Seeds of McCain's war views found in '74 thesis

Determination redoubled
Mr. McCain, then a Navy lieutenant commander, was by all accounts what the American prisoners called a "tough resister." He was nicknamed Crip for the severity of the injuries he sustained — a shoulder, both arms and his knee broken, with a bayonet wound near the groin — when his fighter plane was shot down in October 1967. Military rules only allowed P.O.W.’s to go home in the order of their capture, but some senior officers said his medical condition justified accepting an offer of release from the North Vietnamese. Mr. McCain, the son of a prominent admiral, did not want to be part of North Vietnamese propaganda, so he chose to endure years of torture instead.

At times, Mr. McCain seemed to court punishment, noisily cussing out his captors while giving "thumbs up" signs to his fellow prisoners. "No matter what he did, he always played to the bleachers," Robert Coram, a military historian, wrote in a book about the camps.

All of the prisoners acknowledged that everyone had a breaking point. Mr. McCain’s came 10 months after he arrived. With his father taking command of the Pacific Fleet, the North Vietnamese were determined to coerce the son into denouncing the war. For four days they tied him with ropes, beat him every few hours, re-broke his arm, and left him in a pool of his own blood and refuse. Finally, he signed and tape-recorded a war crimes confession.

His fellow prisoners say his capitulation only redoubled his determination to provoke his captors. "Acts of defiance felt so good that I felt they more than compensated for their repercussions," he wrote, "and they helped me keep at bay the unsettled feelings of guilt and self doubt my confession had aroused."

Others responded differently. Initially unable to feed or clean himself, Mr. McCain was nursed back to health by his cellmate, Maj. Norris Overly of the Air Force . Mr. McCain has often credited Mr. Overly with saving his life, calling him "a very fine man."

Returning from an interrogation in February 1968, however, Mr. Overly told his cellmates he was going home. He said, as he later testified to Congress, that he had given his captors nothing and could not explain their decision.

'I couldn't stand in judgment'
Mr. McCain said in his e-mail message that he had never been angry with Mr. Overly. In his memoir, he recalls only a fear his friend was making a mistake. "I couldn’t stand in judgment of him," he wrote.

But his fellow prisoners say he felt betrayed. After a goodbye ceremony staged for North Vietnamese cameras — Mr. McCain arrived on a stretcher — he and the others began referring to the departures as the "fink release program" and "the slimies."

Mr. Overly declined to comment.

By the end of 1972, a dozen of the roughly 400 American prisoners of war in the North had accepted offers to be freed, only one with the permission of the senior American officers. All were required, at the very least, to sign letters requesting "amnesty" and thanking the North Vietnamese.

Some went further. As early as 1969, Mr. McCain began hearing three American officers denouncing the war over camp loudspeakers. The first two, Robert Schweitzer and Edison Miller, became known as "The Bob and Ed Show." Walter Eugene Wilber soon joined.

They were followed by as many as a dozen others: enlisted infantrymen captured in South Vietnam early in the war and later brought to the northern prisons. They had not received the same training in survival strategies and the code of conduct as the pilots who made up the rest of the prisons in the North. The cooperators called themselves the "peace committee" and enjoyed treats from their captors, including beer, ice cream, Vietnamese dinners, and front-row seats at a local circus. They lived in fear of retribution from the tough resisters.

Mr. Miller and Mr. Wilber, the officers, said in interviews that they considered it pointless to resist after they had surrendered. "I think our duty as senior officers is to get these men home as healthy emotionally and physically as we can, and I don’t intend to play politics," Mr. Miller, a Marine lieutenant colonel, said he told the others.

'We said what we had to say'
Some members of the peace committee said that watching the destruction of Vietnamese villages had turned them against the war, arguing that the pilots did not see the carnage. Others said they were beaten down. "We said what we had to say to get through it," Michael Branch, one of the enlisted men, said in an interview.

Mr. McCain was as enraged as any of the tough resisters by what they considered the treason of the two officers and enlisted men, his friends said. "He thought this was ‘terrible, terrible, terrible,’ they should all be shot," said John Dramesi, a fellow prisoner.

In his memoirs, Mr. McCain addressed only briefly what he called "the camp rats." During a stint in solitary confinement, he had caught a glimpse of two other American officers acting friendly with their guards and enjoying delicacies like eggs and bananas, Mr. McCain and his co-author wrote. Assuming that contact with a fellow American would restore their nerve, Mr. McCain called out: "Hey, guys, my name’s McCain. Who are you?" They called the guards, who beat him again.

Those two were Mr. Miller and Mr. Wilber. They denied the exchange took place, but in his e-mail message Mr. McCain said, "I would have been astonished if they admitted it."

MORE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

The New York Times Section Front

For thrillers, Glenn Beck is new Oprah Analysis: Victories rekindle GOP’s hope The Obamas’ marriage is an ongoing negotiation Bailout fuels era of Wall Street wealth ACORN’s woes strain ties to Dems Biden no longer a lone voice on Afghanistan The New York Times Section Front