New York Times.
[31]
McCain spent six weeks in a hospital, receiving marginal care, was interviewed by a French television reporter whose report was carried on
CBS, and was observed by a variety of North Vietnamese, including the famous General
Vo Nguyen Giap. Many of the North Vietnamese observers assumed that he must be part of America's political-military-economic elite.
[38] Now having lost 50 pounds, in a chest cast, and with his hair turned white,
[34] McCain was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Hanoi in December 1967, into a cell with two other Americans who did not expect him to live a week (one was
Bud Day, a future
Medal of Honor recipient); they nursed McCain and kept him alive.
[39] In March 1968, McCain was put into
solitary confinement, where he would be for two years.
[38] In July 1968, McCain's father was named
Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC), stationed in
Honolulu and commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater.
[3] McCain was immediately offered a chance to return home early:
[34] the North Vietnamese wanted a mercy-showing propaganda coup for the outside world, and a message that only privilege mattered that they could use against the other POWs.
[38] McCain turned down the offer of repatriation due to the
Code of Conduct of "first in, first out": he would only accept the offer if every man taken in before him was released as well.
[40] McCain's refusal to be released was even remarked upon by North Vietnamese officials to U.S. envoy
Averell Harriman at the ongoing
Paris Peace Talks.
[34]
In August 1968, a program of vigorous torture methods began on McCain, using rope bindings into painful positions and beatings every two hours, at the same time as he was suffering from
dysentery.
[38][34] Teeth and bones were broken again as was McCain's spirit; the beginnings of a suicide attempt was stopped by guards.
[34] After four days of this, McCain signed an anti-American propaganda "confession" that said he was a "black criminal" and an "air pirate",
[34] although he used stilted Communist jargon and ungrammatical language to signal the statement was forced.
[41] He would later write, "I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine."
[38] His injuries to this day have left him incapable of raising his arms above his head.
[42] His captors tried to force him to sign a second statement, and this time he refused. He received two to three beatings per week because of his continued refusal.
[43] Other American POWs were similarly tortured and maltreated in order to extract "confessions".
[38] On one occasion when McCain was physically coerced to give the names of members of his squadron, he supplied them the names of the
Green Bay Packers'
offensive line.
[41] On another occasion, a guard surreptitiously loosened McCain's painful rope bindings for a night; when he later saw McCain on
Christmas Day, he stood next to McCain and silently drew a
cross in the dirt with his foot
[44] (decades later, McCain would relate this
Good Samaritan story during his presidential campaigns, as a testament to faith and humanity
[45][46]). McCain refused to meet with various anti-war peace groups coming to Hanoi, such as those led by
David Dellinger,
Tom Hayden, and
Rennie Davis, not wanting to give either them or the North Vietnamese a propaganda victory based on his connection to his father.
[38]
In October 1969, treatment of McCain and the other POWs suddenly improved, after a badly beaten and weakened POW who had been released that summer disclosed to the world press the conditions to which they were being subjected.
[38] In December 1969, McCain was transferred to Hoa Loa Prison, which later became famous via its POW nickname of the "
Hanoi Hilton".
[38] McCain continued to refuse to see anti-war groups or journalists sympathetic to the North Vietnamese regime;
[38] to one visitor who did speak with him, McCain later wrote, "I told him I had no remorse about what I did, and that I would do it over again if the same opportunity presented itself."
[38] McCain and other prisoners were moved around to different camps at times, but conditions over the next several years were generally more tolerable than they had been before.
[38]
Altogether McCain was held as a
prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years. The
Paris Peace Accords were signed on
January 27,
1973, ending direct U.S. involvement in the war, but the
Operation Homecoming arrangements for POWs took longer; McCain was finally released from captivity on
March 15,
1973,
[47] having been a POW for almost an extra five years due to his refusal to accept the out-of-sequence repatriation offer.
[48]