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Show try Thomas Harkin in Vietnam ma . . and Protests, Repression and Tiger Cages I Chain Gang." Harkin resigned from the Committee, Com-mittee, chaired by G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery (D-Miss.), after arriving ar-riving back in the U.S. at the completion of the 11 day tour because be-cause he could not convince the majority of the committee of the neecssity of making public these findings. He could not even convince con-vince them to visit the prison or to talk to South Vietnamese people. peo-ple. The two representatives who witnessed Con Son with Harkin hrve filed a minority report. In the following exclusive CPS interview, Tom Harkin not only describes the whitewash nature of the "fact-finding tour," but information in-formation left out of the official report, due to the fact that the majority of the committee felt all their "facts" could be obtained from military briefings. Harkin, on the other hand, spoke with South Vietnamese students, representatives, rep-resentatives, and prisoners. GPS: Why was the committee set up? Harkin: As the House resolution resolu-tion read, to study all the aspects of our military involvement in Southeast Asia, which is very broad. It's all encompassing as a matter of fact. So, it really left the floor open for them to investigate investi-gate anything they wanted to investigate. in-vestigate. I was enthusiastic before we left. I thought the way we started out was really pretty good. The first week before we left we met with various individuals who were supposedly quite knowledgeable about Vietnam. We had the military mili-tary briefing. That lasted about 3 or 4 hours. Then we had a briefing brief-ing by AID (Agency for International Interna-tional Development), then we had a State Department briefing. We had all those one day. Then one day we met with General Lans- dale. He's very knowledgeable on Vietnam. He outlined for us some of the things that he thought we should see and look into. And he also gave us a list of people that he thought we should talk to, both pro-Thieu and opposed to Thieu and those that are in the Buddhist movement and those in the various sects. And, needless to say, we didn't look into any of the things he suggested, we didn't talk to any of the people that he suggested. CPS. How many similar factfinding fact-finding tours have gone to Vietnam? Viet-nam? Harkin: I don't know. A hell of a lot of them, I know that. There was one over there when we were, there. But this is the only one that was set up by the House of Representatives as a special factfinding fact-finding committee. In fact, it was one of the first, if not the only, select committee, the House has set up for a long time. One member mem-ber told me it was the first one he ever remembered and he's been there since the early fifties. CPS. Was your feeling initially that the committee was really seeking to get information on Vietnam? Harkin: I thought so at first. I tnought the approach we had that first week when we started outlining our goals, some of the questions that we wanted to ask, some of the things we wanted to look into. CPS. What kind of goals? Harkin: First of all, they said they wanted a "no briefings" kind of trip. They wanted to go over there and keep away from the military briefings. They said we'll go out on our own as much as possible, we'll break up into small groups instead of all keeping keep-ing together. I thought, well, ok. Then perhaps we could break up dia, Laos, and one member went ap down to Indonesia and Singapore 1 and came back to Saigon Satar- Lt day night. In the three days fa c I had done my own going out, and m0 interviewed some of the Call rai leaders. K CPS: Were you the only one d sail the committee doing this? owi Harkin : There was one ote wai staff member at this time doiij ove this, Ken Lester. All the Coups inv sional members were gone. C CPS: Did you have intenta lol of getting in touch with Don Lice W- before you went over there? Pro Harkin : Yes, I did. I wrote r'a; him a letter before I went over, because I knew of his reputation. 1 u I knew that he might help us J lha great deal. I said in the letter )ur that I hoped he would make fc naI self available to us for tie ho l"e weeks we were there, so that It ,he could go out with us and showus 8 some areas that he knew about wa: and act as an interpreter. Ben m willing to do that. The three dap that I spent in Saigon he took me around and I met a lot of p pie some of the members ol their House of Representative, some of the Buddhist leaders, some of the Catholics, one of to higher labor leaders, and I fe gan to get a completely different picture. lor I had planned for Dm to "J go: to the group. I thought ;ef his many years here , and W1 knowledge, he could tell we few things they would n yo know. So I had lined Iw" UP jj wr Monday morning speak yo group. Saturday nighH lei must remember that thBJ urday