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Hanoi Jane

 

 

 

 

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An American Traitor: Guilty as Charged

Hanoi Jane's Apology: Old Whine in New Bottles

Miscellaneous Articles About Hanoi Jane

 

An American Traitor: Guilty As Charged

After thirty years of dodging the question and distorting the issue Jane Fonda has made her case for exculpating the treason she committed in Vietnam. The case fails on every count.

For three decades Jane Fonda obfuscated, distorted and lied about virtually everything connected with her wartime trip to North Vietnam: her motive, her acts, her intent, and her contribution to the Communists’ war effort. With the aid of clever handlers, she so successfully suppressed and spun her conduct in Hanoi that many Americans didn’t know what she had done there, and, more important, the legal significance.

Three years ago, our book, "Aid and Comfort": Jane Fonda in North Vietnam (McFarland & Co.), laid bare the incontrovertible facts, applied the American law of treason to them —and proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Jane Fonda should have been indicted for (and would have been convicted of) treason.

With the recent publication of Fonda’s autobiography, My Life So Far —which, with one minor exception, does not contain a single cited source to support any claim she makes in her text, or any quotation she uses—the woman justly dubbed "Hanoi Jane" makes statements and provides details that inadvertently lend support to every key charge against her.

Especially noteworthy is that she devotes 50 pages of her nearly 600 page book—which spans about seventy years of her life—to the two-week trip to Communist North Vietnam that tarnished her public image forever. One of these chapters is called "Framed" which is a pun referring to the infamous photograph of her sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-craft gun and also the characteristically perverse claim of innocence by a defendant whom that same photograph has caught in the act. Since her conduct in wartime Vietnam continues to inflame Americans – vets harassed and even spat on her during her book tour -- and to dog her heels at every turn, one might have expected her to put some substance into her account of this period in her life. Instead, the public is served up with lies that are transparent and omissions designed to bury the truth.

Motive

In Aid and Comfort we discussed at length the important legal distinction between "motive" and "intent." In essence, it’s the difference between wanting to kill your neighbor because he’s been sleeping with your wife (motive), and acting in furtherance of that motive by putting a bullet in his head (intent). In a courtroom it is the latter that matters. One of the elements of the crime of treason is an intent to betray the United States. We wanted to make clear that, whatever motivated Fonda to make the trip to Hanoi, it was her intent in going there, and in doing what she did there, that would be relevant to a tribunal determining whether she committed treason or not.

Still, we did wonder why an American citizen would have traveled to the capital of a ruthless enemy of the United States who was torturing American prisoners of war and killing our fighting men. Accordingly, we raised the question and explored some answers:

Why did Jane Fonda travel to Hanoi during her country’s war with North Vietnam? While no one can know for certain—perhaps not even Fonda herself, because of the complex psychological drives at work within her—and while motive (as distinguished from intent) is not a defense to the crime of treason, still, it is useful to consider why Fonda acted as she did in Hanoi. That consideration is rooted in an examination of Fonda’s background, in which much can be found to explain her radicalization and her later propaganda broadcasts and other pro-Communist, anti-American conduct. Based on that background, we offer an opinion: Jane Fonda’s desperate psychological need to overcome early parental rejection, to acquire a sense of identity and self esteem, and to fill her empty value system, caused her, first, to become an antiwar militant, and then to journey to wartime North Vietnam.

How right we were.

In a mere two sentences, on page 290 of her book, Fonda gives her reason for going to North Vietnam: "Heightened public attention—even if it took controversy to achieve it—was what was needed to confront the impending crisis with [threatened American bombing] of the [North Vietnamese] dikes. I would take a camera and bring back photographic evidence (if such was to be found) of the bomb damage to the dikes we’d been hearing about."

Fonda wants readers to believe that at the time she went to Vietnam there was no "heightened public attention," no "controversy" about bombing the dikes, when of course there was. It was seen in Washington and opposed on the left as a measure to stop the North Vietnamese aggression and end the war. But Fonda wants readers to believe that no one else in the international antiwar, anti-American, pro-Communist movement was "confront[ing] the impending crisis" and that the North Vietnamese were not conducting a ferocious propaganda campaign to prevent destruction of their dikes. It was up to her, Jane Fonda, an actress with a "small 8-millimenter film camera" and a "still camera" to in her autobiography’s oft-repeated mantra, "make it better."

That Fonda would dream up by herself such a heroic, history altering project is in fact belied by the self-portrait she paints in the preceding 289 pages in which she repeatedly confesses that she "would become whatever I felt the people whose love and attention I needed wanted me to be"; that she had "a lifelong feeling of not being good enough"; that she believed herself to be "weak and worthless;" that "it was always men I was concerned about pleasing."

The man she was intent upon pleasing then – who actually sent her to North Vietnam -- was antiwar activist, pro-Vietnamese Communist and self-styled anti-American "revolutionary" Tom Hayden. Hayden had previously traveled to Bratislava, Czechoslovakia with an SDS delegation to meet with the Vietnamese Communists and counsel them on how to conduct psychological warfare against the United States.

"Tom felt strongly that I should go," she writes. "Perhaps it would take a different sort of celebrity to get people’s attention." (In other words, as a political activist, Hayden didn’t have celebrity enough.)

So actress Jane Fonda, encouraged by her pro-Communist husband-to-be, and wearing the proud mantle of a "different sort of celebrity," journeyed to the Communist capitol – the capitol of the aggression against South Vietnam – to provide its regime with propaganda support for its war. This was precisely the support that our American prisoners of war refused to give their Communist captors even at the price of physical and mental torture and, in some cases, death.

Propaganda

Propaganda was an integral part of the psychological warfare strategy of the North Vietnamese Communists. They used it to rally their own citizens. They used it to undermine successive governments in the South, to strengthen Hanoi’s ties to China, to the Soviet Union, and to other communist regimes. They used it to shake morale in American and allied forces and to enlist sympathy and aid from non-Communist countries around the world. Most importantly, they used it to undermine the will of the American people to carry on the war, which they knew was the key to their victory since they could not match America’s military strength. As we wrote in Aid and Comfort: "[D]espite the ‘public relations’ risk of torturing American prisoners of war, the North Vietnamese chanced it because of the high value they placed on propaganda." (More about Hanoi’s torture of American prisoners of war below).

In the fifty or so pages Fonda devotes to her trip to Hanoi, the only time Fonda even alludes to the possibility that the Communists might be using her for propaganda, is when she claims that on arriving there, it occurred to her to "wonder whether this is a group of seasoned cadres whose job it is to manipulate me."

She didn’t wonder long. Fonda was in fact a willing accomplice to such manipulation. She would participate in multiple photo-ops, press conferences, official meetings, guided tours and radio broadcasts. She would work from scripts that were provided for her. And in the end she would satisfy the Communist propagandists beyond their wildest dreams.

Of all her disreputable achievements in these two weeks, it was her Radio Hanoi broadcasts and her meeting with seven American POWs that most profited the North Vietnamese regime. Fonda made about eight broadcasts, some live, some taped. She would have us believe that not until several days after her arrival in Hanoi—and then only as a result of what she had seen on the ground—did the idea of radio broadcasts arise. She claims the broadcasts were solely her idea:

          "As we step from the Viet Duc hospital into the sunlight, I have made up my mind. "I want to speak on your radio," I say to my hosts. "I want to try to tell U.S. pilots what I am seeing here on the ground." * * * I must try to make what I am seeing as personal an experience for them as it is for the soldiers on the ground in South Vietnam. I have come to bear witness, and while I have not planned this, I feel it as a moral imperative."

Lies and Omissions

Of her broadcasts over Radio Hanoi, Fonda writes in her autobiography, "Aside from a few notes I have scribbled to myself, I speak extemporaneously, from my heart, about what I have witnessed and how it made me feel."

This claim, as we showed in Aid and Comfort, is ludicrous: "Consider some of the statements made by this young actress who lacked political sophistication, who was ignorant of history, who had an almost non-existent knowledge of international affairs, and who probably had never before written anything more complicated than a check: "neocolonialism," the 1954 Geneva Accords, what constituted a military target, different types of aircraft and ordnance . . . and more. It is obvious that in Hanoi, Jane Fonda was acting as a willing tool of the Communists, to a considerable extent simply reading "canned" material created by professional Communist propagandists (albeit with perhaps an occasional ad-lib). Indeed, some of the words and syntax are those of a person or persons for whom English was not a first language, and it is doubtful that the political language came from Fonda herself.

Fonda also lies about why she made the propaganda broadcasts. She writes: "I want to speak on your radio, I say to my hosts. I want to tell U.S. pilots what I am seeing here on the ground."

If, as she claims in her autobiography, the purpose of her broadcasts was to apprise pilots and ground troops of what our bombing was doing to the North, why did she broadcast the following statements (among others like them)?

     · The Vietnamese people were peasants—leading a peaceful, bucolic life before the Americans came to destroy Vietnam.

     · The Vietnamese seek only "freedom and independence"—which the United States wants to prevent them from having.

     · The Vietnamese fighters are her "friends."

     · The million infantry troops which the United States put into Vietnam, and the Vietnamization program, have failed.

     · The United States seeks to turn Vietnam into a "neocolony."

     · Patrick Henry’s slogan "liberty or death" was not very different from Ho Chi Minh’s "Nothing is more valuable than independence and freedom."

     · Nixon violated the 1954 Geneva Accords.

