Peterson as U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam is the Worst Possible Choice

By Ted Sampley
Publisher, U.S. Veteran Dispatch


President Clinton's choice of former prisoner of war Pete Peterson as U.S. Ambassador to the defiant, thuggish, communist dictatorship of Vietnam, where advocates for freedom of religion and democracy are systematically arrested and sentenced to long jail terms, is a serious mistake and an unnecessary risk to the national security of the United States. He is the worst possible choice.

These concerns about Peterson, a former Air Force fighter pilot who was held POW for 6 1/2 years in North Vietnam, have nothing to do with whether he is a patriot or was a good Air Force officer. They are about him being the U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam. He has no diplomatic experience and no experience in dealing with the communist Vietnamese other than suffering the bloody brutality of their "re-education" sessions.

Throughout the entire period the Vietnamese held Peterson, he was under the complete control of the Communist Party Proselytizing Department, whose interrogators Peterson says brutally tortured him on a "daily basis." It is fact that very few U.S. prisoners of Hanoi successfully resisted the torture without cooperating in some form or another. Do the communists hold any embarrassing information on Peterson they could use to manipulate his decisions.

After his release in 1973, Peterson reported to his superiors the "murder" of a number of U.S. POWs including- Air Force Maj. Edwin Atterberry and Navy Lt. James Connell. Peterson was the last American to see Atterberry alive when, on May 10, 1969, he witnessed Atterberry , with his arms tied behind him and a rope around his neck, being thrown out of a jeep and dragged by his neck into a torture chamber after an escape attempt.

Peterson, who could see part of the prison camp from his cramped cell, later saw the limp and beaten body of Atterberry loaded into a truck and hauled away. The Vietnamese have steadfastly refused to admit murdering Atterberry or provide details of his death.

Connell was last seen alive by Peterson December 9, 1969 at the prison camp called the Zoo. A U.S. government intelligence report said, "Peterson feels that Connell was killed by the North Vietnamese, since he resisted everything in the North Vietnamese prison system and was in solo [solitary confinement] during entire internment."

After being tortured, initially in an unsuccessful attempt to extract a war crimes confession from him, Connell suffered severe nerve damage to his wrists and hands. Because his captors thought he was faking the paralysis, for 120 successive days they sadistically applied electrical shock on his injuries and poked needles into his fingers and under his nails to see if he would respond. Despite the excruciating pain, Connell betrayed no reaction. If your hands are useless, his interrogators threatened, "we will cut them off."

When the communists led Connell away for the last time, he told another prisoner. Donald Spoon, "they want my hands . . . they are going to cut them off." Spoon said he took Connell's last statement to mean the interrogators planned to break him even if it meant cutting off his hands. Connell was never seen again.

Former prisoner of war, Ret. U.S. Navy Captain Eugene B. McDaniel wrote in his book Scars & Stripes about his own mental state after being tortured for several days: "I felt myself sliding then. I was being beaten, whipped, falling to the point of nothingness. Death would be welcome. I wanted the pain to stop . . . I was bleeding, wracked with fever, my mind numbed by the electric shock, in and out of nightmarish hallucinations. Suddenly I was not a Navy flyer at all; I was not a patriot at this point, and being an American meant nothing in the reality of the moment. I was simply a human being sliding further and further toward death, and there was nothing at all to reach out for anymore, within or without."

The Vietnamese officer who ordered that torture session with McDaniel and many other POWs was nicknamed "Rabbit." McDaniel said Rabbit, now identified as Col. Nguyen Minh Y and working in Hanoi for Vietnam's General Political Department, was a master psychologist who often boasted that the Vietnamese would always control the POWs "even if they returned to the United States."

In 1965, Vietnam's Prime Minister, Vo Van Kiet, then a secret committee member of the Viet Cong National Liberation Front Central Committee, ordered executed three American heroes - Capt. Rocky Versace, Sgts. Kenneth Roraback and Harold Bennett. The three were U.S. Army prisoners of the Viet Cong in South Vietnam. Their remains have never been returned.

Many of Vietnam's leaders today are the same ones responsible for the policies that resulted in the torture and deaths of hundreds of U.S. POWs and tens-of-thousands of South Vietnamese prisoners.

Sooner or later, Peterson will be required to have dealing with Col. Y, Prime Minster Kiet and other torturers responsible for the murder of his fellow POWs. Will Peterson perform his duty as Ambassador and demand the torturers be called before a war crimes tribunal as the U.S. has initiated against accused war criminals in Bosnia?

After having been tortured and witnessing the murder of other POWs, how can Peterson not be bitter?

"I've gotten over that a long time ago. I've never been into any kind of vendetta or anything like that. I really don't have time for hate or recrimination," Peterson said about the torture. Can any rational person forgive unrepentant tortures and murders?

Peterson will be prone to blunder and is obviously not qualified to hold such a critical diplomatic post. After all, a diplomatic blunder helped ignite the Gulf War when a U.S. diplomat in Iraq understated the U.S. position on Saddam Hussein's military buildup on the Kuwaiti border, by feebly commenting "we have no opinion."

Clinton's choice of Peterson is meant to appear noble. Unfortunately, the national security of the United States will be jeopardized by sending a former target of communist indoctrination back into the tiger pit. Peterson's former interrogators certainly know more about Peterson and his weaknesses than he knows about them or himself.