listening Bob Destat? I want you in front 
of my subcommittee.
  Lump came in to watch. Tomorrow we show you the determination of 
Vietnamese people, but the next day was the Fourth of July, 1968, and 
in deference to the American holiday, Fidel gave Kasler a respite.
  Another paragraph of torture. After a long time he turned to his 
cell, made

[[Page H9918]]

him strip down to the shorts. He was locked in the leg irons and made 
to sit on the bed pallet. His hands were left free but they were 
useless now. The wrists, torn and bloody, looked as if though they had 
been almost served by the hell cuffs, and the discolored hands and 
fingers remained so swollen that he could not move them.

                              {time}  1900

  Another page of torture. Another whole page of torture. Another whole 
page of torture. Now we are getting back to the Faker.
  Fidel departed sometime in August. He was not seen back again. The 
Vietnamese had finally concluded that the Faker, Maj. Earl Cobiel, was 
not faking. Frequently they would deliver a few cookies to him. When 
the other prisoners would urge these extras upon him, he would 
sometimes accept them, only to fire back at his fellow prisoners who 
had proffered them. The Vietnamese seemed increasingly frightened over 
the man's condition. Lump kept asking the other Americans, ``What do 
you want us to do? What is needed?''
  Because the Cuban torture masters had gone on to glory at the U.N. 
and back to Fidel, the first-degree, murdering torture master, who was 
put in an NBC special in the middle of the Olympics.
  What is the matter with you people at NBC? Why would you ruin every 
Cuban American's enjoyment of those wonderful games by putting this 
first-degree killer Castro in our face? Why would you glorify this raw 
evil? Because you know nothing about the history of your country.
  I cannot even read this one, it is so bad.
  One of the group, Navy Lt. Al Carpenter, captured November 1, 1966, 
not to be confused with Capt. Air Force Joe Carpenter who was released 
on August 2, 1968, along with Jim Low and Maj. Fred Neale Thompson. 
This Carpenter stayed to the bitter end. He would not take an early 
release.
  ``Release him,'' Carpenter suggested. They had a plan which another 
man who suffered savage medieval torture, Larry Guarino, another hero, 
another camp commander, an SRO, senior ranking officer. He went down to 
90 pounds; an average weight of about 160. Said, ``Release him. See 
that he gets back to the United States where he will receive proper 
medical treatment, care, psychiatric help. Do that and we'll see the 
story never gets out about what we saw happen to him here.''
  The plan was rejected. It seemed clear the man's captors did not want 
him on view to the world. The guard Lump kept badgering Bomar to write 
of the good treatment that Cobiel, and I am inserting his name in the 
Reader's Digest Book POW.
  Bomar kept producing such unsatisfactory statements as ``He received 
two oranges after they stopped beating him with a fanbelt''; or ``He 
was allowed a cookie after they stopped beating him and hitting him for 
hours''; or ``Since the beating stopped he's been given a banana.''
  Dissension began to seethe within the Fidel group. Oh, I am sorry, 
Fidel is gone but not the others.
  Some of the men, sick and weary themselves, reached the end of 
patience and their deranged compatriot. This is sad.
  Tired of trying to cope with Major Cobiel, they urged Bomar to demand 
that he be taken back to the hospital. Bomar agreed that hospital care 
was in order. The man has now lost his senses, and he is fighting his 
friends trying to help him.
  He thought it vital that the group retain physical possession of the 
man. Bomar felt certain that if the man were removed from the company 
of other Americans, he would never be seen again.
  That, Mr. Speaker, is what happened, until his bones came back to 
Arlington or maybe to some local graveyard that has a marker, Maj. Earl 
Cobiel, U.S. Air Force, the year of his birth, the year of his death. I 
hope we gave him the Distinguished Flying Cross or something so it 
could be dug into the marble of his earthly reminder that he lived.
  He thought it vital, Colonel Bomar, that the group keep the man. I 
repeat.
  Still, for the sake of some of the others and their sanity, Bomar 
wanted him in another cell, preferably nearby, with some Americans who 
would look after him. Larry Spencer and Ed Hubbard volunteered for the 
job. Bomar, having divined that all good ideas must originate in his 
captors' heads, tried to implant this one in Lump's cranium. It didn't 
take. The disaster continued.
  POW, Mr. Speaker. Every student of America who loves freedom of 
speech should read it. They paid for our speech with their blood.

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