Guilty of Treason, but a celebrity gets a pass

[Jagged]

I received this email today and wanted to pass it on to everyone here. I knew some of what happen, but this was eye opening to me. I'd love for someone to confirm these facts. Being against the war is one thing, but helping the other side is something else, and I'd never say a peace activist does that.



For those of you that may have forgotten and for those that never knew.

SHE REALLY WAS A TRAITOR!!

and now the President wants to honor her ......!!!!

In Memory of

LT. C.Thomsen Wieland who spent 100 days at the Hanoi Hilton.

IF YOU NEVER FORWARDED
ANYTHING IN YOUR LIFE FORWARD THIS SO THAT EVERYONE WILL
KNOW!!!!!!

She really is a traitor.

A TRAITOR IS ABOUT TO BE HONORED.
KEEP THIS MOVING ACROSS AMERICA.


This is for all the kids born in the 70's 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.'

BY BARBRA WALTERS

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 Vietnam.

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
an d 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 Ban me 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 weights 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: 883-6343

 

[Handley_Page]

If true, it's disgusting.

 

[sr71plt]

Oh, get over it. She was a spoiled, bubble-headed brat, manipulated by others in that phase of her life. And most of what she was saying had merit--it just wasn't a very good way to be expressing it.

(But I must say, I like your avatar, Jagged. I have a set of drink coasters with that motif on them.)

 

[Guest]

Part is true, according to snopes, part is not. The part about the slips of paper seems to be false.

The story's been circulating for a couple of years.

http://www.snopes.com/military/fonda.asp

 

[TE999]

Hanoi Jane is not only a traitor, but she's a vile piece of human garbage. You don't pose for pictures grinning like a fool sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun and not know what you're doing. She was enjoying all the attention like any other self-indulgent, egotistical denizen of Hollyweird.

I'm not surprised that Obeyme's honoring her, she thinks like all the 60's radicals and anarchists he's associated with over the years and are now part of his posse.

 

[Jagged]

Part is true, according to snopes, part is not. The part about the slips of paper seems to be false.

The story's been circulating for a couple of years.

http://www.snopes.com/military/fonda.asp

Thanks though I always thought the pictures she posed for were enough...but hey she's a celebrity it is okay.

 

[Jagged]

Oh, get over it. She was a spoiled, bubble-headed brat, manipulated by others in that phase of her life. And most of what she was saying had merit--it just wasn't a very good way to be expressing it.

(But I must say, I like your avatar, Jagged. I have a set of drink coasters with that motif on them.)

Thank you...but she was stupid and shouldn't have left the country to lend support to the communists. Stupid doesn't make you less guilty.

 

[sr71plt]

Thank you...but she was stupid and shouldn't have left the country to lend support to the communists. Stupid doesn't make you less guilty.

Stupid and conditioned (and overly empowered by society) does. Situation ethics and all (check up with Joseph Fletcher on that). The real world isn't that cut and dried.

And I go back to she was largely right in motivation--and the U.S. government was illegally stifling any opposition. Thomas Jefferson wouldn't be quick to condemn her. (And, yes, I was in Vietnam during that war.)

 

[LaRocha]

Noam Chomsky visited Viet Nam to show his support for their fight against American imperialist aggression. He's still the most quoted living intellectual in America. Jane's an easy target.

- Noam Chomsky, originally delivered a speech on April 13, 1970 in Hanoi while he was visiting North Vietnam with a group of anti-war activists. Broadcast by Radio Hanoi on April 14, and published in the _Asia-Pacific Daily Report_ of the U.S. government's Foreign Broadcast Information Service, April 16, 1970, pages K2-K3.

 

[sr71plt]

Noam Chomsky visited Viet Nam to show his support for their fight against American imperialist aggression. He's still the most quoted living intellectual in America. Jane's an easy target.

- Noam Chomsky, originally delivered a speech on April 13, 1970 in Hanoi while he was visiting North Vietnam with a group of anti-war activists. Broadcast by Radio Hanoi on April 14, and published in the _Asia-Pacific Daily Report_ of the U.S. government's Foreign Broadcast Information Service, April 16, 1970, pages K2-K3.

(Never mind ) Time to put that glass of Shiraz down.

