Thread: Jane Fonda ousted

This is reason enough for me to vote against Obama. I will not engage my thought pattern on Fonda, it may delete my brain or what is left of it. Let me just say I didn't agree with Her. Also like the old saying vultures of a feather flock together.



If you didn't know before now about Jane Fonda this pretty well sums it up. Can't imagine Barbara Walters putting it out like this, though. Guess I will not say that I haven't cared for her either. KVH



Subject: Jane Fonda ousted



This is just another reason to NOT vote for our present President in this election.



Barbara Walters on Jane Fonda



I am sending this one out because so many do not know this truth...And also because she was on 3 times this week talking about her new book... And how good she feels in her 70's... She still does not know what she did wrong..her book just may not make the best list if more people knew... Also...



Barbara Walters said:



Thank you all. Many died in Vietnam for our freedoms. I did not like Jane Fonda then and I don't like her now. She can lead her present life the way she wants and perhaps SHE can forget the past, but we DO NOT have to stand by without comment and see her "honored" as a "Woman of the Century."



For those who served and/or died. . .



NEVER FORGIVE A TRAITOR. SHE REALLY WAS A TRAITOR!!



And now President OBAMA wants to honor her......!!!!



In Memory of LT. C.Thomsen Wieland who spent 100 days at the Hanoi Hilton [Famous North Vietnam Prison]



IF YOU NEVER FORWARDED ANYTHING IN YOUR LIFE FORWARD THIS SO THAT EVERYONE WILL KNOW! A TRAITOR IS ABOUT TO BE HONORED.



KEEP THIS MOVING ACROSS AMERICA



This is for all the kids born in the 70's and after who do not remember, and didn't have to bear the burden that our fathers, mothers and older brothers and sisters had to bear.



Jane Fonda is being honored as one of the '100 Women of the Century.'



BARBRA WALTERS WRITES:



Unfortunately, many have forgotten and still countless others have never known how Ms. Fonda betrayed! not only the idea of our country, but specific men who served and sacrificed during the Vietnam War. The first part of this is from an F-4E pilot.



The pilot's name is Jerry Driscoll, a River Rat.



In 1968, the former Commandant of the USAF Survival School was a POW in Ho Lo Prison the ' Hanoi Hilton.' Dragged from a stinking cesspit of a cell, cleaned, fed, and dressed in clean PJ's, he was ordered to describe for a visiting American 'Peace Activist' the 'lenient and humane treatment' he'd received.



He spat at Ms. Fonda, was clubbed, and was dragged away. During the subsequent beating, he fell forward on to the camp Commandant 's feet, which sent that officer berserk.



In 1978, the Air Force Colonel still suffered from double vision (which permanently ended his flying career) from the Commandant's frenzied application of a wooden baton.



From 1963-65, Col. Larry Carrigan was in the 47FW/DO (F-4E's). He spent 6 years in the ' Hanoi Hilton'...the first three of which his family only knew he was 'missing in action'. His wife lived on faith that he was still alive. His group, too, got the cleaned-up, fed and clothed routine in preparation for a 'peace delegation' visit.



They, however, had time and devised a plan to get word to the world that they were alive and still survived. Each man secreted a tiny piece of paper, with his Social Security Number on it, in the palm of his hand. When paraded before Ms. Fonda and a cameraman, she walked the line, shaking each man's hand and asking little encouraging snippets like: 'Aren't you sorry you bombed babies?' and 'Are you grateful for the humane treatment from your benevolent captors?' Believing this HAD to be an act, they each palmed her their sliver of paper.



She took them all without missing a beat.. At the end of the line and once the camera stopped rolling, to the shocked disbelief of the POWs, she turned to the officer in charge and handed him all the little pieces of paper...



Three men died from the subsequent beatings. Colonel Carrigan was almost number four but he survived, which is the only reason we know of her actions that day.



