Jane Fonda "Traitor E-mail" True or Not?

Just wondering if the facts contained in this e-mail are true. Are the names used actual individuals who served in the military? Did the events actually happen?

> > Jane Fonda is being honored as one of the
> > ‘100 Women of the Century.’
> >
> > â?¦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
> > and st ill 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 w ould
> > 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

Some true, some not.

This email has been around for at least ten years. It’s complete nonsense, other than the fact that Fonda visited North Vietnam. Check Snopes for the real deal.

And apparently believed and repeated everything the North Vietnamese told her. What an idiot.

But I will leave off now, as your question has been answered. The part about the little slips of paper is not true.

Also a fact many people called her traitor for her Vietnam related activities.

Eh…not quite. Read the Snopes link.

And read the book “Tiger Force” by Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss (winners of the Pulitzer Prize) before you start assigning labels like heroes and bad guys to the people involved in that war.

It has always interested me that people had to make up stuff about what she actually did. The truth wasn’t bad enough.

The “truth” is that she was young and politically active, and had the public recognition to make her voice heard. While her stunt was regrettable, speaking her mind against a meaningless war was her constitutional right. As someone who was serving in Vietnam at the time, I was as angry as any other serviceman about war protesters and Ms. Fonda in particular. I got over it.

Visiting the enemy and laughing with them is a far cry from “speaking her mind”. And it’s more than a mere stunt.

But was fighting an ultimately pointless was against a people who had every right to self determination and more patriotic?

Does patriotic mean imposing your own national will upon those who are fighting against it?

Can be seen many ways I suppose.

Bolding mine. Since the OP asks for something that is hard to answer purely factually . . . I’ll dive in and say the problem was that some of that “people” wanted non-communist self-determination. That’s the nature of civil wars.

ETA that the commies were not content with just controlling the North partition-style, so peaceful coexistence was not an option.

Assuming that the North Vietnamese were somehow “good guys” is an extremely dubious proposition. The South Vietnamese dind’t have to be anything mroe than odinary, everyday bastards to be better.

Okay, in an effort to bring something a little more hard-factuality than my last post: here’s the definition of treason under U.S. law:

Pursuant to which a treason prosecution of Hanoi Jane would have arguably been well within the statute.

So that would mean that a Red Cross worker who visited the enemy and happened to laugh at a joke one of them made would be equally guilty under your definition. It was 40 years ago, and it means nothing today. Jane Fonda is irrelevant, and unless Huerta88 is an attorney, his post is just ill-informed opinion as well.

I did not advocate for her present-day or back-then prosecution. I stated the simple proposition that taking actions that aided and could reasonably have been anticipated to aid the propaganda interests of an enemy of the United States, could readily be seen as giving “aid and comfort” to them, as specified in the United States Code provision I quoted, and as I understand this term to have historically been applied.

Huerta88 and smiling bandit are very uniformed on Vietnamese history, how America got involved, the corruption in the South Vietnamese government, what happened after the Americans got fully militarily involved, who Ho Chi Minh was and what he wanted for the Vietnamese (clue: he was first a nationalist, second a communist), and Ho Chi Minh’s view of Americans.

Read up, visit the place and get a educated about what happened there. None of it is pretty but the North Vietnamese were no more corrupted or culpable to the horrors that went on there than any other entity that was involved.

I’ve done the reading and know much of the background. All I suggested was that a substantial portion of the Vietnamese people did not share Ho Chi Minh’s vew of what form of nationhood was desirable. Catholics, for instance, were not big fans of the form of government Ho wanted. Yes, I know there was corruption in the So. VN gov’t and know that ARVN was a relatively useless army. That does not mean that the war was provoked or caused solely by the United States – I can’t imagine the population of the South would have stood for that if there were absolutely no native opposition to the North, and of course there was such opposition.

My only point in my earlier post was that another poster had said something to the effect of Vietnam resisting interference with its self-determination as a nation. Well, apparently even the Vietnamese differed on the nature of that self-determination and nationhood.

Well, you have to hand it Diem. He pissed off the Catholics, the Buddhists, the Americans, the Communists, the army, his own government, opposing governments and everybody else. You’d think that a guy that became the head of a country would have some friends.

You’re comparing Jane Fonda, a traitor who went to Vietnam and allowed them to use her for propaganda, to an imaginary Red Cross worker? Besides using a strawman to make a point you’ve insulted the Red Cross. :dubious: