SwiftVets.com

[Route6]

Apologies I posted the above without first checking this out. Jane Fonda was honored in 1999, so this is very old news. Also, here's what I found on www.snopes.com/military/fonda.asp:

Hanoi'd with Jane

Claim: Jane Fonda betrayed U.S. POWs during the Viet Nam War.

Status: Multiple:
During a 1972 trip to North Vietnam, Jane Fonda ropagandized on behalf of the North Vietnamese government, declared that American POWs were being treated humanely and condemned U.S. soldiers as "war criminals" and later denounced them as liars for claiming they had been tortured: True.

Jane Fonda handed over to their captors the slips of paper POWs pressed upon her: False.

In 1999, Jane Fonda was profiled in ABC's A Celebration: 100 Years of Great Women: True.

The most prominent example of a clash between private citizen protest and governmental military policy in recent history occurred in July 1972, when actress Jane Fonda arrived in Hanoi, North Vietnam, and began a two-week tour of the country conducted by uniformed military hosts. Aside from visiting villages, hospitals, schools, and factories, Fonda also posed for pictures in which she was shown applauding North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gunners, was photographed peering into the sights of an NVA anti-aircraft artillery launcher, and made ten propagandistic Tokyo Rose-like radio broadcasts in which she denounced American political and military leaders as "war criminals." She also spoke with eight American POWs at a carefully arranged "press conference," POWs who had been tortured by their North Vietnamese captors to force them to meet with Fonda, deny they had been tortured, and decry the American war effort.

Fonda apparently didn't notice (or care) that the POWs were delivering their lines under duress or find it unusual the she was not allowed to visit the prisoner-of-war camp (commonly known as the "Hanoi Hilton") itself. She merely went home and told the world that "[the POWs] assured me they were in good health. When I asked them if they were brainwashed, they all laughed. Without exception, they expressed shame at what they had done." She did, however, charge that North Vietnamese POWs were systematically tortured in American prison-of-war camps.

To add insult to injury, when American POWs finally began to return home (some of them having been held captive for up to nine years) and describe the tortures they had endured at the hands of the North Vietnamese, Jane Fonda quickly told the country that they should "not hail the POWs as heroes, because they are hypocrites and liars." Fonda said the idea that the POWs she had met in Vietnam had been tortured was "laughable," claiming: "These were not men who had been tortured. These were not men who had been starved. These were not men who had been brainwashed." The POWs who said they had been tortured were "exaggerating, probably for their own self-interest," she asserted. She told audiences that "Never in the history of the United States have POWs come home looking like football players. These football players are no more heroes than Custer was. They're military careerists and professional killers" who are "trying to make themselves look self-righteous, but they are war criminals according to law."

Were Jane Fonda's actions treason, or were they the exercise of a private citizen's right to freedom of speech? At the time, the legal aspects of this question were moot: President Nixon was engaged in trying to wind down American involvement in Vietnam and had to face another election in a few months, so politically he had far more to lose than to gain by making a martyr out of a prominent anti-war activist. (No requirement in either the Constitution or federal law states that the U.S. must be engaged in a declared war, or any war at all, before charges of treason can be brought against an individual.)

On the one hand, Jane Fonda provided no tangible military assistance to the North Vietnamese: she divulged no military secrets, she gave them no money or material, and she did not interfere with the operations of the American forces. Her actions, offensive as they were to many, were primarily of propaganda value only. On the other hand, Iva Ikuko Toguri (also known as "Tokyo Rose") was convicted of treason for making propaganda broadcasts on behalf of the Japanese during World War II (although she claimed her betrayal was forced and was eventually pardoned many years later by President Gerald Ford), and Fonda's efforts could fall under the definition of "giving aid and comfort to the enemy." It is also undeniable that some American soldiers came to harm as a direct result of Fonda's actions, an outcome she should reasonably have anticipated.

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 untrue. Those named in the inflammatory e-mail categorically deny the events they supposedly were part of.

"It's a figment of somebody's imagination," says 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."

The tale about a defiant serviceman who spit at Jane Fonda and is severely beaten as a result is often attributed to Air Force pilot Jerry Driscoll. He has repeatedly stated on the record that it did not originate with him.

Mike McGrath, President of NAM-POWs, also stepped forward to disclaim the story:

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.
The story about a POW forced to kneel on rocky ground while holding a piece of steel rebar in his outstretched arms is still affirmed as true, though. That account comes from Michael Benge, a civilian advisor captured by the Viet Cong in 1968 and held as a POW for 5 years. His original statement, titled "Shame on Jane," was published in April by the Advocacy and Intelligence Network for POWs and MIAs.