 

[Guest]

Thanks though I always thought the pictures she posed for were enough...but hey she's a celebrity it is okay.

I didn't state my opinion as to her status. I just said much of your statement was wrong. A hoax. Lies.

I hate when specific groups use a bit of the truth, then embellish with fabricated crap and email to the masses in order to push their warped agendas.

She certainly earned the contempt of many Vietnam vets, my dad among them. But she didn't cause deaths like the email states.



Home --> Military --> Hanoi'd with Jane

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 propagandized 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.

Example: [Collected on the Internet, 1999]

When I was at Camp Pendleton receiving combat corpsman training, I noticed that the pickup truck belonging to the gunnery sergeant in charge of our training was adorned with bumper stickers containing extremely unflattering remarks about Jane Fonda. I also noticed a few referred to Ms. Fonda and Vietnam, but at the time I honestly had no idea why.

Being an E-5 and close to rank to our E-7 gunny, after a training rotation one afternoon I decided to ask him about those stickers, and what they had to do with Fonda.

He muttered a few obscenities and proceeded to tell me the story. Fonda, he said, became a traitor during the Vietnam War — a war in which "gunny" had served two tours and for which he had received three Purple Hearts (which is why he enjoyed training Navy corpsmen to be Marine Corps combat corpsmen — they'd saved his life a time or two).

The following excerpts are not "gunny's" words, but when received them in an e-mail recently, it reminded me of his story. And, as ABC's Barbara Walters prepares to honor the traitorous Jane Fonda during Walters' "100 years of great women" program soon, I thought the American people needed to hear this story again. You see, Fonda isn't just exercise videos and the third wheel in "Nine to Five" (the movie).

* * * * * * *


"There are few things I have strong visceral reactions to, but Jane Fonda's participation in what I believe to be blatant treason, is one of them. Part of my conviction comes from exposure to those who suffered her attentions.

"In 1978, the Commandant of the USAF Survival School, a colonel, was a former POW in Ho Lo Prison — the Hanoi Hilton. Dragged from a stinking cesspit of a cell, cleaned, fed, and dressed in clean PJs, 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 dragged away. During the subsequent beating, he fell forward upon the camp Commandant's feet, accidentally pulling the man's shoe off — which sent that officer berserk.

"In '78, the AF colonel still suffered from double vision — permanently grounding him — from the Vietnamese officer's frenzied application of a wooden baton.

"From 1983-85, Col. Larry Carrigan was 347FW/DO (F-4Es). He'd spent 6 [product] years in the Hilton — the first three of which he was listed as MIA. His wife lived on faith that he was still alive. His group, too, got the cleaned/fed/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 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 the little pile of notes.

"Three men died from the subsequent beatings. Col. Carrigan was almost number four.

"For years after their release, a group of determined former POWs, including Col. Carrigan, tried to bring Ms. Fonda and others up on charges of treason. I don't know that they used it, but the charge of 'Negligent Homicide due to Depraved Indifference' would also seem appropriate. Her obvious 'granting of aid and comfort to the enemy' alone should've been sufficient for the treason count. However, to date, Jane Fonda has never been formally charged with anything and continues to enjoy the privileged life of the rich and famous.

"I, personally, think that this is shame on us, the American Citizenry.

"Part of our shortfall is ignorance: Most don't know such actions ever took place.

"The only addition I might add to these sentiments is to remember the satisfaction of relieving myself into the urinal at some air base or another where 'zaps' of Hanoi Jane's face had been applied."

And there is this account:

"I was a civilian economic development advisor in Vietnam, and was captured by the North Vietnamese communists in South Vietnam in 1968, and held 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 Ban Me Thuot, South Vietnam, whom I later buried in the jungle near the Cambodian border.

"At one time, I was weighing approximately 90 lb. [my normal weight is 170 lb.). 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 would like to tell her about the real treatment we POWs were receiving, which was far different from the treatment purported by the North Vietnamese, and parroted by Jane Fonda, as 'humane and lenient.' Because of this, I spent three days on a rocky floor on my knees with outstretched arms with a piece of steel re-bar placed on my hands, and beaten with a bamboo cane every time my arms dipped.

"Jane Fonda had the audacity to say that the POWs were lying about our torture and treatment. Now ABC is allowing Barbara Walters to honor Jane Fonda in her feature "100 Years of Great Women." Shame on the Disney Company.

