This question is inspired by John McCain’s story, but please don’t go political. Thanks!
It’s been repeated a lot during the RNC that John McCain had the opportunity to get out of prison sooner than he did if he had gone along with his captors.
Do captors in POW situations tend to be honest in those opportunities? Would going along actually have led to an early release? I guess I always assume that such captors would have no issue with lying. “Yeah, you do this and we’ll let you go!” while in reality they wouldn’t let him go at all. It always strikes me like the movie scenes with the baddie holding a gun on the innocent stranger. “Put down the gun, Batman, or I’ll shoot!” Yeah, but if he puts down the gun, you’ll still shoot!
The difference between the McCain and Batman situations is that McCain’s captors need to build trust with the other captors that when they strike a deal, they keep up their end of the bargain. They may have already shown McCain that they do.
If they lie, they will not be able to exploit any more prisoners. If they exploit one, get what they want, then let him go, then the others will be more likely to follow.
“CPT Billy gave us the tactical information we needed, and he taped a video confession condeming America’s actions. So we let him go. You could be home right now with your family… just like him. All you have to do is sign this and give us some information. Wouldn’t you like to go home?”
I am not familiar with McCain’s specific situation, but it would be counter productive for captors–restrained captors, that is (not unrestrained terrorists*)–to lie about perks, release, or better treatment.
*If the ultimate plan is just to lop your head off in front of a camera, then they wouldn’t really care what they promise or lie about.
The rule for POWs is “first in, first out”. In other words, it would not only have been a breach of POW code to accept a favor, it would have been a breach of ethics for him to leave before those who had been there longer.
Why would their lies have to be revealed to the other prisoners?
They could still say: “CPT Billy gave us the tactical information we needed, and he taped a video confession condeming America’s actions. So we let him go” even if they really had told CPT Billy that he was going home right before taking him to a place in the jungle where they shot him in the head, couldn’t they?
Early release offers usually comes with no strings because the propaganda value that can be obtained far outweighs any sort of outdated tactical or strategic intelligence that can be gained. Had McCain accepted they would definitely have told the others in an attempt to demoralize them and reduce their resistance to interrogation.
They could have, and you’re right, he couldn’t have stopped them. But it could easily have been demonstrated that he had been repatriated against his will, which is not a violation of the Code of Conduct or deemed to be any sort of collaboration. While it’s important for us at home to believe that, it is far more important for the people still in captivity to believe it.
Even though the North Vietnamese asserted that the POWs were War Criminals, they were still accountable for what happened to them. If they took them out into the jungle and shot them in the back of the head and it were known that the man was alive in captivity the North Vietnamese would have had to answer for it. Since their support was based upon their claim that the US actions were illegal, they could not have executed prisoners without destroying the pseudo-legitimacy of their claim.
A major complicating factor with the John McCain situation was that his father, Admiral John S. McCain Jr. (the Senator and Presidential candidate is John S. McCain III) was Commander in Chief, Pacific (i.e., the officer in charge of the entire theater of war) at the then-Cdr. McCain was captured.
His captors offered to release McCain in large part for the propaganda value (or rather propaganda harm to the US) that the early release of the theater commander’s son would have. It was a complicated situation, but McCain declined early release, so the potential propaganda risks were avoided.