night after the from Bangkok and ofterpi andaUtl'ese.n.nj'J. etnam is the day night I went to the (Continued on Me !) n By PATSY TEUXAW College Press Service WASHINGTON (CPS) The United States has for years claimed that North Vietnamese and NLF prisoners were treated well, in accordance with the Geneva Ge-neva accords, and have cited inspections in-spections by the International Red Cross to back up their contention. The U.S. made this into a major propaganda claim, noting the Red Cross was not allowed to visit POW camps in the North. But because Thomas Harkin refused re-fused to keep quiet about the tiger ti-ger cages he saw in the South Vietnamese prison on Con Son Island, he has not only made liars out of military, AID and Administration Admin-istration officials both here and there, but he has cast severe suspicions on the validity and credibility of such "fact-finding" tours. Harkin visited, along with Don Luce of the World Council of Churches and two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Representa-tives, William R. Anderson (D-Tenn.) (D-Tenn.) and Augustus Hawkins (D-Calif.), (D-Calif.), the Con Son prison. Harkin Har-kin knew through contacts with South Vietnamese students of the existance of the "tiger cages" on the island. Through both luck and cunning he managed to get the group inside one of the well-hidden cages. He described the cage as "an airless pit four to five feet wide, about nine feet long and about ten feet deep. They are never allowed out, the food is minimal, and they are given little water. Many are forced to drink their own urine. Most of the men could not stand up, their legs having been paralyzed by beatings beat-ings and by being shackled to a bar about one or two feet off the floor. There are buckets of lime dust kept above the cages and the guards throw this down on the prisoners when they beg for food or water." There are tiger cages for both male and female prisoners, pris-oners, and, according to Harkin, all are political prisoners whose crime was that they "spoke for peace" Before Harkin had seen the cages, Frank Walton, U.S. Director Direc-tor of Public Safety and supervisor super-visor of the prisons over there, told Harkin that South Vietnamese Vietnam-ese prisons were rather like a hoy stout camp. After Harkin did see Hie cages, Walton stated, "Well, they're!' no-worw than a Georgia into twos or threes, get a civilian interpreter to go along, and we could go out and start talking to Vietnamese people, both in and rut of government. As far as the goals in the areas we wanted to look into, we wanted to look into Vietnamiza-tion. Vietnamiza-tion. Not only how it was going, but is it the tiling to do? So many people are saying Vietnamization is great, it's got a great sound to. it; as we pull out, we Vietnaniize the war. But as one Vietnamese told me, it's probably the crudest crud-est thing we've ever done to them. Even more cruel than destroying their countryside. What we're saying say-ing to them, in effect, is that, "Look, we couldn't win the war militarily. So what we're going to do is arm you and train you, and then you can win it militarily." militar-ily." But they're smart enough to know they can't win it militarily. militar-ily. There's just no military victory vic-tory possible in that type of a situation. The only thing that will bring peace to that country is a negotiated settlement. Some type cf a coalition agreement with all sides. Another area we wanted to look into was POW's and how they are treated. This is how it came about that we went out to Con Son. We wanted to look into, of course, the military aspects. But that was going to be very short, and just for a couple of days. We wanted to look into the economy, too. There's been a great inflation. The past year the Vietnamese economy had a 50 percent inflation. The year before that it was something like 30 or 35 percent. We wanted to look into that and some of the steps that are being taken to cure this inflation and to help the Vietnamese Vietna-mese people. The ordinary Vietnamese Viet-namese has to buy on the local market, and he has to compete with the dollar. One dollar on the market buys 118 piasters. That's the official exchange rate. But on the black market, or on the street, you can get 470 piasters for a dollar. CPS: When did you begin to doubt the intentions of the committee? com-mittee? Harkin: After the first three days. We'd had three solid days of military briefings. At the end of three days, I still thought there was some hope. When all the members took off and went to Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Cambo- 4iu v in uiuiir, luesiiay duly -is, After he'd seen caged men 'No Worse Than Chain Gang Prison Director Tells Harkin (Continued from Page 2) of the committee and said that I l,a,l Don Luce lined up to speak Monday morning for a half hour before everyone took off again. I gave him a rundown on who he 1(as and he said, "I think we've talked to