"I had the opportunity to meet with Jane Fonda for a couple of hours after I was released. I asked her if she would be willing to debate me on TV. She did not answer me, her husband (at the time), Tom Hayden, answered for her. She was mind controlled by her husband. This does not exemplify someone who should be honored by '100 Years of Great Women.'"

"After I was released, I was asked what I thought of Jane Fonda and the anti-war movement. I said that I held Joan Baez's husband in very high regard, for he thought the war was wrong, burned his draft card and went to prison in protest. If the other anti-war protesters took this same route, it would have brought our judicial system to a halt and ended the war much earlier, and there wouldn't be as many on that somber black granite wall called the Vietnam Memorial. This is democracy. This is the American way.

"Jane Fonda, on the other hand, chose to be a traitor, and went to Hanoi, wore their uniform, propagandized for the communists, and urged American soldiers to desert. As we were being tortured, and some of the POWs murdered, she called us liars. After her heroes — the North Vietnamese communists — took over South Vietnam, they systematically murdered 80,000 South Vietnamese political prisoners. May their souls rest on her head forever."

In the words of Paul Harvey, America, "now you know the rest of the story."

ABC and Babs Walters will undoubtedly include "Hanoi" Jane in their televised celebration because their black souls are too hardened and too imbued with an anti-American sentiment to do anything else. And ultimately, they will all answer for what they have done in their lives. In the meantime, I don't plan on watching anything that has Jane Fonda's face anywhere near it. I won't buy her videos; I won't rent or go see her movies. As far as I'm concerned, she's already dead to me.

Whether or not you agreed with the war in Vietnam, whether you're a Vietnam vet or a former member of the protest movement, or whether you're too old or too young to have been there, the behavior of Jane Fonda towards our own military men is reprehensible beyond belief. All I ask is that you think about these accounts the next time you see her. Let your conscience guide your actions from there.

Variations: An October 2009 variant claims:
SHE REALLY WAS A TRAITOR!!

and now OBAMA wants to honor her ......!!!!

A TRAITOR IS ABOUT TO BE HONORED
KEEP THIS MOVING ACROSS AMERICA
How Barack Obama got dragged into this is a mystery, in that the proposed "honoring" the missive decries (inclusion in ABC's 30 April 1999 "A Celebration: 100 Years of Great Women") happened ten years before he became President.

Origins: The right to freedom of speech is one of our most cherished rights. It is also a double-edged sword: the same right that allows us to criticize our government's policies without fear of reprisal also protects those who endorse and promote racism, anti-semitism, ethnic hatred and other socially divisive positions.

Rarely is this dichotomy so evident as when a democratic nation engages in war, and the protection of civil liberties clashes head-on with the exigencies of a war effort. Protesting a government's involvement in a war without also interfering in the prosecution of that war is a difficult (if not impossible) feat, a situation that has sometimes led the government to curtail the freedom of speech, Jane Fonda in Vietnam such as when the U.S. Sedition Act (passed during World War I) made criminals of those who would "willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States." Under this law, peacefully urging citizens to resist the draft or simply drawing an editorial cartoon critical of the government became illegal. (The Sedition Act was later overturned.)

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 have repeatedly and categorically denied 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." In 2005, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that Carrigan "is so tired of having to repeat that he wasn't beaten after Fonda's visit and that there were no beating deaths at that time that he won't talk to the media anymore."

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 also repeatedly stated on the record that it did not originate with him:
Driscoll said he never met Fonda, as the e-mail claims — and therefore, never spit on her and didn't suffer permanent double vision from a subsequent beating. "Totally false. It did not happen," Driscoll said.

"I don't know who came up with [my] name. The trouble that individual has caused me!" he said, referring to the time he has spent repeatedly denying the persistent myth.
Mike McGrath, President of NAM-POWs, has 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.
Despite the claims of hundreds of Vietnam veterans who maintain they were "there" and can affirm these tales as true, Jane Fonda actually met with only a handful of American POWs in North Vietnam, and even they have spoken out on the record to disclaim the story:
"The whole [e-mail] story about Jane Fonda is just malarkey," said Edison Miller, 73, of California, a former Marine Corps pilot held more than five years. Miller was among seven POWs who met with Fonda in Hanoi. He said he didn't recall her asking any questions other than about their names, if that. He said that he passed her no piece of paper, and that to his knowledge, no other POW in the group did, despite the e-mail's claims.
In fact, Fonda carried home letters from many American POWs to their families upon her return from North Vietnam.