I was a civilian economic development advisor in Vietnam , and was captured by the North Vietnamese communists in South Vietnam in 1968, and held prisoner for over 5 years.



I spent 27 months in solitary confinement; one year in a cage in Cambodia and one year in a 'black box' in Hanoi. My North Vietnamese captors deliberately poisoned and murdered a female missionary, a nurse in a leprosarium in Banme Thuot , South Vietnam , whom I buried in the jungle near the Cambodian border. At one time, I weighed only about 90 lbs. (My normal weight is 170 lbs)



We were Jane Fonda's 'war criminals....'



When Jane Fonda was in Hanoi , I was asked by the camp communist political officer if I would be willing to meet with her.



I said yes, for I wanted to tell her about the real treatment we POWs received... And how different it was from the treatment purported by the North Vietnamese, and parroted by her as 'humane and lenient.'



Because of this, I spent three days on a rocky floor on my knees, with my arms outstretched with a large steel weight placed on my hands, and beaten with a bamboo cane.



I had the opportunity to meet with Jane Fonda soon after I was released. I asked her if she would be willing to debate me on TV. She never did answer me.



These first-hand experiences do not exemplify someone who should be honored as part of '100 Years of Great Women.' Lest we forget....' 100 Years of Great Women' should never include a traitor whose hands are covered with the blood of so many patriots.



There are few things I have strong visceral reactions to, but Hanoi Jane's participation in blatant treason, is one of them. Please take the time to forward to as many people as you possibly can.. It will eventually end up on her computer and she needs to know that we will never forget.



RONALD D. SAMPSON, CMSgt,

USAF 716 Maintenance Squadron,

Chief of Maintenance DSN: 875-6431 COMM: 883-634! 3

PLEASE HELP BY SENDING THIS TO EVERYONE IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK. IF ENOUGH PEOPLE SEE THIS MAYBE HER STATUS WILL CHANGE.

________________________________________________

Originally Posted by kathyet

This is reason enough for me to vote against Obama. I will not engage my thought pattern on Fonda, it may delete my brain or what is left of it. Let me just say I didn't agree with Her. Also like the old saying vultures of a feather flock together.



If you didn't know before now about Jane Fonda this pretty well sums it up. Can't imagine Barbara Walters putting it out like this, though. Guess I will not say that I haven't cared for her either. KVH



Subject: Jane Fonda ousted



This is just another reason to NOT vote for our present President in this election.



Barbara Walters on Jane Fonda



I am sending this one out because so many do not know this truth...And also because she was on 3 times this week talking about her new book... And how good she feels in her 70's... She still does not know what she did wrong..her book just may not make the best list if more people knew... Also...



Barbara Walters said:



Thank you all. Many died in Vietnam for our freedoms. I did not like Jane Fonda then and I don't like her now. She can lead her present life the way she wants and perhaps SHE can forget the past, but we DO NOT have to stand by without comment and see her "honored" as a "Woman of the Century."



For those who served and/or died. . .



NEVER FORGIVE A TRAITOR. SHE REALLY WAS A TRAITOR!!



And now President OBAMA wants to honor her......!!!!



In Memory of LT. C.Thomsen Wieland who spent 100 days at the Hanoi Hilton [Famous North Vietnam Prison]



IF YOU NEVER FORWARDED ANYTHING IN YOUR LIFE FORWARD THIS SO THAT EVERYONE WILL KNOW! A TRAITOR IS ABOUT TO BE HONORED.



KEEP THIS MOVING ACROSS AMERICA



This is for all the kids born in the 70's and after who do not remember, and didn't have to bear the burden that our fathers, mothers and older brothers and sisters had to bear.



Jane Fonda is being honored as one of the '100 Women of the Century.'



BARBRA WALTERS WRITES:



Unfortunately, many have forgotten and still countless others have never known how Ms. Fonda betrayed! not only the idea of our country, but specific men who served and sacrificed during the Vietnam War. The first part of this is from an F-4E pilot.



The pilot's name is Jerry Driscoll, a River Rat.



In 1968, the former Commandant of the USAF Survival School was a POW in Ho Lo Prison the ' Hanoi Hilton.' Dragged from a stinking cesspit of a cell, cleaned, fed, and dressed in clean PJ's, he was ordered to describe for a visiting American 'Peace Activist' the 'lenient and humane treatment' he'd received.



He spat at Ms. Fonda, was clubbed, and was dragged away. During the subsequent beating, he fell forward on to the camp Commandant 's feet, which sent that officer berserk.



In 1978, the Air Force Colonel still suffered from double vision (which permanently ended his flying career) from the Commandant's frenzied application of a wooden baton.



From 1963-65, Col. Larry Carrigan was in the 47FW/DO (F-4E's). He spent 6 years in the ' Hanoi Hilton'...the first three of which his family only knew he was 'missing in action'. His wife lived on faith that he was still alive. His group, too, got the cleaned-up, fed and clothed routine in preparation for a 'peace delegation' visit.



They, however, had time and devised a plan to get word to the world that they were alive and still survived. Each man secreted a tiny piece of paper, with his Social Security Number on it, in the palm of his hand. When paraded before Ms. Fonda and a cameraman, she walked the line, shaking each man's hand and asking little encouraging snippets like: 'Aren't you sorry you bombed babies?' and 'Are you grateful for the humane treatment from your benevolent captors?' Believing this HAD to be an act, they each palmed her their sliver of paper.



She took them all without missing a beat.. At the end of the line and once the camera stopped rolling, to the shocked disbelief of the POWs, she turned to the officer in charge and handed him all the little pieces of paper...



Three men died from the subsequent beatings. Colonel Carrigan was almost number four but he survived, which is the only reason we know of her actions that day.



I was a civilian economic development advisor in Vietnam , and was captured by the North Vietnamese communists in South Vietnam in 1968, and held prisoner for over 5 years.



I spent 27 months in solitary confinement; one year in a cage in Cambodia and one year in a 'black box' in Hanoi. My North Vietnamese captors deliberately poisoned and murdered a female missionary, a nurse in a leprosarium in Banme Thuot , South Vietnam , whom I buried in the jungle near the Cambodian border. At one time, I weighed only about 90 lbs. (My normal weight is 170 lbs)



We were Jane Fonda's 'war criminals....'



When Jane Fonda was in Hanoi , I was asked by the camp communist political officer if I would be willing to meet with her.



I said yes, for I wanted to tell her about the real treatment we POWs received... And how different it was from the treatment purported by the North Vietnamese, and parroted by her as 'humane and lenient.'



Because of this, I spent three days on a rocky floor on my knees, with my arms outstretched with a large steel weight placed on my hands, and beaten with a bamboo cane.



I had the opportunity to meet with Jane Fonda soon after I was released. I asked her if she would be willing to debate me on TV. She never did answer me.



These first-hand experiences do not exemplify someone who should be honored as part of '100 Years of Great Women.' Lest we forget....' 100 Years of Great Women' should never include a traitor whose hands are covered with the blood of so many patriots.



There are few things I have strong visceral reactions to, but Hanoi Jane's participation in blatant treason, is one of them. Please take the time to forward to as many people as you possibly can.. It will eventually end up on her computer and she needs to know that we will never forget.



RONALD D. SAMPSON, CMSgt,

USAF 716 Maintenance Squadron,

Chief of Maintenance DSN: 875-6431 COMM: 883-634! 3

PLEASE HELP BY SENDING THIS TO EVERYONE IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK. IF ENOUGH PEOPLE SEE THIS MAYBE HER STATUS WILL CHANGE.

________________________________________________

Kathy, need a link!!

I got it in an email It came in this email letter

Kathy, I checked this out and it appears to be an old story with a lot of fabrications in it.