The unknown author of the "Hanoi Jane" e-mail appears to have picked up Benge's story online and combined it with fabricated tales to create the forwarded text. Some versions now circulate with Benge's name listed; others quote his statement anonymously. In fact, Fonda carried home letters from many American POWs to their families upon her return from North Vietnam, and rumors that a POW was beaten to death when he refused to meet with her were nothing more than rumors,

Still, legally treasonous or not, Jane Fonda's actions engendered widespread contempt among servicemen and their families, especially since she acted not as a reckless youth who rashly spouted ill-considered opinions now best forgotten, but as a 34-year-old adult who should be expected to bear full responsibility for her actions. Her inclusion in ABC's 30 April 1999 "A Celebration: 100 Years of Great Women" only fanned the flames of anger within many who felt she had never properly atoned for her behavior.

Ever since her infamous 1972 visit to North Vietnam, Jane Fonda has maintained the fiction that she was just "trying to stop the war." But she didn't go to North Vietnam to try to bring about peace, or to reconcile the two warring sides, or to stop American boys from being killed — she went there as an active show of support for the North Vietnamese cause. She lauded the North Vietnamese military, she denounced American soldiers as "war criminals" and urged them to stop fighting, she lobbied to cut off all American economic aid to the South Vietnamese government (even after the Paris Peace Accords had ended U.S. military involvement in Vietnam), she publicly thanked the Soviets for providing assistance to the North Vietnamese, and she branded tortured American POWs as liars possessed of overactive imaginations

In 1988, sixteen years after the fact, Fonda finally met with Vietnam veterans to apologize for her actions. This nationally-televised apology (during which she attempted to minimize her actions by characterizing them as "thoughtless and careless") came at a time when New England vets were successfully disrupting a film project she was working on, leading more than a few to read a huge dollop of self-interest into her apology.

Fonda again "apologized" in 2005, an act which not suprisingly once again coincided with the release of a film in which she had a starring role (Monster-in-Law, her first leading role since 1990's Stanley & Iris) and a book tour to promote her autobiography. As she had several years earlier, Fonda made it quite clear that she was apologizing only for posing for photographs while seated at a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, and even then her "apology" was couched in the most oblique terms possible (i.e., she didn't address the people she harmed and say she was sorry for hurting them; she only issued the self-confessional statement that she "regretted" one of her actions):
2000: "I will go to my grave regretting the photograph of me in an anti-aircraft carrier, which looks like I was trying to shoot at American planes. It hurt so many soldiers. It galvanized such hostility. It was the most horrible thing I could possibly have done. It was just thoughtless."

2005: "I will go to my grave regretting that. The image of Jane Fonda, 'Barbarella,' Henry Fonda's daughter, just a woman sitting on an enemy aircraft gun was a betrayal. It was like I was thumbing my nose at the military and at the country that gave me privilege."
Fonda emphasized she was that not apologizing for any other actions connected with her trip to North Vietnam, or for any of her other anti-war activities:
The 67-year-old actress and activist, however, defended her decision to go to Hanoi and said she had no regrets about being photographed with American POWs there or making broadcasts on Radio Hanoi because she was trying to stop the war.

"There are hundreds of American delegations that had met with the POWs," she added. "Both sides were using the POWs for propaganda. It's not something that I will apologize for."
(One man who didn't take Fonda's confessions to heart was 54-year-old Michael Smith. While Fonda was autographing copies of her autobiography, My Life So Far, in Kansas City in April 2005 as part of a promotional book-signing tour, Smith, who said he was a Vietnam veteran, waited in line for 90 minutes and then spat tobacco juice on Fonda .) Whether the war was right or wrong, those who risked (and gave) their lives fighting it are still deserving of respect, and for Fonda to brand men who were held captive and tortured as "liars" and "hypocrites" (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary) in order to defend her political views was something she still adamantly refuses to apologize for.

Last updated: 2 May 2005

Admin note: I have deleted the original post containing the hydra-esque "slips of paper" story. This "e-mail" keeps coming back like an old song and only serves as a means to discredit the voluminous and very real case for treason against Hanoi Jane. However, the reality of her actual perfidy needs no embellishment and it is a reality that bears repetition often...and LOUD. We appreciate the reminder...

Moving to Geedunk as I can't even stand to see this traitor's name in a forum for true American heroes./Me#1