The source of the story about a prisoner forced to kneel on rocky ground while holding a piece of steel rebar in his outstretched arms still affirms that account as true, though. Michael Benge was a senior agro-forestry officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) who was working in South Vietnam when he was captured by the Viet Cong in 1968 and held prisoner for five years:
He was at a Hanoi prison in 1972 when a political officer he hadn't seen before asked whether he would like to meet Fonda. "I said yes," he wrote in a 1999 letter that protested the Fonda honors, "for I would like to tell her about the real treatment we POWs received and how different it was from the treatment purported by the North Vietnamese."

Benge said he doesn't know who pilfered his story from his letter and attached it to the Carrigan and Driscoll fictions.

In the 1972 incident, "I think I had maybe a little smarter-than-the-average bear [political officer] who knew I was being cynical," Benge said recently. Benge said he spent the next three days kneeling on a rocky floor with a steel bar on his outstretched hands. Whenever his arms dipped, he was struck with a bamboo cane, he said.

North Vietnamese guards might be the only people able to verify Benge's torture account independently. But, McGrath said, Benge's account is "consistent with [North] Vietnamese policy and conduct about people who didn't cooperate."
Benge's 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.

Whether the actions Jane Fonda actually did undertake during her visit to North Vietnam were legally Urinal sticker treasonous or not, her behavior 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 visit to Hanoi, 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 surprisingly 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 that she was 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.

Last updated: 28 October 2009

The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/military/fonda.asp

Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2010 by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson.
This material may not be reproduced without permission.
snopes and the snopes.com logo are registered service marks of snopes.com.
; Sources Sources:

Abrams, Garry. "Fonda Meets with Vets, Wins a Few Hearts."
Los Angeles Times. 20 June 1988 (p. E1).

Andersen, Christopher. Citizen Jane: The Turbulent Life of Jane Fonda.
New York: Henry Holt, 1990. ISBN 0-8050-0959-0.

Elvin, John. "The Vietnam War is Over, But 'Hanoi Jane' Lives On."
Insight on the News. 25 November 1996 (p. 20).

Fonda, Jane. My Life So Far.
New York: Random House, 2005. ISBN 0-375-50710-8.

Grossberg, Josh. "Fonda Regrets 'Hanoi Jane.'"
E! Online. 1 April 2005.

Hahn, Trudi. "Ex-POW Is No Fan of Fonda, But He Debunks E-Mail Claim."
[Minneapolis] Star Tribune 25 May 2005.

Holzer, Henry Mark and Erika Holzer. "Aid and Comfort": Jane Fonda in North Vietnam.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2002. ISBN 0-7864-1247-X.

Jacoby, Jeff. "Dubious Honor for Hanoi Jane."
The [Montreal] Gazette. 18 June 1999 (p. B3).

Labbe, J.R. "Dubious Honor for Hanoi Jane."
Omaha World-Herald. 11 May 1999 (p. 19).

London, Herbert. "ABA Invite to Fonda an Outrage."
The Times-Picayune. 14 August 1999 (p. B7).

Zekas, Rita. "He's Not Fonda Jane."
The Toronto Star. 11 August 1990 (p. M20).

Associated Press. "Viet Nam Vets Meet with Jane Fonda."
The Toronto Star. 20 June 1988 (p. C4).

Associated Press. "Jane Fonda Regrets N. Vietnam Photo."
20 June 2000.

Reuters. "Man Spits Tobacco Juice in Jane Fonda's Face at Book Signing."
Houston Chronicle. 21 April 2005.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Without question, she was a traitor, and should have been met by ther FBI when she landed in the US, clapped in irons and hauled off to prison until her trial, then packed off to federasl prison to serve her sentence. It's still not too late to do it, but it probably won't happen.

Later, she became a confidant and advisor to Moonbeam Brown, then governor of CA and now the Dem candidate for the office. I hope the Rep. candidate lets all the voters know about that.

