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McCain returns to the past | page 1, 2 "So you got something," Jack jokes. "Yeah, collateral damage," Dad says.
Somewhat incongruously, the lake and both prisons are in the middle of the city; as a prisoner, McCain could occasionally hear the "ching-ching" of bicycle bells emanating from somewhere outside his cell. In the shadow of the neighboring "Hanoi Towers" apartments, offices and shops for rent, a small horde of obnoxious cameramen awaits McCain outside the Hanoi Hilton. As we drive up, a mustached guy from the U.S. Embassy tells us that one wall is all that remains of the original prison, built in 1886 by the French. As we enter, McCain's wife and son are pushed aside by the cameramen as McCain makes his way down the cellblock known as "Thunderbird," named after a Las Vegas hotel. "I hate the media," says U.S. News & World Report's Roger Simon. McCain repeatedly stops to throw a lifeline to his family members and drag them up to where he's standing, in cells that never really held prisoners. The entire building has been reconstructed as a museum about French cruelty to the Vietnamese -- and Vietnamese hospitality to the Americans. McCain is asked about the museum's approach to his days in its dank walls. "It's incomplete," he says, "though I would be somewhat astounded if they had some kind of memorial to their treatment of us." This is his third or fourth visit to the prison. Cindy was here once before on a relief mission for the charity she runs; she came without her husband and she broke down. But Jack has never been here before, and McCain wants to show him the photographs of him and his buddies that are hanging in one display, but forgets which room it's in. A sound man guides him there.
McCain points at pictures of him and his buddies hanging behind a glass display case. There's Ev Alvarez, the longest-held prisoner in the North (1964 to 1973), who spent some time on the "Straight Talk Express" during his fellow prisoner's ill-fated run for the presidency. There's Pete Peterson, now U.S. ambassador to Vietnam. There's the old man. "Not a bad-looking guy, eh, Jack?" McCain points out that in one propaganda photo, of U.S. soldiers praying, one subversive soldier "is scratching his chin with his middle finger." Salter beckons McCain to another wall, where the Vietnamese government has a plaque testifying that from Aug. 5, 1964, until Jan. 24, 1973, "the U.S. Government carried out two destructive wars by the Army and Navy against North Vietnam" in which the Vietnamese army "brought down thousands of aircraft." Even though the pilots "committed intold [sic] crimes on our people," the sign reads, "American pilots suffered no revenge once they were captured and detained. Instead, they were well treated with adequate food, clothing, and shelter."
McCain shakes his head in amazement. "That's entertainment," he finally says. The group next buzzes by the Plantation, which still serves as a military office. All are denied entry, even to the front yard. "They'll never change," McCain says of the communist military bureaucrats -- an angry-looking man and woman standing at the gate. He motions toward Tucker Carlson of the Weekly Standard. "Tell Tucker to give her his cigarettes and they'll let us in," he jokes. He, Cindy and Jack walk down Pho Ly Nam De Street, and he tells them the story of Doug Egdall, an 18-year-old South Dakota sailor whom McCain knew at the Plantation. On his first night on his ship, Egdall went onto the deck to watch the ship's attack on the shore. But the munitions blast blew the ship back and Egdall fell overboard. "He never even spent a night on the ship," McCain says. Plucked from the waters by North Vietnamese fishermen the next morning, Egdall was taken to the Plantation, where he was given "the run of the camp" compared with the other prisoners. "He was a tall, gangly guy, just 18," and the Vietnamese underestimated his intelligence. Egdall soon memorized everyone's names, all 200-odd prisoners, and when he was released he informed the military of exactly who was there. Plus, McCain says, "he was the first one to talk about the mistreatment at the camps." Now he teaches an "Escape and Evasion" class in San Diego, McCain says with a smile. The next and final stop of the day is the "Ranch," where the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting is headquartered. Since none of the information McCain is about to be briefed on is classified, he encourages the task force to let the six U.S. reporters on this trip accompany him on the briefing. Lt. Col. Franklin Childress tells us about the six most recent missions to reclaim the remains of a total of 15 U.S. soldiers still missing in action. Each mission costs about $1 million, he says. The trips to the mountain sites, in particular, are often treacherous, with tough weather, live munitions, leeches and snakes like the bamboo viper -- nicknamed a "two-stepper," Childress says, "because if you're bitten you take two steps and then you die." Eighty to 85 percent of the cases are along terrain like this along or near the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Some missions, of course, are easier, like a trip last summer to reclaim a plane underwater near Da Nang. The two pilots were found still strapped in their seats in the cockpit. Childress talks briefly about sightings of live soldiers and stories of soldiers still held in tiger cages in Laos. Twenty months ago, he reports, there was a sighting of a suspected former soldier. The task force takes all of these reports seriously, he says, though it's pretty clear he doesn't think any of the reports of American soldiers still being held captive are credible. In the recent case, the man was indeed tall, pale and skinny, with dark hair and a beard. But he also was not an American but an ethnic minority from China. "There is usually a kernel of truth" to each of the reports, says Gary Flanagan, a casualty resolution specialist with the Pentagon, here since '91. A report about an African-American man being held in chains on the border under armed guard turned out to be a Senegalese-Vietnamese worker in a lumber camp who was dragging lumber with a chain, under the supervision of a guard protecting the valuable wood. After a vigorous mountain scouting trip in 1988, Flanagan heard reports of a white American being forced to carry materials over the mountain. "That was me," he says. "I look pretty ragged after a few days out there." "The question then arises," McCain says at the end of the briefing, "when do we terminate this operation? And I think the answer lies with the families. When they feel satisfied." He recalls the reports about servicemen still held in tiger cages and a false photo of captive servicemen that Newsweek once featured on its cover. (At this, Newsweek reporter Howard Fineman shifts uncomfortably in his seat.) The search for soldiers' remains -- and, however unlikely, survivors of the war -- continues, McCain says, with almost $800 million spent on the operation since 1992. "When I think about the lengths we go to," he says later, in a brief drive back to Hotel Dae Woo (where we're all staying until we leave for Ho Chi Minh City Thursday evening), "I mean, we didn't do this for any other war. It's a commentary on the commitment we feel to our soldiers, and an obligation we feel, perhaps a touch of guilt." Salter notes that "everybody looks for a psychological reason" for why McCain is so active on every legislative issue dealing with Vietnam -- POW/MIAs, the Vietnamese economy, diplomatic recognition. "I don't think there is one. He just feels a stewardship for the relationship, he and Kerry." McCain seems to agree. He gave President Clinton bipartisan political cover on lifting the embargo against Vietnam and again on diplomatic recognition. But he says Kerry would have done the same for a Republican president were the situation reversed. "It wasn't so much giving Clinton cover as it was moving the process through," McCain says. "And doing the right thing." And what if all his efforts on the trade agreement on this trip are for naught? Well, at the very least the trip will have accomplished something for Jack. "It'll give him something to remember when the old geezer's down at the old soldiers' home," McCain says.
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