     · Vietnam is "one nation, one country."

     · The Communists’ proposal for ending the war is "fair, sensible, reasonable and humanitarian."

     · The United States must get out of South Vietnam and "cease its support for the . . . Thieu regime."

     · "I want to publicly accuse Nixon here of being a new-type Hitler whose crimes are being unveiled."

     · "The Vietnamese people will win."    

     · "Nixon is continuing to risk your [American pilots’] lives and the lives of the American prisoners of war . . . in a last desperate gamble to keep his office come November. How does it feel to be used as pawns? You may be shot down, you may perhaps even be killed, but for what, and for whom?"

     · Nixon "defiles our flag and all that it stands for in the eyes of the entire world."    

     · "Knowing who was doing the lying, should you then allow these same people and some liars to define for you who your enemy is?"

     · American troops are fighting for ESSO, Shell and Coca-Cola.    

     · "Should we be fighting on the side of the people who are, who are murdering innocent people, should we be trying to defend a government in Saigon which is putting in jail tens of thousands of people into the tiger cages, beating them, torturing them . . . . And I don’t think . . . that we should be risking our lives or fighting to defend that kind of government."    

     · "We . . . have a common enemy—U. S. imperialism."

     · "We thank you [the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese] for your brave and heroic fight."

     · "Nixon’s aggression against Vietnam is a racist aggression [and] the American war in Vietnam is a racist war, a white man’s war."

     · Soldiers of the South Vietnamese army "are being sent to fight a war that is not in your interests but is in the interests of the small handful of people who have gotten rich and hope to get richer off this war and the turning of your country into a neocolony of the United States."

     · "The only way to end the war is for the United States to withdraw all its troops, all its airplanes, its bombs, its generals, its CIA advisors and to stop the support of the . . . regime in Saigon . . . ."

     · "There is only one way to stop Richard Nixon from committing mass genocide in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and that is for a mass protest . . . to expose his crimes . . . ."

     · "In 1969—1970 the desertions in the American army tripled. The desertions of the U.S. soldiers almost equaled the desertions from the ARVN army . . . ."

     · American soldiers in Vietnam discovered "that their officers were incompetent, usually drunk . . . ."

     · "Perhaps the soldiers . . . who have suffered the most . . . [are] the black soldiers, the brown soldiers, and the red and Asian soldiers."

     · Recently I talked to "a great many of these guys and they all expressed their recognition of the fact that this is a white man’s war, a white businessman’s war, that they don’t feel it’s their place to kill other people of color when at home they themselves are oppressed and prevented from determining their own lives."

     · "I heard horrifying stories about the treatment of women in the U.S. military. So many women said to me that one of the first things that happens to them when they enter the service is that they are taken to see the company psychiatrist and they are given a little lecture which is made very clear to them that they are there to service the men."

Whoever scripted this blatant anti-American, pro-Communist propaganda, one thing is certain: it had nothing to do with apprising pilots and ground troops of the consequences of American bombing in North Vietnam. Fonda’s transparently crude attempts to provide the Communists with a famous American voice to mouth their propaganda and undermine our war efforts in Vietnam could have had only one purpose: to provide aid and comfort to our enemy.

Doubtless because the accusation has dogged her for over three decades (we made the same charge in Aid and Comfort), Fonda found it necessary to disabuse her readers by tossing in a single throwaway sentence: "[S]ome will later accuse me of treason for urging soldiers to desert—something I do not do."

Here is Fonda speaking live over Radio Hanoi, and on tape, virtually inviting South Vietnamese soldiers (and, by implication, American troops) to desert:

          "We read with interest about the growing numbers of you [South Vietnam Army troops] who are understanding the truth and joining with your fellow countrymen to fight for freedom and independence and democracy [i.e., with the Communists]. We note with interest, for example, that as in the case of the 56th Regiment of the 3d Division of the Saigon Army, ARVN soldiers are taken into the ranks of the National Liberation Front [the Viet Cong], including officers who may retain their rank. We think that this is an example of the fact that the democratic, peace-loving, patriotic Vietnamese people want to embrace all Vietnamese people in forgiveness, open their arms to all people who are willing to fight against the foreign intruder." [Emphasis ours]

How can the Communists "embrace" and "open their arms" to South Vietnamese and American troops unless they desert?

As to encouraging "mutiny"—a word never mentioned, a subject not even addressed, in Fonda’s autobiography—Fonda’s Radio Hanoi broadcasts, unlike her veiled nuances devoted to desertion, are not so subtle: "[Although] we do not condone the killing of American officers . . . we do support the soldiers who are beginning to think for themselves."

Which soldiers were those? Beginning to think about what? The juxtaposition of these two thoughts—killing officers and thinking for themselves—can have no meaning other than applauding, even encouraging, the "fragging" (murder by hand grenade) of officers by enlisted men.

Fonda is insistent in her autobiography about having gone to wartime North Vietnam only because she wanted to help stop the killing and end the war: "I…wanted to…stop the killing."

Another lie. Worse than a lie—a perverse irony. By providing the North Vietnamese Communists with an abundance of timely anti-American, pro-Communist propaganda, Fonda’s trip and the activities of her comrades in the anti-war movement who were also inspired by her betrayals actually lengthened the war and, concomitantly, increased the deaths and casualties on both sides.

Fonda, herself, along with Hayden and their followers, have for years taken credit for restraining the Nixon Administration from destroying the dikes—an action which, by all accounts, would have shortened the war and perhaps even ended it, reducing at least one year’s casualties.

That Fonda’s propaganda efforts played an important role in prolonging the war and increasing the death toll is attested to by North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin. In a postwar interview with The Wall Street Journal reproduced at length in "Aid and Comfort, " the Colonel, a dedicated Communist cadre for most of his life, confidant of Ho Chi Minh and the architect of the "Ho Chi Minh Trail" along which the North Vietnamese conducted their aggression against the South, and also one of the first officers of their army to enter Saigon on the day it fell, had this to say:

     Wall Street Journal

     Bui Tin: It was essential to our strategy. Support for the war from our rear [China] was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda . . . gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. (Emphasis ours)

The identical point was made by North Vietnamese Defense Minister General Vo Nguyen Giap, the architect of France’s defeat at Dien Bien Phu. This was the man most responsible for the Communists’ military strategy in their war with the United States.

Stop the killing? End the war? Jane Fonda’s treason unquestionably prolonged both. What she "ended" were the lives of many Americans, and many more Vietnamese for whom she claimed to have such sympathy.

Most chilling of all, perhaps, is that the consequences of Fonda’s actions did not begin and end with Vietnam. In facilitating a Communist victory in Vietnam, Jane Fonda, self-described woman of conscience, contributed to the genocidal bloodbath that would soon follow in Cambodia.

POWS: "Healthy and Repentant"

In writing Aid and Comfort, and now this rebuttal to the Vietnam section of Fonda’s autobiography, we have often attempted—without success—to rank her treasonous acts from bad to worse; everything she did in Hanoi, and immediately thereafter, was reprehensible.

But among the worst lies she told while in North Vietnam concerned her deliberate exploitation of American prisoners of war and the aid she gave to those who tortured them by providing them a cover of denial for their crimes.

It is no surprise that in her autobiography (which doesn’t contain a single index reference to "prisoner of war" or "POW"), Fonda devotes little more than one page to her widely publicized meeting with seven American POWs and her claims that they were not tortured. And, worse, that they were sorry for serving their country.

Here is the essence of what Fonda has written in her autobiography, tracking what she said in a Radio Hanoi broadcast:· "The POWs appear to be healthy and fit."· "All of them have called publicly for an end to the war and signed a powerful antiwar letter . . . . "· "A few of them tell me they, too, are against the war and want Nixon to be defeated in the upcoming elections. They express their fear that if he is reelected, the war will go on and on . . . and that bombs might land on their prison."· "I am asked to convey their hopes that their families will vote for George McGovern."· "I ask them if they feel they have been brainwashed or tortured, and they laugh."

Evidently she didn’t ask John McCain or any of the many many American POWS who were tortured in contravention of the Geneva codes. Or, she did ask them and fearing more torture if they told her the truth and possibly death, they lied to her. In fact, this meeting and her anti-American propaganda following it was so palpably a charade that even Fonda, after noting the presence of at least one guard, "realize[d] that the men could have been lying to protect themselves, but I certainly see no signs in any of the seven that they have been tortured, at least not recently." (Emphasis ours).

Here is what really happened that day in Hanoi, as related in Aid and Comfort [our footnotes appear in brackets]:

          "At least three POWs were unwillingly made to meet with Fonda. One prisoner didn’t even know where he was being taken: I was informed . . . to get ready to leave. We were put on a bus, blindfolded and driven away. Others were loaded on the bus at another stop and the bus left again. We were unloaded, lined up and had the blindfolds removed. We were then taken into a room and seated. The next thing that occurred was the appearance of Hanoi Jane and she began to speak. [Email in possession of authors]  Fonda . . . was doing a script, at one point she got lost in what she was saying, went back and used exactly the same words again for about two sentences to get back on track. I never got a chance (nor did I want to) say anything, it was a listen and be on display thing . . . anything else would have brought on problems. ['Problems' was a euphemism. Lack of cooperation at this show interview would have resulted in more torture. The source of the former POW’s quotation is an email in possession of authors] [Emphasis in original]

What was Fonda’s "script"—conveniently omitted in her nearly 600-page autobiography? While pointing at a chart,

          ". . . Jane Fonda’s theme was that we [the United States] were committing genocide on the Vietnamese people. She also asserted that we were bombing the dikes which was against the rules of war. [Email (from one of the POWs) in possession of authors]

Fonda was quick to lie about her meeting with the POWs, even as she continued to parrot the North Vietnamese propaganda lines being fed to her:

          "This is Jane Fonda speaking from Hanoi. Yesterday evening . . . I had the opportunity of meeting seven U.S. pilots. Some of them were shot down as long ago as 1968 and some of them had been shot down very recently. They are all in good health. We had a very long talk, a very open and casual talk. We exchanged ideas freely. They asked me to bring back to the American people their sense of disgust of the war and their shame for what they have been asked to do.