'Hanoi Jane' Email Blends Fact and Fiction - Urban Legends

She is a traitor

Maybe Barbara WaWa didn't say this but what Hanoi Jane did gave her the name HANOI Jane...Here is one site I am sure if I really look I can find some more Hanoi Jane information...I lost friends and family in Vietnam and I will never forget the traitor HANOI JANE




Jane Fonda
A.K.A.
Hanoi Jane




Several requests from students and other visitors have asked if the photos depicting Jane Fonda sitting on an NVA anti-aircraft gun were really her or not. The answer to this question is YES. Jane Fonda has expressed her regrets for having her picture taken while sitting on the anti-aircraft gun and for the pain that her action has caused many American Veterans.







Another student had requested the transcript of Jane Fonda's radio address which she had broadcast in North Vietnam. This transcription, dated August 22, 1972 was made from her Hotel Especen broadcast in Hanoi at 7:11 p.m.

The following was submitted in the U.S. Congress House Committee on Internal Security, Travel to Hostile Areas. [HR16742, 19-25 September 1972, page 761]

[Broadcast]

This is Jane Fonda. During my two week visit in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, I've had the opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a large number of people from all walks of life- workers, peasants, students, artists and dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses, soldiers, militia girls, members of the women's union, writers.

I visited the (Dam Xuac) agricultural coop, where the silk worms are also raised and thread is made. I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The beautiful Temple of Literature was where I saw traditional dances and heard songs of resistance. I also saw unforgettable ballet about the guerrillas training bees in the south to attack enemy soldiers. The bees were danced by women, and they did their job well.

In the shadow of the Temple of Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and actresses perform the second act of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons, and this was very moving to me- the fact that artists here are translating and performing American plays while US imperialists are bombing their country.

I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam- these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters.

I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation, offered me, an American, their best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by. The daughter and I, in fact, shared the shelter wrapped in each others arms, cheek against cheek. It was on the road back from Nam Dinh, where I had witnessed the systematic destruction of civilian targets- schools, hospitals, pagodas, the factories, houses, and the dike system.

As I left the United States two weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the American people that he was winding down the war, but in the rubble- strewn streets of Nam Dinh, his words echoed with sinister (words indistinct) of a true killer. And like the young Vietnamese woman I held in my arms clinging to me tightly- and I pressed my cheek against hers- I thought, this is a war against Vietnam perhaps, but the tragedy is America's.

One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he'll never be able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo- colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to resist. I've spoken to many peasants who talked about the days when their parents had to sell themselves to landlords as virtually slaves, when there were very few schools and much illiteracy, inadequate medical care, when they were not masters of their own lives.

But now, despite the bombs, despite the crimes being created- being committed against them by Richard Nixon, these people own their own land, build their own schools- the children learning, literacy- illiteracy is being wiped out, there is no more prostitution as there was during the time when this was a French colony. In other words, the people have taken power into their own hands, and they are controlling their own lives.

And after 4,000 years of struggling against nature and foreign invaders- and the last 25 years, prior to the revolution, of struggling against French colonialism- I don't think that the people of Vietnam are about to compromise in any way, shape or form about the freedom and independence of their country, and I think Richard Nixon would do well to read Vietnamese history, particularly their poetry, and particularly the poetry written by Ho Chi Minh.

[recording ends]


Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda being interviewed after their return from North Vietnam. Jane Fonda tells the world press that the American Prisoners of War were being well treated and not tortured.


Background of Jane Fonda's Anti-War Activities

While American Soldiers were fighting and dying in the Vietnam War, Jane Fonda, the daughter of Henry Fonda, was using her money and influence at colleges and universities to gather support to advocate communism and encourage rebellion and anarchy against the United States Government.

On November 21, 1970 she told a University of Michigan audience of some two thousand students, "If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become communist." At Duke University in North Carolina she repeated what she had said in Michigan, adding "I, a socialist, think that we should strive toward a socialist society, all the way to communism. " Washington Times July 7, 2000

Jane Fonda began her participation in anti-war activities around 1967, allegedly after meeting with Communists while in France and with American citizens who were revolutionaries. Her activities included active participation in demonstrations, rallies, radio broadcasts and plays.