 

[LaRocha]

Without question, she was a traitor, and should have been met by ther FBI when she landed in the US, clapped in irons and hauled off to prison until her trial, then packed off to federasl prison to serve her sentence. It's still not too late to do it, but it probably won't happen.

Later, she became a confidant and advisor to Moonbeam Brown, then governor of CA and now the Dem candidate for the office. I hope the Rep. candidate lets all the voters know about that.

You're silly, there is such a thing as Treason, and it was defined by the Constitution:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

There's no aid or comfort in Jane's actions.

 

[Boxlicker101]

You're silly, there is such a thing as Treason, and it was defined by the Constitution:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

There's no aid or comfort in Jane's actions.

Her broadcasts did give aid and comfort to North Vietnam. Here is a link to a person who did not get such gentle treatment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mildred_Gillars

 

[Boota]

Someone smarter would not have allowed themselves to be used that way, but I think her actions fall short of treason. It's not an excuse, but I really think she was just a duped kid with an overblown level of importance due to her celebrity status. Foolish and misguided, but not quite treasonous.

Now outing a CIA agent...

 

[bronzeage]

Whenever somebody asks me why a fish would try to eat a piece of plastic with treble hooks hanging off both ends, I think about threads like this one.

http://www.bassnorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/090318-crankbait-bass-side-of-veg-03.jpg

 

[sr71plt]

Someone smarter would not have allowed themselves to be used that way, but I think her actions fall short of treason. It's not an excuse, but I really think she was just a duped kid with an overblown level of importance due to her celebrity status. Foolish and misguided, but not quite treasonous.

Now outing a CIA agent...

Precisely.

 

[Pure]

lets get things straight.

the effort is to declare Obama a traitor, and this old chestnut, alleging that Fonda was, is just the flimsy means.

yes, Jane, in a moral sense, gave 'comfort' to the enemy, but not in a way that would ever be prosecuted because of the small item of free speech which Jagged and TE seem unaware of. and her alleged perfidy is said to have resulted in several beatings.

on the other side, are the massive number of civilian deaths in indochina, including in the secret wars in Cambodia and Laos; Congress was deceived and arguably war crimes were committed.

Hitchens in his book, the Trial of Henry Kissinger reviewed the evidence, and HK's crimes form a very long list, and involve thousands of deaths, some of them, for example in the Pinochet coup in Chile and its bloody aftermath.

Here are some excerpts as to the Kissinger (and co.) crimes in Indochina.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/CaseAgainst1_Hitchens.html

A SAMPLE OF CASES: KISSINGER'S WAR CRIMES IN INDOCHINA

Some statements are too blunt for everyday, consensual discourse. In national "debate," it is the smoother pebbles that are customarily gathered from the stream and used as projectiles. They leave less of a scar, even when they hit. Occasionally, however, a single hard-edged remark will inflict a deep and jagged wound, a gash so ugly that it must be cauterized at once.

In January 1971 there was a considered statement from General Telford Taylor, who had been chief U.S. prosecuting counsel at the Nuremberg trials. Reviewing the legal and moral basis of those hearings, and also the Tokyo trials of Japanese war criminals and the Manila trial of Emperor Hirohito's chief militarist, General Yamashita Tomoyuki, Taylor said that if the standard of Nuremberg and Manila were applied evenly, and applied to the American statesmen and bureaucrats who designed the war in Vietnam, then "there would be a very strong possibility that they would come to the same end [Yamashita] did." It is not every day that a senior American soldier and jurist delivers the opinion that a large portion of his country's political class should probably be hooded and blindfolded and dropped through a trapdoor on the end of a rope.

In his book Nuremberg and Vietnam, General Taylor also anticipated one of the possible objections to this legal and moral conclusion. It might be argued for the defense, he said, that those arraigned did not really know what they were doing; in other words, that they had achieved the foulest results but from the highest and most innocent motives. The notion of Indochina as some Heart of Darkness "quagmire" of ignorant armies has been sedulously propagated, then and since, in order to make such a euphemism appear plausible.