          They told me that the pilots believe they are bombing military targets.

          They told me that the pilots are told that they are bombing to free their buddies down below, but, of course, we all know that every bomb that falls on North Vietnam endangers the lives of the American prisoners.

          They asked me: What can you do? They asked me to bring messages back to their loved ones and friends, telling them to please be as actively involved in the peace movement as possible, to renew their efforts to end the war.

          One of the men who has been in the service for many, many years has written a book about Vietnamese history, and I thought that this was very moving, that during the time he’s been here, and the time that he has had to reflect on what he has been through and what he has done to this country, he has—his thought has turned to this country, its history of struggle and the people that live here.

          They all assured me that they have been well cared for. They—they listen to the radio. They receive letters. They are in good health. They asked about news from home.

          I think we all shared during the time I spent with them a sense of—of deep sadness that a situation like this has to exist, and I certainly felt from them a very sincere desire to explain to the American people that this was is a terrible crime and that it must be stopped, and that Richard Nixon is doing nothing except escalating it while preaching peace, endangering their lives while saying he cares about the prisoners.

          And I think that one of the things that touched me the most was that one of the pilots said to me that he was reading a book called The Draft, a book written by the American Friends Service Committee [Quakers], and that in reading this book, he had understood a lot about what had happened to him as a human being in his 16 years of military service. He said that during those 16 years, he had stopped relating to civilian life, he had forgotten that there was anything else besides the military and he said in realizing what had happened to him, he was very afraid that this was happening to many other people.

          I was very encouraged by my meeting with the pilots [because] I feel that the studying and the reading that they have been doing during their time here has taught them a great deal in putting the pieces of their lives back together again in a better way, hopefully, and I am sure that when—when they go home, they will go home better citizens than when they left. "[Hearing Report, 7670]

Back in the United States, Fonda telephoned the wife of one of the POWs:

          "She [Fonda] called me after that meeting to let me know [my husband] was fine. I said I just didn’t see how he could be fine held in prison, kept from his country, his home and his family. She hung up on me." [Email in possession of authors]

Fonda’s live broadcast from Hanoi, directed at American troops (both free and captive) throughout Vietnam, was replete with blatant falsehoods.· The prisoners were not "all in good health" or "well cared for." By Fonda’s own admission, one of them had been in captivity since 1967, when torture was routine. · Nor did Fonda have "a very long talk" with the POWs. Again, by her own admission, her diatribe took "twenty minutes or so." "It was a listen and display thing," one of the POWs reported later.· The meeting was not "very open and casual," and she and the POWs did not "exchange ideas freely"—because, by her own admission, at least one guard was present at all times. · Each POW did not make antiwar statements and did not attack his Commander-in-Chief (although two may have).

Small wonder that Fonda’s autobiography conveniently skips lightly over her meeting with the seven American POWs, the better to perpetrate lies she had told three decades ago. Far from regretting her deeds of thirty years ago, she in effect repeats them in her book.

Having spent all of a week in Hanoi being chaperoned by Communist functionaries and being shown only what they wanted her to see, after having engaged in a twenty-minute charade in the company of seven American prisoners of war and at least one guard, suddenly Jane Fonda is an expert on torture! While this meeting, and Fonda’s absurd statement above, was post-1969, when admittedly much of the torture had abated, American prisoners of war were even then being maltreated, not to mention being denied virtually every protection of the Geneva Convention that Fonda was so fond of invoking on behalf of the enemy.

Chapter Three of Aid and Comfort spells out the documented maltreatment and brutal torture of our American POWs. Words like "inhumane" and "barbaric" are inadequate to describe what these men endured without surcease—some of them for five or six years. As we were writing that chapter, which details everything from disease, lack of sanitation, near-starvation and withholding of medical treatment to diabolical torture devices whose primary purpose was to extract propaganda, we had to take periodic breaks—such was our emotional turmoil.

Here is one POW’s matter-of-fact description:

          "The techniques varied from the use of the ropes to cuffs of a rachet type that could be tightened until they penetrated the flesh, sometimes down to the bone; aggravation of injuries . . . such as twisting a broken leg; forcing a man to sit or kneel for long periods of time without food or sleep; beatings with fanbelt-like whips and rifle butts . . . [applying] an assortment of straps, bars, and chains to body pressure points . . . ."

But Jane Fonda didn’t confine herself to skepticism about our POWs having been tortured. When the POWS were finally released and allowed to come home as part of the truce agreement that removed American troops from Vietnam, instead of celebrating their release as any normal American or decent person would, Fonda went on the attack. As we wrote in Aid and Comfort, she denounced them as "liars, hypocrites and pawns," adjectives better suited to herself:

          "[W]hen the last accounted-for American POW was out of Vietnam, officially April 1, 1973, stories of the brutal treatment to which they had been subjected began to surface. True to form, Fonda castigated them. Hanoi Jane called these Americans—who had suffered indescribably, and walked into freedom with their heads held high and their wounds, psychological and physical, mostly hidden from public view—'liars, hypocrites, and pawns.'  She was livid at the charge that these men had been tortured: 'Tortured men do not march smartly off planes, salute the flag, and kiss their wives. They are liars. I also want to say that these men are not heroes.' One of the first contingent of POWs said that, indeed, he had not only been tortured, but that the Vietnamese had tortured him—broken his arm—for the specific purpose of forcing him to see her during her visit to North Vietnam. Jane’s response was a shrug: 'Nobody’s perfect, not even the Vietnamese.' [Peter Collier, National Review, July 17, 2000. This POW’s statement has not been corroborated]. [Emphasis ours]

Fonda’s impugning of POW torture stories persisted: "At home, there were some Americans who refused to believe that POWs were tortured. Others believe that their torture was somehow justified. In 1973, shortly after the American POWs were repatriated, antiwar activist Jane Fonda, after hearing reports, of Americans tortured in the camps in North and South Vietnam, commented to Newsweek reporters: ‘There was most probably torture of POW’s [sic] guys who misbehaved and treated their guards in a racist fashion or tried to escape were tortured. Some [U.S.] pilots were beaten to death by the people they had bombed when they parachuted from their planes. But to say that torture was systematic and the policy of the North Vietnamese is a lie.’" [Robert C. Doyle, Voices From Captivity, 192, citing Newsweek, April 16, 1973, 51. See also "Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden— Candid Conversation, "Playboy (April 1974): 67].

In the face of the irrefutable evidence that Fonda callously lied about the suffering of America’s POWs, here is the spin she puts on it in her autobiography:

          "I made a mistake I deeply regret. I said that the POWs claiming torture were liars, hypocrites, and pawns. I said, 'I’m quite sure that there were incidents of torture . . . . But the pilots who are saying it was the policy of the Vietnamese and that it was systematic, I believe that is a lie.' I firmly believe that the POWs I met with had not been tortured. But what I didn’t know at the time was that prior to 1969 there had in fact been systematic torture of POWs."

Like Casablanca’s Captain Renault—a regular "winner" at the roulette table, who was "shocked, shocked" to learn that illegal gambling had been going on at Rick’s Café—Jane Fonda, well-informed antiwar activist, a vocal and dedicated part of the pipeline which channeled domestic Communists and fellow travelers in and out of North Vietnam, supposedly hadn’t the faintest notion, even as late as 1972, that her comrades in Hanoi systematically tortured—as a matter of policy—American prisoners of war. This was not a mistake. It was an act of aggression against American heroes who had been subjected to horrible tortures and against America itself.

The Photograph

Nothing is more emblematic of Jane Fonda’s trip to Hanoi—nothing has caused her to be more justly scorned—than the photographs (there are several, taken moments apart) of a blissful Fonda sitting atop a 37 mm North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun surrounded by reporters and a gun crew. In the version we used on the cover of "Aid and Comfort," Fonda is looking through the gun sight at an imaginary American plane, her face ecstatic, her hands folded almost in prayer. If there was anything about her trip to Hanoi that Fonda needed to lie about, it is this photo op.

So she does: According to her memoir, she arrived at Hanoi’s airport. Her hosts briefly went over the itinerary for her visit. "I noticed that the trip to an antiaircraft installation is still on the agenda for the last day, despite my message [a "pretrip letter"] from Los Angeles saying I was not interested in military installations. I tell them that I don’t want to keep that visit on the agenda."

Does such a letter even exist? No evidence in her autobiography is provided to support its existence. In fact, when her itinerary was published in a Congressional Hearing Report [which we reprinted in full in Aid and Comfort], there was no entry that scheduled a visit to any antiaircraft installation. A reasonable person would conclude that she made up the entire story of her "pretrip" demurral, along with so much else.