enough people I think vie have to get busy and start ivriting a report." And that's nlien I really knew. That's when I really knew that they weren't going to find anything, any-thing, that they weren't really interested in-terested in finding anything. All they were interested in was going over there and looking around. At least; that was my feeling about the chairman of the committee. com-mittee. He wasn't really interested interest-ed in finding any facts at all. There were a couple of members who did go out on their own, who did talk to people, and did make at least a little bit of an effort to try and find some things. But the majority, well, I went up to one and said, "Look, I've got the chairman of the House Interior Committee over here lined up. Would you like to go talk to him?" And the response I'd get would be, "Well, gee, I don't know. What do they have lined i up for me tomorrow?" They're i just like little puppies. They've got to be led around. ' CPS: What do you think their i motivation is? A whitewash of the war? Harkin: Well, like Lansdale ! said, you go over there with your own preconceived ideas of the war and most of those that went - over there had strong feelings for involvement over there. CPS: So they weren't really ; looking for anything that would ; upset those feelings or cause any problems in having to justify the war over here. Harkin: That's probably right, I think. I know that the few times before you leave. What they were doing is whitewashing a snow job. They were snowed when they were over there. The State Department De-partment led them around all the time. When they wanted to go some place they set it up through the State Department. You just can't find things out that way. CPS: Do you think that this is the way the State Department plans and directs most of its fact finding tours and investigations? Harkin: Sure it is. It's 'institutionalized. 'institu-tionalized. I spent a hell of a lot of time in the military, and I can honestly say, nine times out of ten, they don't Me to you when they give you these briefings. They only see so far. CPS: The Committee, you said in your statement, tried to convince con-vince you to keep your findings of the "tiger cages" at Con Son quiet, because it would cause too much trouble. Harkin: Dammit, 'if you're going go-ing to find facts, then you'd better bet-ter admit it. I love to investigate things, dig into things, and bring facts out into the open. I don't go along with the attitude that says, "Hey, we can't do this because be-cause it's embarrassing." Especially Espec-ially when you have so many people that are suffering and dying dy-ing because of it Just in the interest in-terest of humanity alone, to suppress sup-press something like this is a hyprocritical move. Gus Hawkins put it very well when he said this whole thing just shows our hy-pocricy, hy-pocricy, it just shows it to the world. And then, am I supposed to condone it by shutting up? CPS: Many have before you. Do you think it significant that fluence others in staff positions? Do you think it signifcant that you quit? Harkin: Well, you can quit, and they'll just find someone else. It's no big thing. They'll get someone your own eyes the cruelty and inhumaneness the people are suffering suf-fering there. And they're not people peo-ple that have committed crimes; they're not rapists and murderers: murder-ers: they're just people that have spoken for peace. That's all. They haven't broken any laws, they haven't even been tried, they haven't been sentenced. Yet, they are suffering in the tiger cages. It's an outrage. Our objective in Vietnam is to build a strong viable democratic goverenment, and that's just so much bullshit We're just not doing it. We're building up a repressive, dictatorial, ruthless, military regime. re-gime. And the tiger cages prove it. Even Thieu himself admits, or his government admits, that they have between 35 and 50,000 political polit-ical prisoners. But like I said in that statement, these are the ones you can count. The people in the tiger cages have never been counted. coun-ted. How many more tiger cage type things do they have in Vietnam? Viet-nam? There are more than just the two we saw at Con Son. The colonel himself admitted that. People go and say that they've seen them. But you don't really know. People have been going out to Con Son for years. Our auvisors, even the International Red Cross, say that the prison on Con Son Island is an enlightened end modern facility. It's not bad, they say, and they generally give it good ratings, Hell, yes, if vou 0 to the plates the colonel takes you to see, you're goh.g to give it a good rating. There are, as far as prisons go, some fairly decent de-cent things out there. But you've got to dig behind the walls, dig behind t!ir.-.e double walls and through the secret doors and you find these things. The Red Cross can't do it. They have no power. They go -fit l!i'.:-e and say, "Wo CPS: Were all the people you spoke with in the tiger cages there for political reasons? Harkin: Yes. there was only one man we talked to in the tiger cages, and he wasn't a VC, he just admitted that he followed the teachings of one of the leaders in the NLF. Most of them were just there, like this one man, who said he was there because he was arrested. I said "Why were you arrested?" He said, "Well, because be-cause I spoke for peace, and they came and arrested me, and they beat me and tortured me and they threw me in the tiger cages." CPS: Were most of your initial contacts with the students in the Universities? Did you find out what the sentiment of students in the universities is? Harkin: We talked to some of the student leaders. I did anyway. In early May 34,000 students refused re-fused to go to class. Remember that in Saigon there are upwards of 50,000 students. So they just closed down the university. That's a helluva lot of students. That's more than you ever get in America. Amer-ica. CPS: What is the feeling among the student leaders. Is everyone anti-Thieu and anti-Ky? Harkin: Oh, yeah. Almost without with-out exception. CPS: What type of student did you talk to? The leaders of the strike? Harkin: The student who drew the map of the prison, who spent two years in the Con Son prison and 13 months in the liger cages he was one of the loaders of the Student Union. And the Saigon Student Union is the one the Thieu government just crushed, and they destroyed their meeting place. They made a shambles out of it and refuse to allow them to meet anymore. (To be Continued) j that I interjected things tnat dis- , turbed their notions of what was , happening or what they thought uiey had seen, they thought then , they had to take great pains to i go out and find out. Maybe that I was right, but they did it in the j wrong context. Instead of going . out on their own to find out if , what I had said was true, they t just went right back to the j source, the military, to find out j whether or not what I had said !' was right. It's not a very good j way of checking anything. The t reason I termed it a whitewash is ,1 because I said we had certain goals and certain objectives be- lore we left. We had said we were ' going to do one thing befoie we .j "ef t ; once over there we did a 6 completely different thing, and ' we didn't find any facts. Then you come back and you try to " write a report based upon what you were going to do before you " left. Why go? You can write it else tnat will oe ineir wmppiug boy. I mean, we had eight staff people, and if you take away the three military people, what did the rest of them say? Not very much. I don't know if it's significant signif-icant or not. I was going to help Gus Hawkins write his minority report, even before we went to Con Son. If we had not gone to the Con Son prison and seen the things we had seen I probably would not have quit. I would have gone strongly with Congressman Hawkins in writing his minority report, saying that they just did not see the right things, they didn't go to the right places, and really blasting them that way. I mean, when you go out and see something the Thieu government denies exists, o.:r government denies de-nies exists, the advisors deny exists, the prison officials deny exists, and then you go in and you find them. Not only find them, but you actually witness with want to look a.utnd," and the colonel col-onel says, "OK, come on, we'll look around and I'll show vou." CPS: Do you think that Colonel Walton, Director of Public Safety ever there, was lying when he said he did not know of the existence exist-ence of the tiger cages. Harkin: I know he was lying. Ho later admitted he was. On the way out we were told by AID officials of-ficials that there were 29 POW's. When we got there the Colonel said there were 35 POW's this is where the wires started getting crossed but he said that these POW's were those thu: after thev were picked up by the POW camp, then they committed a criminal offense. They killed somebody or something. Strikes one's fancy how in the hell'd Uiey kill somebody, with their b?re hands or something? It was unclear really as to what their crime was, but I see that two days ago Roy Johnson of the Em- bassy Staff in Saigon, said mai there were no POW's in Con Son. It's the same damn thing, somebody's some-body's not checking with somebody some-body else. They better start getting, get-ting, their story straight. Now there, reaDy? You really don't or there aren't. How many are theere, really? You really don't' know. Because they're not going to tell you the truth. Hell, there may be 100 or 200 or maybe 300 POW's out there. You never know. The more fact that we have seen something that no one else has seen just raises the questions, just how many more? And how do you get to see these other ones? I do know that there are what they call cattle cages out there. The student had been both in the tiger cages and the cattle cages. |