Jane Fonda also helped in the organization of a production group called the F.T.A. (F*** The Army). This group helped to set up coffee houses near military bases where they would perform anti-war derogatory-type sketches for the visiting soldiers. The coffee-house sketches were intended to counterpoint the U.S.O. shows, such as Bob Hope and other U.S.O. sponsored performers whose performances increased morale and gave positive support to American soldiers. Some of the F.T.A. coffee house employees would mingle with the soldiers to help them to "relax and unwind", while encouraging the soldiers to desert. Some soldiers alleged that they were promised jobs and money by the F.T.A. if they deserted.

The Vietnam Veterans Against the War Organization received major financial support from Jane Fonda. Jane Fonda's F.T.A. coffee houses helped in recruiting soldiers and veterans for the Vietnam Veterans Against The War Organization. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War Organization membership was approximately 7,000 at it's highest. The Organization's membership number was comparatively low, when you consider that more than 2 1/2 million Americans served during the Vietnam war.

Jane Fonda personally sought out returning American soldiers from Vietnam to solicit them to publicly speak out against American atrocities against Vietnamese women and children during her broadcasts. North Vietnamese officials based in Canada allegedly coordinated her broadcasts.

In 1972 Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden and others traveled to North Vietnam to give their support to the North Vietnamese's Government. When she returned to the United States, she advised the news media that all of the American Prisoners of War were being well treated and were not being tortured.

As the American POWs returned home in 1973, they spoke out about the inhumane treatment and torture they had suffered as prisoners of war. Their stories directly contradicted Jane Fonda's earlier statements of 1972. Some of the American POWs such as Senator John McCain, a former Presidential candidate, stated that he was tortured by his guards for refusing to meet with groups such as Jane Fonda's. Jane Fonda, in her response to these new allegations, referred to the returning POWs as being "hypocrites and liars."

The Wall Street Journal (August 3, 1995) published an interview with Bui Tin who served on the General Staff of the North Vietnam Army and received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. During the interview Mr. Tin was asked if the American antiwar movement was important to Hanoi's victory. Mr. Tin responded "It was essential to our strategy" referring to the war being fought on two fronts, the Vietnam battlefield and back home in America through the antiwar movement on college campuses and in the city streets. He further stated the North Vietnamese leadership listened to the American evening news broadcasts "to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement."



Visits to Hanoi made by persons such as Jane Fonda, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and various church ministers "gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses." Mr. Tin surmised that "America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win." Mr. Tin further advised that General Vo Nguyen Giap (Commanding General of the North Vietnam Army) said the 1968 Tet Offensive was a defeat.

The military defeat of North Vietnam after the Tet Offensive of 1968 became a political victory for North Vietnam because of anti-war demonstrations and the sensationalism of the news media. The North Vietnamese interpreted the U.S. reaction to these events as the weakening of America's resolve to win the war. The North Vietnamese believed that victory could be theirs, if they stayed their course.

From 1969 until the end of the war, over 20,000 American soldiers lost their lives in a war that the United States did not have the resolve to win. The sensationalism by the American news media and the anti-war protests following the 1968 Tet Offensive gave hope to Communist North Vietnam, strengthening their belief that their will to succeed was greater than ours. Instead of seeking a successful resolution at the Paris Peace Conference following the disastrous defeat of the 1968 Tet Offensive, they employed delay tactics as another tool to inflame U.S. politics. This delaying tactic spurned further anti-war demonstrations. Those who sensationalized their reporting of the war and those who supported anti-war demonstrations are guilty of giving our enemy hope. Because of their actions, they must share partial responsibility for those 20,000 + Americans deaths.

We won the war on the battlefield but lost it back home on the college campuses and in the city streets.