And even though she claims to have noticed the itinerary item practically from the moment her feet touched the ground, Fonda acquiesced in the AAA visit because, as she writes, "Altering the plans [not scheduled for another two weeks!] appears to cause consternation. Decisions have been made. I am too tired to protest." Still, she decides, "I am going." Lots of Americans, she writes, are taken to military installations; lots of them have to wear helmets. And since such Americans were anti-Americans who believed their country was the "imperialist aggressor" in Vietnam, lots of them had beatific expressions on their face when they sat in gun turrets designed to kill their own countrymen.

As she arrives at an antiaircraft gun installation on the outskirts of Hanoi and sees a weapon used to shoot down American aircraft, Fonda purports to be surprised at "a horde of photographers and journalists." (Sure, a Hollywood star is surprised to see cameras at a showpiece event that has been set up for her!) The Communist soldiers sing. Fonda’s translator translates: "All men are created equal. They are given certain rights; among these are life, liberty and happiness." (We are not making this up.) Fonda is so moved by this musical version of our Declaration of Independence that "I begin to cry and clap. These young men should not be our enemy. They celebrate the same words Americans do." [Emphasis is Fonda’s]

One good performance deserves another. The AAA gunners ask Fonda to reciprocate with a song of her own. Somehow Fonda has managed to anticipate this request before leaving the United States. She has memorized in Vietnamese a song written by South Vietnamese and antiwar activists -- i.e., supporters of the Communist propaganda offensive. "Everyone laughs and claps, including me," she writes.

The performance is over. "Someone, I don’t remember who, leads me toward the gun, and I sit down, still applauding. It all has nothing to do with where I am sitting. I hardly even think about where I am sitting." Give us a break.

These three sentences are the only explanation in some 600 pages of Fonda’s autobiography of why she provided the North Vietnamese Communists with a propaganda picture worth, not the proverbial thousand words, but rather thousands of American and Vietnamese lives.

As Fonda walks away, we are asked to believe that the implications of her conduct suddenly dawned on her. She writes, "Oh my God. It’s going to look like I was trying to shoot down America planes." [Emphasis Fonda’s] Not really, Jane. It looks just like you thought that shooting down American planes was a fantastic idea, which is evident from everything else you did and said in Vietnam and in respect to the war before and after.

She claims, preposterously, in her autobiography that she pleaded with her translator to make sure her hosts saw to it that the potentially embarrassing photographs were not published. If this is true, how come she didn’t protest the pictures when they were published? How come it took her twenty years to "apologize" for embarrassing herself (which was the extent of her apology)? This self-serving assertion is of course belied by the fact that she went to the gun emplacement installation in the first place and allowed herself to be photographed – for what purpose? Home entertainment?

Thirty-three years later comes this grudging (and embarrassing and not credible) admission: "It is possible that the Vietnamese had it all planned." [Emphasis ours] But, she continues, "can I really blame them?" And besides, Fonda adds as an afterthought: "the gun was inactive, there were no planes overhead." In what reality is this woman living?

Regrets

In recent months, while promoting her autobiography across the United States, Fonda has purported to apologize for some of her conduct in North Vietnam. But her words have always been equivocal and ambiguous—a technique she established many years ago and honed to a fine art ever since.

As we wrote in Aid and Comfort, What makes Fonda’s regret ring so hollow and self-serving are her revealing words in a 1989 interview, in which she stated categorically: "I did not, have not, and will not say that going to North Vietnam was a mistake . . . . I have apologized only for some of the things that I did there, but I am proud that I went." Proud that she went to give aid and comfort to a ruthless totalitarian enemy that launched an aggressive war that killed more than 2 million people and saddled South Vietnam with a Communist police state that has lasted for more than thirty years.

Jane Fonda is 68 years old. When she started writing her autobiography, she had an opportunity to take genuine stock of her life and set the record straight once and for all. Here was a chance to prove that she really was sorry for what she had done. That she understood the meaning of the words "apology" and "making amends" and how her actions really did have serious consequences. That regrets, if sincere, require action, not just lip service.

Not only did Fonda lack the integrity and strength of character to seize the opportunity, but she was contemptuous at the mere suggestion that she had much to apologize for. How can one take seriously anything this woman says about an apology when, on page one of the North Vietnam section of her autobiography, she writes: "My only regret about the trip was that I was photographed sitting on a North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun sight"?

Conclusion

Aid and Comfort": Jane Fonda In North Vietnam

Our answer is threefold.

First, Fonda was the most prominent American citizen to give the North Vietnamese invaluable antiwar, anti-United States, pro-Communist propaganda, which cost many American lives. She is a symbol of the willingness of members of the American left to oppose their country in war and give aid and comfort to the enemy camp – even when that enemy is a ruthless totalitarian aggressor. Because she got away with it, it was all the more important that we set the historical record straight by proving that she was indictable and convictable for treason.

Second, we felt strongly that a moral reckoning for Fonda’s conduct in Hanoi was long overdue, one that we hope will follow her to her grave—as it should.

Third, we believed then—we continue to believe—that what we think of as "Fonda-ism" must be fought whenever it appears. Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language defines "ism" as "a doctrine, theory, system, etc." By "Fonda-ism," we mean the belief that American citizens can with impunity interfere with their country’s foreign policy by making common cause with enemies bent on its destruction.

By herself, Jane Fonda is unimportant—confused, defensive, narcissistic, empty—a woman who admits in her autobiography that "Maybe I simply become whatever the man I am with wants me to be: ‘sex kitten’ [Roger Vadim], ‘controversial activist’ [Tom Hayden], ‘ladylike wife on the arm of corporate mogul’ [Ted Turner]."

But Fonda-ism is important because Americans who give aid and comfort to our enemies – Communists then, jihadists now -- put at risk, not only our cherished institutions, but—in today’s world—our very existence.

Hanoi Jane's "Apology": Old Whine In New Bottles

 was a time-consuming book to write. It required thoroughly researched facts, complex legal and constitutional analysis, hundreds of supporting and elaborating footnotes, and an appendix setting forth every one of Fonda’s broadcasts. We have often been asked why, given other writing projects and more pressing interests, we chose to do it. : Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi’s victory?

With the publication of Jane Fonda’s autobiography, the public in general and veterans in particular have once again been insulted by her contentless "apology" for a single episode in her multi-faceted junket to Hanoi in July 1972. Fonda’s charade on "60 Minutes" the other night was simply a robotic reprise of what she has been repeating as a mantra for years in words carefully crafted by her spin doctors.

In our 2002"Aid and Comfort": Jane Fonda in North Vietnam , Erika Holzer and I wrote the following:

[After the Vietnam War ended], Fonda went on with her life – garnering more adulation as an actress; becoming a fitness guru; providing untold millions to her office-seeking politician husband Tom Hayden in support of an assortment of far-left causes; marrying media billionaire Ted Turner; establishing herself as a Hollywood icon; piling up award upon award; and recently pursuing other causes. But she has never been made to account for her wartime trip to North Vietnam .

Fonda’s seeming apology on Barbara Walters’ TV show "20/20" in 1988 was hollow and insincere – not to mention, incomplete. Her pose, she told Walters, on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun used to shoot down American planes was "a thoughtless and cruel thing to have done." She was sorry she had hurt the prisoners in the Hanoi Hilton, she had been "thoughtless and careless." [This footnote followed the text]: During an interview in 2000 Fonda told Oprah Winfrey, "I will go to my grave regretting the photograph of me in antiaircraft carrier [sic] which looks like I was trying to shoot at American planes. That had nothing to do with the context that photograph was taken in. But it hurt so many soldiers. It galvanized such hostility. It was the most horrible thing I could possibly have done. It was just thoughtless. I wasn’t thinking; I was just so bowled over by the whole experience that I didn’t realize what it would look like." The Washington Times, July 7, 2000 (commentary by Bruce Herschensohn). Fonda limiting her "apology" to the antiaircraft gun incident is yet another example of her attempt to minimize her activities in North Vietnam . On February 9, 2001, Fonda was at it again on Walters’ "20/20" show. Walters said Fonda had been "against the war," and the actress agreed, leaving the implication that being against the war justified her propagandizing for the enemy from its own soil. Yet millions of loyal Americans, who also opposed the war – including some much more prominent than Fonda – never traveled to the capitol of a country that was killing our troops and torturing our prisoners. Fonda said, "It just kills me that I did things that hurt those men," apparently referring to our POWs. It’s obvious she never bothered to find out how she hurt "those men" – men who were injured, sick, debilitated, and treated by their captors in a manner that in [our] book [we] could hardly bring [ourselves] to describe. She made no effort to learn the toll her activities took on the morale of our prisoners and men still in the field, nor the punishment some received for upholding their honor and refusing to meet with her. Worse . . . after repatriation was concluded on April 1, 1973 and the details of our POWs’ ordeal were revealed, Fonda called the returned POWs "liars and hypocrites" for reporting that they had been brutally tortured. Finally, Fonda told Walters and her viewers that hurting the prisoners was "not my intent." In [our book] we spend dozens of pages discussing Fonda’s intent. One wonders what Fonda’s answer would have been if Walters had asked Fonda what her intent was. So, once more, the Jane and Barbara show allowed Fonda to offer yet another glib, superficial "apology," just like her earlier ones, aimed at convincing the gullible that Hanoi Jane is truly sorry for what she did in North Vietnam . She is not. She never was. Once the full truth is known, even the gullible will not take seriously any more Fonda "apologies." [Our text then continued]: What makes Fonda’s regret ring so hollow and self-serving are her revealing words in a 1989 interview, in which she stated categorically: "I did not, have not, and will not say that going to North Vietnam was a mistake . . . I have apologized only for some of the things that I did there, but I am proud that I went." [This footnote followed the text]: Even genuine repentance on Fonda’s part would not have erased . . . what she had done in Hanoi .