Taylor had no patience with such a view. American military and intelligence and economic and political teams had been in Vietnam, he wrote, for much too long to attribute anything they did "to lack of information." It might have been possible for soldiers and diplomats to pose as innocents until the middle of the 1960s, but after that time, and especially after the My Lai massacre of March 16, 1968, when serving veterans reported major atrocities to their superior officers, nobody could reasonably claim to have been uninformed, and of those who could, the least believable would be those who-far from the confusion of battle-read and discussed and approved the panoptic reports of the war that were delivered to Washington.

General Taylor's book was being written while many of the most reprehensible events of the Indochina war were still taking place, or still to come. He was unaware of the intensity and extent of, for example, the bombing of Laos and Cambodia. Enough was known about the conduct of the war, however, and about the existing matrix of legal and criminal responsibility, for him to arrive at some indisputable conclusions. The first of these concerned the particular obligation F of the United States to be aware of, and to respect, the Nuremberg principles:
[...]
However history may ultimately assess the wisdom or unwisdom of the war crimes trials, one thing is in disputable: At their conclusion, the United States Government stood legally, politically and morally committed to the principles enunciated in the charters and judgments of the tribunals. The President of the United States, on the recommendations of the Departments of State, War and Justice, approved the war crimes programs. Thirty or more American judges, drawn from the appellate benches of the states from Massachusetts to Oregon, and Minnesota to Georgia, conducted the later Nuremberg trials and wrote the opinions.[...]

"Thus the integrity of the nation is staked on those principles, and today the question is how they apply to our conduct of the war in Vietnam, and whether the United States Government is prepared to face the consequences of their application."

Facing and cogitating these consequences himself, General Taylor took issue with another United States officer, Colonel William Corson, who had written that
"[r]egardless of the outcome of . . . the My Lai courts-martial and other legal actions, the point remains that American judgment as to the effective prosecution of the war was faulty from beginning to end and that the atrocities, alleged or otherwise, are a result of a failure of judgment, not criminal behavior."

To this Taylor responded:
"Colonel Corson overlooks, I fear, that negligent homicide is generally a crime of bad judgment rather than evil intent. Perhaps he is right in the strictly causal sense that if there had been no failure of judgment, the occasion for criminal conduct would not have arisen. The Germans in occupied Europe made gross errors of judgment which no doubt created the conditions in which the slaughter of the in habitants of Klissura [a Greek village annihilated during the Occupation] occurred, but that did not make the killings any the less criminal."

Referring this question to the chain of command in the field, General Taylor noted further that the senior officer corps had been
"more or less constantly in Vietnam, and splendidIy equipped with helicopters and other aircraft, which gave them a degree of mobility unprecedented in earlier wars, and consequently endowed them with every opportunity to keep the course of the fighting and its consequences under close and constant observation. Communications were generally rapid and efficient, so that the flow of information and orders was unimpeded.

[...]
[Taylor wrote} "How much the President and his close advisers in the White House, Pentagon and Foggy Bottom knew about the volume and cause of civilian casualties in Vietnam, and the physical devastation of the countryside, is speculative. Something was known, for the late John McNaughton (then Assistant Secretary of Defense) returned from the White House one day in 1967 with the message that "We seem to be proceeding on the assumption that the way to eradicate the Vietcong is to destroy all the village structures, defoliate all the jungles, and then cover the entire surface of South Vietnam with asphalt."
This was noticed (by Townsend Hoopes, a political antagonist of General Taylor's) before that metaphor had been extended into two new countries, Laos and Cambodia, without a declaration of war, a notification to Congress, or a warning to civilians to evacuate. [...]
Melvin Laird, as secretary of defense during the first Nixon Administration, was queasy enough about the early bombings of Cambodia, and dubious enough about the legality or prudence of the intervention, to send a memo to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asking, "Are steps being taken, on a continuing basis, to minimize the risk of striking Cambodian people and structures? If so, what are the steps? Are we reasonably sure such steps are effective?" No evidence has surfaced that Henry Kissinger, as national security adviser or secretary of state, ever sought even such modest assurances.

Indeed, there is much evidence of his deceiving Congress as to the true extent to which such assurances as were offered were deliberately false. Others involved-such as Robert McNamara; McGeorge Bundy, national security adviser to both Kennedy and Johnson; and William Colby-have since offered varieties of apology or contrition or at least explanation. Henry Kissinger, never. General Taylor described the practice of air strikes against hamlets suspected of "harboring" Vietnamese guerrillas as "flagrant violations of the Geneva Convention on Civilian Protection, which prohibits 'collective penalties,' and reprisals against protected persons,' and equally in violation of the Rules of Land Warfare." He was writing before this atrocious precedent had been extended to reprisal raids that treated two whole countries-Laos and Cambodia-as if they were disposable hamlets.

 

[Dragonlipz]

More teabagger, right-wing, hysteria........
Get over whatever you're channeling.....Nixon and Kissinger committed treason to the troops they abandoned in North Viet Nam prison camps.....
That's a fact but you won't get worked up over the fact that brave American heroes were left to rot in prison so that Nixon could claim an 'end' to the whole mess.....
If you ever wore a uniform, you'd know what I'm talking about.
Jane has and had a right to her opinion: Nixon had a duty to his troops (Commander in Chief) and he failed them.....................think about that....shit for brains - Jagged

 

[Boxlicker101]

Someone smarter would not have allowed themselves to be used that way, but I think her actions fall short of treason. It's not an excuse, but I really think she was just a duped kid with an overblown level of importance due to her celebrity status. Foolish and misguided, but not quite treasonous.

Now outing a CIA agent...

You do havbe a point there, and her guilt was not as extreme as that of the woman in the link I provided, but Fonda was guilty, and should have ben brought to trial. I also agree that the person who outed the CIA agent was guilty of a crime, but he was a newsman, the most sacred of sacred cows.

There were many war crimes committed in both South and North Vietnam, and if all the guilty had been prosecuted, most of the defendants would have been Vietnamese.

I don't know if you are aware of this, DL, but Ford was the CIC when US involvement.

 

[IrezumiKiss]

Whenever somebody asks me why a fish would try to eat a piece of plastic with treble hooks hanging off both ends, I think about threads like this one.

http://www.bassnorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/090318-crankbait-bass-side-of-veg-03.jpg

http://i469.photobucket.com/albums/rr57/Jericho9mm/clap.gif

 

[sr71plt]

I also agree that the person who outed the CIA agent was guilty of a crime, but he was a newsman, the most sacred of sacred cows.

I promised myself not to comment to this thread again, but this statement is so stupidly innane that I can't help myself. A newsman can't out a CIA agent who doesn't walk up to him and declare himself or who the newsman doesn't personally catch in the act of washing his special-issue CIA undies.

Someone in the know--inside the government--is the one who outed this CIA agent. To the newsman.

Numbskull! You never cease to make my jaw drop anew at your truly stupid statements.

 

[Boxlicker101]

I promised myself not to comment to this thread again, but this statement is so stupidly innane that I can't help myself. A newsman can't out a CIA agent who doesn't walk up to him and declare himself or who the newsman doesn't personally catch in the act of washing his special-issue CIA undies.

Someone in the know--inside the government--is the one who outed this CIA agent. To the newsman.

Numbskull! You never cease to make my jaw drop anew at your truly stupid statements.

I seriously doubt that Valerie Plame ever outed herself to Robert Novak. Somebody did, and those persons were reported by Novak to be high ranking officials, but he never further identified them. As a newsman, who is above the law, he could not be forced to do so, nor was he ever oficially accused of breaking any law. If you or I had printed a circular and passed it around or posted the fact here, we would have imprisoned, and rightly so.

In any event, he was certainly not obligated to make her status public knowledge.

 

[sr71plt]

I seriously doubt that Valerie Plame ever outed herself to Robert Novak.

And then you can't even get the point.

 

[Boxlicker101]

And then you can't even get the point.

No, what is the point? I am saying that Novak should not have made public the status of Valerie Plame, even though it was not illegal for him to do so. I believe that a sense of patriotism should have kept him from doing so.

Did you ever hear the WW2 slogan "Loose lips sink ships?" I feel this situation was akin to the reasons for that slogan.

And I full agree that those government officials should not have been allowed to get away with what they did.

ETA: And I was responding to this comment of yours . (bolding added)

I promised myself not to comment to this thread again, but this statement is so stupidly innane that I can't help myself. A newsman can't out a CIA agent who doesn't walk up to him and declare himself or who the newsman doesn't personally catch in the act of washing his special-issue CIA undies.
Someone in the know--inside the government--is the one who outed this CIA agent. To the newsman.