Americans must realize that there are agents* operating in this Country attempting to undermine our Country and it's leadership through our democratic principles in an effort to achieve a foreign country's goal. A prime example of such a person during the Vietnam War was Jane Fonda, an admitted Socialist, who blatantly supported North Vietnam. * Agent - Any person who works to obtain the goals of another nation either for money or for their own political beliefs.

A valuable lesson was taught by North Vietnam to other nations on how the United States may be defeated by fighting a two front war - the battlefield and the American home front. We must be aware of this vulnerability.

In 1975, after the fall of the South Vietnam Government, Jane Fonda returned to Hanoi with her newborn son Troy for a celebration in her honor for the work she had done for North Vietnam. During the celebration, her son was christened after a Viet Cong hero, Nguyen Van Troi. Troi had attempted to assassinate Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara while on his visit to South Vietnam in 1963. The South Vietnam Government executed Troi for this attempted assassination.

I have heard and read that some people believe that Jane Fonda was simply young and impressionable. Jane Fonda was born on December 21, 1937. She was 34 years old when she made her infamous trip to North Vietnam and was in her 30's when she participated in anti-war demonstrations and rallies. During this same time period a large number of young American soldiers, who had not yet reached their 21st birthday, were fighting the war in Vietnam and were held accountable for all of their actions. These same young soldiers were, upon their return to the United States, still not of legal age to vote or buy alcoholic beverages. Jane Fonda was an adult when she made these conscious decisions and actions, and as such, she is responsible and should be held accountable. The Vietnam Memorial Wall contains the names of 25,493 American soldiers who served their Country and paid the ultimate price for freedom who were under the age of 21 ( Casualty Statistics).

Many Veterans would have enjoyed seeing the following mug shot of Jane Fonda taken for her treasonous acts, instead of the bogus drug charge which was later dropped.






Additional Articles on Jane Fonda

Fonda Admitted to Being a Socialist and Revolutionary

My Response to a letter titled "God Bless Jane"

Democides in Communist and Democratic Regimes

Jane Fonda Urban Legends

Jane Fonda Anti-War Demonstrator and Communism in the United States





Jane Fonda A.K.A. Hanoi Jane

Full analysis: The text above, which has been making the email rounds since September 1999, purports to reveal heretofore unknown facts about Jane Fonda's anti-war tour of North Vietnam in 1972, during which, as is well known, she actually did pose for photo ops with Communist troops and broadcast anti-American propaganda over Radio Hanoi.

The record shows she also participated in a staged press conference with unwilling American POWs, the purpose of which was to "prove" that American prisoners weren't being mistreated by their Viet Cong captors. Years afterward, when the then-released POWs described the very real torture and degradation they had suffered at the hands of the North Vietnamese, Fonda dismissed them as "hypocrites and liars."

Considered treasonous by some, her behavior during these years earned Fonda the nickname "Hanoi Jane" among veterans and POWs of the Vietnam War, many of whom hate her to this day.

Image revamped

Since the 1970s, Fonda has revamped her public image several times over, rededicating herself to acting, becoming a fitness guru and businesswoman, marrying and divorcing billionaire media mogul Ted Turner. In 1988 she delivered a televised apology to Vietnam veterans and their families, a gesture that failed to mollify everyone but served to establish some distance between the new Fonda and the old, whose actions, she now admitted, had been "thoughtless and careless."

Old wounds reopened

As the '90s wore on Fonda's radical past showed signs of fading from public memory — until, that is, Barbara Walters decided to honor her in a 1999 TV special called "A Celebration: 100 Years of Great Women." The announcement of the program, which aired in April of that year, prompted a renewed outcry from veterans, ex-POWs, and their families, many of whom took to the Internet to vent their indignation. Angry recriminations were posted in newsgroups, newsletters, and on website, and circulated via forwarded email. Bits and pieces of those texts, along with some shameless fabrications, were cobbled together by person(s) unknown to create the "Hanoi Jane" email reproduced above. Much of it is false.

There's no disputing the fact that Jane Fonda toured North Vietnam in 1972, that she engaged in what amounted to a propaganda campaign on behalf of the Communists, and that she participated in an orchestrated "press conference" distorting the truth about the treatment of American POWs. There's no denying that she defamed the POWs by calling them liars when they later spoke out about their plight.

New allegations in forwarded email

As to the specific allegations in the "Hanoi Jane" email, let's examine their veracity point by point, beginning with the most egregious:

Claim: Fonda betrayed POWs by turning over slips of paper they gave her to their captors. POWs were beaten and died as a result.

Status: FALSE.

"It's a figment of somebody's imagination," said Ret. Col. Larry Carrigan, whom I reached by phone at his home in Arizona. Carrigan, who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967, says he has no idea why this story was attributed to him. "I never met Jane Fonda," he told me. It goes without saying he never handed her a secret message.

He said he did see Jane Fonda once while he was a POW — on film. The occasion was a night when Carrigan and the other 80 or so men he was interned with were called out into the prison courtyard — "the first time we'd been outside under the stars in 5 or 6 years." As the men stood there wondering what was in store for them, a movie projector began whirring behind them. Their captors were showing them footage of Fonda's 1972 visit to Hanoi.


Claim: A POW spat at Fonda, for which he was brutally beaten.

Status: FALSE.

This story is attributed in the email to former Air Force pilot Jerry Driscoll, who's on record as saying it's false and didn't originate from him. I wasn't able to speak with him directly, but Mike McGrath and Paul Galanti, fellow officers of the Nam-POWs organization to which Driscoll belongs, both told me he unequivocally disavows the story.

[UPDATE: After this commentary was written I received personal confirmation from Jerry Driscoll that the story is indeed bogus — as he put it, "the product of a very vivid imagination."]

Mike McGrath, currently serving as the president of Nam-POWs, has worked hard to help Driscoll and Carrigan squelch the false rumors circulating under their names.

"They would like to get their names removed but the story seems to have a life of its own," he told me. "There are a lot of folks out there who would love to have a story like that to hang their hat and their hate on."

Claim: POWs were beaten for refusing to cooperate or meet with Fonda during her visit.

Status: TRUE.

The final anecdote in the "Hanoi Jane" email recounts the experience of a POW who agreed to meet with Fonda but announced to his captors that he planned on telling her how horrid conditions in North Vietnamese prison camps really were.

"Because of this," the narrative continues, "I spent three days on a rocky floor on my knees with outstretched arms with a piece of steel placed on my hands, and beaten with a bamboo cane every time my arms dipped."

Those words were written by Michael Benge, a civilian adviser captured by the Viet Cong in 1968 and held as a POW for 5 years. When I contacted him, Benge confirmed that the story was indeed his own, and true.

Entitled "Shame on Jane," Benge's original statement on the matter was web-posted in April 1999 by the Advocacy and Intelligence Network for POWs and MIAs. The text was clearly cribbed from that or another website and combined with the fictitious anecdotes above to create the "Hanoi Jane" email that still circulates to this day.

Ex-POW: 'None of us are members of the Jane Fonda Fan Club'

A good cause is never well served by lies, and that's how all of the ex-POWs I spoke or corresponded with about the falsehoods in this message felt. Paul Galanti said: "None of us are members of the Jane Fonda Fan Club, but these fabrications are something she just did not do."

No one had an answer to the question, "Who made up these stories, and why?" but both Carrigan and McGrath expressed serious doubt that it was a POW.

"She did enough to place her name in the trash bin of history," McGrath explained. "None of us need to make up stories on her."

Jane Fonda could not be reached for comment.


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'Hanoi Jane' Email Blends Fact and Fiction - Urban Legends



She will always be a traitor in my eyes, the saying goes you can put lipstick on a pig but it will still be a pig. She even married a like minded person Ted Turner