Jane Fonda’s conduct in Hanoi is examined at length in "Aid and Comfort," but to summarize:

          · Touring the so-called "War Crimes" museum in the company of North Vietnamese Communist civilian and military officials and members of the international press, and there making pro-Communist and anti-American propaganda statements. . . .

          · Touring a North Vietnamese hospital in the company of North Vietnamese Communist civilian and military officials and members of the international press, and there making pro-Communist and anti-American propaganda statements.

          · Touring dikes and populated areas in the company of North Vietnamese Communist civilian and military officials and members of the international press, and there making pro-Communist and anti-American propaganda statements.

          · Touring the North Vietnamese countryside in the company of North Vietnamese Communist civilian and military officials and members of the international press, and there making pro-Communist and anti-American propaganda statements.

          · Making a live broadcast, through the radio facilities of the North Vietnamese regime, containing pro-Communist, anti-American propaganda, which broadcast was taped for later replay.

          · Touring a textile center in the company of North Vietnamese Communist civilian and military officials and members of the international press, and there making pro-Communist and anti-American propaganda statements.

          · Making a second live broadcast, through the radio facilities of the North Vietnamese regime, containing pro-Communist, anti-American propaganda, which broadcast was taped for later replay.

          · Meeting with seven captured American airmen and haranguing them with pro-Communist, anti-American propaganda.

           · Being interviewed by a French journalist and continuing to make her pro-Communist, anti-American propaganda statements.

          · Making a third live broadcast, through the radio facilities of the North Vietnamese regime, containing pro-Communist, anti-American propaganda, which broadcast was taped for later replay.

          · Holding a press conference in Hanoi , where she described her activities since arriving in North Vietnam , and continuing to make her pro-Communist, anti-American propaganda statements.

          · Making a fourth live broadcast, through the radio facilities of the North Vietnamese regime, containing pro-Communist, anti-American propaganda, which broadcast was taped for later replay.

          · Making two more live broadcasts on one day, through the radio facilities of the North Vietnamese regime, containing pro-Communist, anti-American propaganda, which broadcasts were taped for later replay.

          · Meeting with North Vietnamese Vice Premier Nguyen Duy Trinh and continuing to make her pro-Communist, anti-American propaganda statements.

          · In the company of Communist civilian and military officials and members of the international press, posing in the control seat of a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, feigning taking sight on an imaginary American aircraft, and, by her conduct and words, continuing to make her pro-Communist, anti-American propaganda statements.

Has anyone heard an "apology" for any of this from Hanoi Jane?

 

Miscellaneous Articles By The Authors About Hanoi Jane

December 20, 2001:

 

Hanoi Jane and Taliban John's "overt acts"
As the drums beat louder for Taliban John Walker to be charged with treason, it is more important than ever for the American public to understand clearly what elements must be alleged and then proved to indict and convict someone of that constitutional crime.

The necessary element of "intent" can be proved by the actor's own statements, or inferred by the jury from his conduct.

Also a question for the jury is whether the actor's conduct provided "aid and comfort" to the enemy.

Two witnesses must testify to at least one overt act. But what is an "overt act" sufficient to satisfy the constitutional requirement?

Fortunately, as "Aid and Comfort" shows, we have an unambiguous example of overt acts that did sustain a treason indictment and conviction, in the Supreme Court case of Haupt v. United States. Hans Max Haupt was the father of one of the Nazi saboteurs who landed by submarine on the United States coast. Hans tried to help his son obtain reemployment at a sensitive defense plant, gave his son a place to live, and purchased a car for his son. At trial, Hans argued that his conduct was insufficient to constitute treasonous overt acts because they were "commonplace, insignificant and colorless, and not sufficient even if properly proved to support a conviction." The Supreme Court, 8-1, disagreed.

An example of overt acts that could have sustained an indictment and conviction were those committed by Jane Fonda in North Vietnam during July 1972, had the Nixon administration charged her. She made anti-American broadcasts, taped and played incessantly to American prisoners of war, attacking the United States, its president, and its military. She met with seven American POWs, and returned home to tell their families that they were in great shape. She lied about our POWs being tortured. She held press conferences in Hanoi, Paris, and American cities, attacking our government. She provided "photo ops" for the North Vietnamese Communists --- not the least of which showed her sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun used to shoot down American planes, looking through the sight at an imaginary aircraft. She met with senior North Vietnamese civilian and military leaders. (For further details, see "Aid and Comfort": Jane Fonda in North Vietnam).

Which brings us to the recent conduct of American citizen/Taliban fighter John Walker in Afghanistan. So far, we know from his own lips that he trained in two Al Qaeda terrorist camps, fought in Kashmir with Taliban/Al Qaeda forces, and marched some 100 miles with them into Northern Afghanistan, where he was captured. We also know that Walker was engaged in the Qala Jangi prison revolt where he was wounded, and that he was at least in close proximity to the killing of American CIA agent Mike Spann.

If Haupt's overt acts --- assisting his saboteur son to get a job, a place to live, and an automobile --- were sufficient to sustain a treason indictment and conviction, and if Fonda's overt acts --- broadcasts, photo ops, lies, meetings, press conferences --- could have been sufficient to sustain a treason indictment and conviction, then what about Taliban John's overt acts that are described above: terrorist training, terrorist combat, terrorist travel, terrorist rebellion, and perhaps complicity in terrorist murder of an American?

There is no doubt that John Walker's conduct is more than sufficient to sustain the "overt act" requirement for an indictment for the constitutional crime of treason. Thus, since there is adequate evidence from which an intent to betray could be inferred, and adequate evidence to show that the enemy benefited from Taliban John's conduct (and presumably two-witness proof of at least one overt act), there is no legal impediment to indicting John Walker for treason - nor to convicting him.

However, in the days ahead, we shall see whether there is a political impediment to indicting Taliban John --- just as there was to indicting Hanoi Jane.

January 22, 2002:

 

Hanoi traveler Ramsey Clark surfaces again

It is not even six months since the devastating events of September 11th, and already the America-last movement - predictably- struggles to find a grandstanding "issue" to undermine the Bush Administration's war on terrorism. In a reprise of their conduct during the Vietnam War, along with sits-in, lighting candles, offering prayers and incantations - "give peace a chance," "no 'eye for an eye'," "let's not become like them," "violence never solved anything" - the movement offers their usual stale, naive, anti-American slogans. But this time - thankfully, and unlike during the Vietnam War - they've run into a virtually solid wall of indifference from the American public and its elected representatives. Although - also predictably - the movement enjoys considerable, and sympathetic, media support, as it did during Vietnam, this time its angst is DOA.

That does not stop them, as witness the current grandstanding by, among others, a notorious lover of those who hate America: Ramsey Clark - and, like Jane Fonda, a sojourner to North Vietnam during the war, while American POWs were held captive there.

Son of a justice of the United States Supreme Court, and himself a former Attorney General of the United States, Clark, since leaving office some three decades ago, can be counted on to show up whenever and wherever America is hated most - North Vietnam and revolutionary Iran being just two examples. In Hanoi, Clark, like his fellow citizen, Jane Fonda, snuggled up to the Communists. In Iran, Clark courted the Ayatollahs. Now - apparently troubled not in the least by the atrocities committed in Afghanistan by the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists - Clark and his cohorts have taken a page from the Left's unsuccessful Vietnam-era strategy. They are trying to use the courts to advance their political agenda - this time, by complaining about the government's treatment of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

According to an Associated Press report, a habeas corpus case has been filed in Los Angeles federal court by a coalition of "clergy, professors and civil rights attorneys" who are seeking to have the Guantanamo detainees brought to a civilian court and presented with charges. One could write a law review article about the absurdity of this demand by people who ought to, and probably do, know better.

At the threshold, let's dispose of some important questions, a negative answer to any one of which could dispose of the case. Do the petitioners have a right to legally represent people they have never met? Can there be proper venue in a Los Angeles federal court regarding persons held in Cuba? Does the writ of habeas corpus apply to foreign military detainees in general, and the Guantanamo terrorists in particular? Do "clergy, professors and civil rights attorneys" possess "standing to sue" (i.e., a sufficient personal stake in the case's outcome) on behalf of strangers?

However, there is one fundamental constitutional principle that, alone, is enough to doom this attempt by the America-haters to use the courts to advance their political agenda. That principle is found in the judicial article: Article III of the Constitution of the Untied States of America. The principle is called the "political question" doctrine - but a better label would be "non-justiciability," because it refers to issues that are simply not appropriate for judicial determination. (Yes, even in this day when it seems that every gripe is fit for judicial resolution, there are still many issues not suitably decided in a court of law).

Ironically for Clark, a sizeable body of law on non-justiciability arose out of the Vietnam War. In essence, a non-justiciable "political question" is one that is the province, not of the judiciary under Article III of the Constitution, but rather the business either of Congress under Article I or the Executive/Commander-in-Chief under Article II. It does not take much insight to appreciate that the business of war is peculiarly an Article II affair, given that it expressly makes the president Commander-in-Chief. As such, President Bush has delegated to the Secretary of Defense the power to deal with captured enemies. Mr. Rumsfeld has done just that, including incarcerating them at Guantanamo. In a famous case from the Vietnam War era, United States v. Sisson, United States District Judge Wyzanski dismissed a challenge to the War's constitutionality because - like the Guantanamo case brought in Los Angeles - it involved "just the sort of evidence, policy considerations, and constitutional principles which elude the normal processes of the judiciary and which are far more suitable for determination by coordinate branches of the government."

In seeking a writ of habeas corpus to bring the Guantanamo Taliban and al-Quaeda terrorists before a civilian court - and thus have that court interfere with the Commander-in-Chief's power under Article II - Ramsey Clark and those of his ilk would have a federal court in California decide a non-justiciable question, and thus violate the fundamental Constitutional doctrine of Separation of Powers. Imagine having a federal judge in California dictate to the Bush Administration such "policy considerations" as what food the detainees will be served, the number of showers per week they'll be allowed, whether they can watch cable TV and use exercise equipment. And how about conjugal visits?

How presumptuous - and, given the mindset of the detainees, how dangerous - it is for "clergy, professors and civil rights lawyers" to try to invoke the power of the federal judiciary in a meddlesome attempt to dictate policy to the Department of Defense!

Ironically, yet appropriately, what ought to necessitate dismissal of Clark's and his friends' attempted political use of the federal court is the constitutional doctrine of "political questions."

 

 

September 24, 2001:

 

Hanoi Jane: soft on terrorists

Jane Fonda is at it again. Nearly thirty years ago, she went to North Viet Nam and aided a Communist anti-American propaganda campaign. (See www.Hanoijane.net.) Now, in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks, she is once again undermining the United States — this time, by blurring a crucially important distinction.

On September 20th, Fonda reportedly told an Atlanta radio station that Americans should "try to understand the underlying causes" of the terrorist attacks which, in her view, must "be dealt with as a crime. And when there’s a crime, you don’t bomb a city or a country — you use very, very clever intelligence, undercover-type operations to get the criminals and punish them. . . ." It would be a mistake, she opined, for America to retaliate militarily.

Put aside that Fonda characterized American response as "saber rattling" and "calls for vengeance." Put aside her implication that the "underlying causes" of the attacks were poverty and hunger rather than hatred for Western values and culture. Put aside that Fonda knows nothing about intelligence operations. What Fonda is saying is that the terrorists are not soldiers to be attacked militarily, but mere criminals.

There is a profoundly important distinction to be made between an act of war and the commission of a criminal act. Indeed, that Fonda blurred this distinction is far less important than why she did.

President Bush has consistently characterized the terrorism as an act of war against the United States. By any customary definition of "war," he is correct. War is armed military combat, regardless of whether the combatants have issued an official declaration (which, incidentally, the terrorists have done). Let Fonda tell the dead, the missing, the wounded veterans from Korea, that they were not at war with the North Koreans and Chinese Communists. Let her tell the mourners at the Viet Nam Memorial Wall that their loved ones were not at war with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. And let her tell the dead beneath the rubble of the World Trade Center that they were not killed in a radical Islamic "holy war."

Declared or not, a war exists when armed belligerents mount an attack — as in killing stewardesses and pilots, hijacking aircraft, and crashing them into buildings filled with thousands of people.

A "crime"is very different. It is a violation of domestic law punishable by fine and/or imprisonment and sometimes death. It is prosecuted in court, and the proceedings are hedged with constitutional and other safeguards — notably, due process of law, non-self incrimination, search warrants supported by probable cause, etc.

It is this important distinction between a state of war and the commission of a crime that is being blurred by Fonda and like-minded Leftists. If the terrorist killings are not treated as acts of war but rather as the commission of mere domestic crimes, the terrorists would be entitled to the safeguards ensured by our criminal justice system — with the outcome as uncertain as O. J. Simpson’s trial for the brutal murder of two people. On the other hand, if the attacks on American soil are considered acts of war, military response, unhampered by the safeguards afforded criminals, is necessary and justified.

Based on this war/crime dichotomy, the radical Islamic terrorists would stand a far better chance in our criminal justice system than on the receiving end of the military's smart bombs and special forces operations. That is what Fonda and people of her ilk want: an escape hatch for the terrorists. And that is why, when she equates the killing of thousands of Americans by the soldiers of radical Islam with the domestic crime of murder, and when she rails against a military response to an act of war waged against the United States of America, Jane Fonda stands exposed as being soft on terrorists.

 

 

September 7, 2001:

 

September's Fonda reinvention

Our thesis that Hanoi Jane has been engaged in a deliberate campaign to reinvent herself is explained in this site's archives for May 8, July 1, and August 7, 2001.

The last gambit we reported occurred on July 21, 2001. Apparently, Fonda took August off.

However, early in September she was at it again.

On September 5th, The Santa Fe New Mexican reported that "The Big Country backdrop was real, and so was Jane Fonda, picking up trash along the Pecos River. The star . . . spoke out Monday about keeping America beautiful. Fonda, owner of a 2,000 acre ranch nearby, was joined by about two dozen fly-fishing enthusiasts to help clean the river after the summer onslaught. 'You don't find a place that's 25 minutes from a city like Santa Fe' and yet 'is completely isolated,' she said, 'and needed me to bring it back to health.' Young people should learn to respect the land, too, she said. She called out to several camper groups Monday: 'Be sure that you pack your trash and take it with you.'"

A few observations.

As we said above, the reinvention proceeds apace.

Worse, it is the height of hypocrisy that this woman who journeyed to wartime Hanoi to foster and contribute to the anti-American propaganda efforts of the Communist North Vietnamese should be spouting platitudes about keeping America beautiful. Fonda hated America, could find little to commend it, exalted communism, and worked for the defeat of our country on the battlefield.

The America that Hanoi Jane now says she now wants to keep beautiful was defended by American men and women whom Fonda deprecated. They are the real heroes in keeping America, not only beautiful, but free

 

 

August 7, 2001:

 

July's Fonda reinvention

The archives for May 8 and July 1, 2001, contain information supporting our thesis that Hanoi Jane has been engaged in a deliberate campaign to reinvent herself, yet again. In those postings we noted her activities for the months of February, March, April, May, June and July of this year.

Now, we have another July event.

On July 21, 2001, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee held a fund raiser. It was reported that "The Atlanta fund-raiser featured House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, Missouri Democrat, and DCCC Chairwoman Nita Lowey of New York as well as Georgia Democratic Reps. John Lewis, Sanford Bishop and Cynthia McKinney."

The DCCC's "special guest" was Atlanta resident Jane Fonda.

We are not going to make a partisan Democrat-Republican point here, for we are sure there are many in the Republican Party who would not be adverse to using Hanoi Jane to raise money if they thought they could get away with it.

Our point is that politicians of both parties -- as well as many other Americans -- would do well to remember Jane Fonda's pilgrimage to Hanoi, and to condemn her for it each time the opportunity arises.

Rather than do that, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee missed the boat when, in commenting on the Fonda's assistance to the Democrat fund-raising effort, all he could say was that their use of Hanoi Jane "represents the Democrats' fundamental problem: an inability to appeal to middle-of-the-road voters." What he should have said was that anyone who gives Jane Fonda a platform, anyone who makes her a "special guest," anyone who ducks the opportunity to publicize her conduct on behalf of America's enemy, sanctions that conduct -- whoever they are, and whatever political party they belong to. Until that happens, consistently and ruthlessly, Hanoi Jane will probably succeed in reinventing herself, at least in the eyes of the gullible.

 

 

July 1, 2001:

 

Fonda's Reinvention Continues, Unsuccessfully

On May 8th we wrote an essay on this website entitled "Hanoi Jane at Lincoln Center - The Reinvention Advances." we said that: "Since earlier this year, Hanoi Jane has once again been reinventing herself." We made the point that if one examined her activities from the beginning of the year, a clear pattern of self-reinvention emerged. In February came her announcement that she was writing her autobiography, she appeared on her pal Barbara Walters's TV show, and she appeared briefly on stage in a play entitled "The Vagina Monologues." In March, Ted Turner announced that he had given Hanoi Jane $100 million, and she in turn donated $12.5 to Harvard for the funding of a questionable "gender studies" program. In April, she appeared at a Ft. Worth fundraiser relating to prevention of teen pregnancy. In May, Fonda received a tribute from New York City's Lincoln Center Film Society. In June, she threw a party for hundreds of neighbors at her newly acquired ranch in New Mexico, and spoke at a conference in Sweden.

Now in the July/August issues of AMERICAN HERITAGE magazine we have Hanoi Jane on the cover, the subject of a lengthy article entitled "MS AMERICA Why Jane Fonda Is A Mirror Of The Nation's Past 40 Years." This ten page illustrated cover story treads familiar ground: her daughter, Vanessa, refers to Hanoi Jane as a "chameleon," the author notes that her marriage to Turner "was just another identity pit stop for a public figure who is part Zeitgeist receptacle, part historical timeline, and part cultural encyclopedia," the warts-and-all Fonda family history is yet again dredged up, and Jane's flirtation with and then marriage to radicalism is surveyed. There is, however, a brief section of the article that is significant for our purposes: the references to Fonda's July 1972 pilgrimage to North Viet Nam. And, once again, in Hanoi Jane's current orchestrated campaign to reinvent herself, she makes matters worse.

The AMERICAN HERITAGE article accurately identifies some of what was happening to Fonda when she went to Hanoi: "All the earmarks of her actress training came into play: a radical immersion in the subject experience resulting in profound empathy, followed by an exhibitionist portrayal of this newly adopted perspective." Then - the clear implication being that the author had somewhere obtained a fresh quotation, probably from Fonda herself - he writes about the infamous photograph of Jane Fonda squinting through the sight of a North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun, searching for an imaginary American plane: "'The worst thing I ever did in my life' is how Fonda assesses that moment today. 'It's the most stupid, naïve thing I could have done. I was so swept up in what was happening that I didn't even think that there were photographers there and how it could be interpreted. I will go to my grave regretting that - not going to North Vietnam,' she qualifies, 'but that photograph'."

Let's break this down.

The author is directly quoting Fonda.

Hanoi Jane says that she was "stupid" and "naïve." Not wrong. Not assisting the Communists' propaganda campaign. Not acting in a manner inimical to the interests of her country. Just "stupid" and "naïve" - like buying a lemon used car, perhaps.

Then Fonda asserts: "I didn't even think that there were photographers there." She must have been blind, as the cover of "Aid and Comfort": Jane Fonda in North Viet Nam" will conclusively prove - as do the many other photographs of Hanoi Jane sitting on that antiaircraft gun, surrounded by reporters.

But most important is that, yet again, Fonda has been quoted as stating merely that she "regrets" the photograph - We'll bet she does! - but not expressing regret for going to North Viet Nam, where she made propaganda broadcasts, met with senior Communist civilian and military leaders, exploited American POWs, held anti-American press conferences, and provided the North Vietnamese with countless "photo ops."

No, Fonda still has no "regret" about any of that.

Maybe she will when "Aid and Comfort" is published. Maybe then - when the truth is known about what she did in North Viet Nam, and the harm it caused - Hanoi Jane's self-reinvention will finally end.

 

 

June 18, 2001:

 

Foreword To "Aid And Comfort"

Several weeks ago we announced on this site that there was important news in the offing, and that we would post it as soon as we could. Well, here it is. The foreword to "Aid and Comfort": Jane Fonda in North Viet Nam has just been completed by Col. George E. ("Bud") Day (USAF, Ret.).

Col. Day, a 34-year veteran of WW II, Korea, and Viet Nam, is America's most highly decorated soldier since General of the Army Douglas MacArthur. A tactical fighter pilot, Col. Day was shot down over North Vietnam, suffering three fractures of his right arm, a badly wrenched knee and a damaged eye. Kept in a hole for a week without shoes, tortured, and tied up like an animal, he realized that he was only about 18 miles from the DMZ and friendly lines. He decided to escape. For ten days in the jungle he evaded capture, enduring pain, hunger, fear, and even American bombing. Miraculously, he made it to the DMZ crossed it, and was in sight of a US marine base when he was shot by North Vietnamese troops and recaptured. Transported to Hanoi, he spent 67 months as a prisoner of war in the hell holes of Hanoi.

Among Bud Day's honors -- some 70, more than 50 for combat -- is America's highest, the Medal of Honor.

In recommending Col. Day's own book, Return With Honor, United States Senator and former cellmate John McCain said that "Bud Day is one of the greatest men I have ever had the honor to know."

It is a profound honor for us that Col. Day has written the forward to "Aid and Comfort": Jane Fonda in North Vietnam.

 

 

May 30, 2001:

 

Hanoi Jane in New Mexico

This is the text of a Letter-to-the editor Professor Holzer sent to The Santa Fe New Mexican on May 27th.

"The gossip column of Sunday's New Mexican confirmed a rumor that Jane Fonda has purchased property in Rowe [just outside of Santa Fe]. The paper then reported that she's inviting her Rowe neighbors to a shindig on June 2. As the author of a forthcoming book proving that Hanoi Jane's propaganda broadcasts and other conduct in North Vietnam provided more than sufficient evidence for a treason indictment and conviction, I am struck by two ironies. First, that of all places in America Fonda has chosen New Mexico with its unique connection to Bataan and Corregidor, whose defenders share a common bond with the American POWs of Viet Nam. Second, that Fonda would hold her open house less than a week after Memorial Day, when we honor our fallen veterans. It is my greatest hope that in honor of those veterans the citizens of Rowe will boycott Hanoi Jane's party, and that all New Mexicans will shun her whenever and wherever they encounter her in our state. Although Jane Fonda's aid to the North Vietnamese occurred nearly three decades ago, many of us have not forgotten."

The newspaper did not print the letter.

Professor Holzer made essentially the same point yesterday in letters to the American Legion and VFW chapters in Santa Fe and Los Alamos, adding that "[i]f any of you plan to protest, I shall be proud to march with you." As of now, none of the four organizations have informed me that they plan to protest.

 

 

May 29, 2001:

 

Fonda "Tribute" Update

Our May 8th entry on this site described the previous night's tribute to Jane Fonda at New York's Lincoln Center. We now have an update on that event, which bespeaks of the underlying animosity still out there toward Hanoi Jane.

The New York Observer has reported "a curious chill," "an oddly muted ceremony, empty seats and scattered applause" that "greeted the woman who is still known as 'Hanoi Jane'."

Following the film tribute at Lincoln Center, traditionally there's a party at Central Park's upscale Tavern on the Green. Usually, it's packed. This time, however, the Observer reported that the Tavern "was remarkably uncrowded, and those in attendance were treading carefully around Ms. Fonda." One regular noted that the post-tribute parties "are never that empty. It was a very lukewarm reception. It's hard to get excited about someone who aids and abets the enemy."

When, at the tribute Fonda spoke about how she had helped soldiers to question the Vietnam War, according to the Observer "the room was silent. A few people got up and left."

Remember, this happened at a Lincoln Center Film Society event. In New York City. Neither the event, nor the venue, are especially right wing or pro-military. Probably quite the contrary. And yet, at least to some extent, Hanoi Jane laid an egg. This tells us that her propaganda efforts and other conduct in North Vietnam remain very much remembered, not just by those of us who will never forget, but also by those who we may sometime think, wrongly it seems, have forgotten. Also, the events of Lincoln Center once again underscore the importance of dogging her steps and never allowing Hanoi Jane to forget what she did those many years ago in that far off land.

 

 

May 8, 2001:

 

Hanoi Jane at Lincoln Center - The Reinvention Advances

Last night, at New York's arts showcase, Lincoln Center, Jane Fonda was honored by the glitterati of both coasts.

Although in actuality the event was a fund-raiser for the Film Center of Lincoln Center, ostensibly the gala festivities were a tribute to Fonda's 30-year, 40-film, motion picture career.

Although the Fonda tribute was good business for the Film Society, it was an outrage for the Society to honor a woman who, during a shooting war, traveled to the bosom of our enemy to further its worldwide propaganda campaign. Here is just some of what Fonda did in North Vietnam in July 1972: She made broadcasts, allowed the tapes of same to be played to our men in the field and our POWs, met with senior Communist military and civilian leaders, held press conferences, "interviewed" American prisoners of war, provided countless "photo ops" for the North Vietnamese, defamed our country and its leaders, praised the North Vietnamese aggressors, and encouraged disobedience and even desertion.

At the end of World War II, would it have been appropriate for the Lincoln Center Film Society to have honored Tokyo Rose, Axis Sally, or Lord Haw Haw, no matter what their other accomplishments? Certainly not. Fonda's conduct in wartime North Vietnam was reprehensible. Rather than be honored, she should be shunned and/or her presence protested everywhere she appears. There will be many more opportunities to protest in light of what the Film Society tribute was really all about - from Fonda's perspective.

Since earlier this year, Hanoi Jane has once again been reinventing herself.

Recall the stages of her adult life: ingénue, award-winning actress, semi-expatriate, radical, anti-war activist, fitness guru. In recent years, Fonda's role has been "woman-of-the-world," as little more than an appendage to her husband Ted Turner. But late last year her tenure as Mrs. Turner seemed to be in doubt.

If that stage of Fonda's life was coming to an end, what would replace it?

Conveniently, in 1994 Fonda had started something called the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention. This would prove to be the vehicle for her next metamorphosis. But first she had to reinvent herself and climb back into public view. That's what the Lincoln Center Film Society tribute was part of last night.

Look at this chronology for the year 2001:

February. Fonda announces that she's writing her autobiography, and much media ink is spilled. She appears on Barbara Walters' "20/20" TV show, making another empty "apology" to Vietnam veterans. Fox TV News touts Fonda's so-called "apology." The news is heard 'round the world. She appears briefly in the controversial play The Vagina Monologues in New York City. More publicity. Not a bad month's work.

March. Ted Turner claims that he had just given his wife - Jane Seymour Fonda Plemiannikov Hayden Turner - $100 million. She, in turn, gives $12.5 million to Harvard to fund a questionable gender studies program. More ink is spilled. More TV coverage. More publicity. More reinvention.

April. Fonda appears in Ft. Worth, Texas, to make a speech about teen pregnancy, a condition that few openly approve of and most thoughtful people disdain. Although veterans and other patriotic Americans protest her appearance, substantively she's on the right side of an important social issue. April also finds her announcing her divorce from Turner. Slowly, with the Barbara Walters "apology," the $12.5 million to Harvard, the Ft. Worth pregnancy speech, and other publicity from the autobiography announcement, the play, the Turner payment, and the divorce, Fonda is fast surfacing into public view - this time as "her own woman." (In June she is to appear in Sweden in connection with a film on the subject of teen pregnancy).

May. Lincoln Center. Preceded by a huge puff piece in various sections of The New York Times entitled "Jane Fonda: An Unscripted Life Starring Herself," which failed to discuss her wartime trip to Hanoi, the Film Society - wittingly or unwittingly - contributed to Fonda's self-reinvention by showcasing her in the glamorous setting of a "tribute." While the Film Society may not have known about Fonda's obviously calculated campaign to reenter public life as someone other than Mrs. Ted Turner (let alone as Hanoi Jane), it's obvious that the organization did know of her anti-American activities in North Vietnam and made a conscious effort to avoid all mention of them. For example, while clips were shown from dozens of Fonda's films, there were none from the punishing Godard and Gorin Letter to Jane (about her trip to Hanoi), Introduction to the Enemy (made in Hanoi by Fonda and Hayden in 1974, while the South Vietnamese were fighting for their lives), or any of the footage shot of her in North Vietnam in July 1972 (including film of American POWs). You can be sure that there was no photograph of Fonda sighting a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun ordinarily used to blast American pilots and their planes out of the sky.

Why not? Why, like the Lincoln Center Film Society, has the American press, for the most part, given Hanoi Jane a pass about her conduct in North Vietnam, thus aiding her current calculated effort at self-reinvention?

We have an hypothesis, drawn from our experience with agents and publishers over our forthcoming book, "Aid and Comfort": Hanoi Jane in North Vietnam. There are at least four reasons. The first is fear of Fonda and/or Turner, whose wealth and contacts give pause to those who would offend them. The second is sympathy with Fonda's anti-war crusade, even though one could have protested the Vietnam War, as many did, without aiding the enemy's propaganda program. The third is because the pro-feminist media is unwilling to undermine a sometime icon of that movement (despite Barbarella and other non-feminist lapses by Fonda in the past.) The fourth, in shorthand terms, is that Fonda's wartime behavior in North Vietnam is "stale." This notion embraces several subsets. It happened a long time ago; let's move on. Today, no one gives a damn. Treason is too esoteric a subject. Fonda apologized.

Passing for the time being on the first three reasons (We will write more about them in the future), it needs to be said, about the third reason, that the story of Jane Fonda's propaganda trip to wartime North Vietnam is far from "stale." In the seventy-five days that www.HANOIJANE.NET has been on-line, we have received thousands of visits and many emails. Virtually every one of the latter express the same sentiments: Fonda was wrong, she was never made to pay, the story must be told, the website's visitors eagerly await its telling, and her conduct on behalf of our Nation's enemy should plague her for the rest of her life.

Given Fonda's ongoing public efforts to reinvent herself, that should be easy to accomplish.

 

 

April 15, 2001:

 

"Aid And Comfort" and Forgiveness

After we finished the entry that appears just above, we received an e-mail informing we that "I think you need to get over this. Ms Fonda has admitted she made serious mistakes in her effort to bring peace. She has asked forgiveness of those she offended. Unless you've never made a mistake or offended anyone, I don't think you have a right to continue to condemn her. P.S. I'd like to see if you add this to your list of comments received by those viewing your web site."
Although virtually every email that we have received at HANOIJANE.NET has been supportive of our attempt to make known the facts and legal significance of Fonda's July 1972 propaganda trip to wartime North Vietnam, there have been a few letters making this "forgiveness" point. Accordingly, we're going to address it now, for all time.

But first, a few other subsidiary points must be made about the above-quoted email.

Fonda has not admitted with any specificity that "she made serious mistakes." If she had, our research would have turned up such an admission(s). Indeed, under the dates of February 9 and March 12 on this website we have shown that her purported "apologies" were glib and superficial, and that while she may have "convinced the gullible that Hanoi Jane is truly sorry for what she did in North Vietnam . . . [s]he is not, and never was."

The email writer mis-characterizes Fonda's broadcast and other assistance to the North Vietnamese's worldwide anti-American propaganda campaign as a "serious mistake." Serious it was. A mistake it was not. Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language defines "mistake" as "to understand or perceive wrongly." By her own admissions - repeated in Hanoi, Paris, New York, and Los Angeles - Fonda knew exactly what she was doing, and why. Her zealotry on behalf of the North Vietnam Communists both in Hanoi and upon her return to the United States was unmistakably knowing and intentional. Indeed, if one were to have accused her at a press conference in any of those cities of "understanding or perceiving wrongly" her activities on behalf of the Communists, doubtless she would have defiantly denied the accusation. Further, the texts of her Hanoi broadcasts and other conduct there make abundantly clear that Fonda believed that she was in the right and that the United States was in the wrong.

Next, the email writer equivocally states that Fonda was making an "effort to bring peace." Whatever this means, when one examines her broadcasts and other conduct in North Vietnam, as "Aid and Comfort" does in great detail, it quickly becomes clear that Fonda's idea of peace was a Communist victory. Indeed, in one broadcast she virtually says so. Thus, the email writer's statement amounts to a recognition that Fonda's "efforts" were directed to a "peace" favoring the North Vietnamese.

The email writer refers to "those she offended." This is obscene. Webster's says that "'offend' implies causing displeasure or resentment in another . . . by wounding his feelings. . . ." Fonda's broadcasts and other conduct in North Vietnam did much, much more than cause "displeasure or resentment" or "wound feelings." Yes, some POWs were "offended," but, as my book makes clear, many of them, as well as troops in the field and airmen on carriers, had their morale seriously undermined by what Fonda did.

Then, the writer's "people-who-live-in-glass-houses" point: "Unless you've never made a mistake or offended anyone, I don't think you have a right to continue to condemn her." In other words, there is no objective right and wrong, and the ability (or duty) to condemn is contingent on the accuser's own record. Righteousness, according to the writer, belongs to the pure. On that theory, commission of a "mistake" or "offense" disqualifies one from making moral judgments. Or, to put the point slightly differently, "judge not lest ye be judged."

Well, among other things, the American legal system doesn't work that way. Which brings us to our main point, "forgiveness."

The writer - and the very few others who have sent us similar emails - claim that, for whatever reason(s), Fonda should be forgiven. Either because she has "apologized," or because that's the charitable thing to do, or because so much time has elapsed since July 1972, or because she was stupid, or because she was well-intentioned, or because she was trying to end the war. Unfortunately, these notions of "forgiveness" are equivocal, and those who urge them neglect to specify exactly what concept of forgiveness they seek to invoke. This is regrettable because there are different concepts of forgiveness. For example, religious: "Go and sin no more"; personal: "It's OK, I won't hold it against you."

But there are only two kinds of forgiveness that are relevant in Fonda's case, moral and legal.

One may choose to forgive Fonda morally for her transgressions, and while that form of forgiveness is wrong, that is the forgiver's own business.

Legal forgiveness, however, is an entirely different matter. The law is quite clear that forgiveness has no place in assessing liability for one's acts (though it may be somewhat relevant as to punishment). Under the law, one is either liable civilly or guilty criminally - or not. The law does not, nor should it, "forgive." It is the duty of the law only to assess culpability or its absence. Thus, when viewing the case of Hanoi Jane from a legal perspective, there is no room for the concept of "forgiveness." Either Jane Fonda committed treason, or she did not. If she did, the law does not forgive. And if she did, even a genuine apology would be wholly irrelevant. Were it otherwise, make it real what this would mean. Added to the seemingly unlimited modern defenses to criminal conduct - for example, abuse as a child, drunkenness, "diminished" mental capacity, youth, discrimination - would be the "apology defense": I'm really sorry that I broadcast enemy propaganda to American troops and prisoners, that I met with some POWs, that I fraternized with senior North Vietnamese civilian and military leaders, that I held press conferences around the world and lauded the Communists and attacked America, that I provided Communist journalists and photographers with major photo opportunities, that I used my celebrity to advance the enemy's cause. I'm sorry, and so you can't touch me."

Well, friends, it doesn't work that way.

Sorry about that.

 

 

March 12, 2001:

 

Fox News apologizes for Fonda's conduct

Jane Fonda's recent announcement that she was writing her autobiography for publication next year offered yet another opportunity for her apologists to minimize Fonda's July 1972 pilgrimage to North Vietnam.

That opportunity was seized by Fox News' Roger Friedman. On the Fox News website, Friedman wrote that in Fonda's forthcoming autobiography we should "[e]xpect to see a discussion of her Vietnam experience." Friedman's characterization of Fonda's propagandizing for America's Communist enemies during a shooting war as a mere "experience," rather than as the reprehensible act it was, set the stage for his last paragraph: "This reporter knows that every time Fonda's name has appeared here, we have been inundated with 'Hanoi Jane emails. Instead of pushing that button at the bottom of this page, think for a minute about the incredible body of work Fonda created as an actress . . . the good she's done to help people around the world, and whether you ever said or did anything in your youth which you regret now."

Translation: Despite what Fonda did in North Vietnam she was a successful actress (a classic non sequitur), she's helped unnamed people in unnamed ways in unnamed places (surely not American POWs at the Hanoi Hilton), she was a mere "youth" (35 years old) when she went to North Vietnam, and, presumably, she regr