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History Brief Page: US torture of Vietnamese

Citizens Commission of Inquiry, eds. The Dellums Committee Hearings on War Crimes in Vietnam. New York: Vintage Books, 1972.

I personally have used boards, rifle-butts, pistol-whipped people ... (p. 85)

... a man being beaten severely. He was then taken to the POW compound, and he died during the night. (p. 85-86)

This is only typical of some of the stuff that went on. At no time was I told that I was wrong. I received the Army commendation medal for being an outstanding interrogator, I guess. The the only thing I was told was that I shouldn't beat prisoners, or elicit information the way we normally did in front of visiting people ... (p. 86)

During my five months in Vietnam I witnessed many, many incidents of brutality, brutalization, and torture of prisoners. Torture was a policy that existed when I got there, continued after I left (p. 91)

... the interrogation officer was in the process of screening out one young woman I would say between the age of sixteen and eighteen... . Every time she gave a negative response or answered with the 'I don't know,' the crank was turned and she was given an electrical shock. She was shocked so severely that she began to menstruate profusely ... (p. 92)

... the two American counter intelligence agents, began first by wiring the two suspects up and torturing them severely with electrical torture. When this got no results, one of the men took out his .38 snub-nose revolver and began to pistol-whip them. They were beaten bloody. As I remember it, the old man was beaten unconscious ... (p. 93)

... two of my agents had broken a man's arm, an old man's arm, in the process of interrogation ... (p. 94)

The Vietnamese civilians who were obtained by infantry units were subjected to, in my experience, a cycle of torture. They were first, when detained by infantry foot soldiers, brutalized and tortured. If they were turned over to a battalion, they were tortured again. If they were detained further, brought to the brigade interrogation center, they were tortured again and brutalized probably by electrical torture at that time (p. 95)

Eventually, when he in fact after several months did not allow electrical torture in his unit anymore, he was relieved (p. 102)

Mostly I worked in the cover of the GS-9 with the Department of Defense USAID [US Agency for International Development] mission (p. 108)

... subdivided into four cages ... I had seen this building before, knew what went on in there. They brought suspects in, detaining the Vietnamese whom they suspected of being sympathizers, and proceeded to interrogate them by various methods, some of which to describe would be a duplication of what was described earlier. What I saw specifically was a man being drug out of the hooch, he was dead, he had just died, he had been tortured by the use of a dowel inserted into the semi-circular canal of the ear and tapped in further and further as he was interrogated (p. 110)

... this is the way they used both Vietnamese, they would take two up in the helicopter, get out over open territory, away from the City of Danang and the air base, and they would proceed to interrogate in English the Vietnamese in whom they had no more interest. ... When they had threatened him a couple of times with throwing him out of the helicopter and he had not responded because he did not speak English, they would throw him out of the helicopter and they did on both occasions and on both occasions the second person being threatened with the same fate would volunteer whatever information the interrogators would ascribe ... This happened twice and I was along for observation (p. 111)

Twelve of them had been dumped out over the Mekong Delta ... I could see shreds of flesh on the door jamb of the helicopter from the hands where they had tried to hold on and I could see blood on the floor of the helicopter where they were beaten out of the helicopters (p. 134)

Special Forces personnel had quite a variety of imaginative means of torture (p. 134)

... we had a large python snake, about eight feet long ... they were put in a room overnight and the snake was thrown in the room with them and they had to contend with wrestling with this python ... that is one method that was used at the base camp ... (p. 135)

... the latrine emptied into this rice paddy ... filled with feces and urine. It was about four feet deep ... I witnessed on several occasions ... he would be blindfolded, hands tied behind his back, and the interrogator would ask questions ... and when the answer was not satisfactory, the American just simply took the pole he was poling the canoe around the rice paddy and would knock the Viet Cong out of the rowboat and into this urine-filled rice paddy. He would sputter around there for a few minutes, drinking up half the paddy, I imagine, trying to find out which was was up, because he was blindfolded and his hands were tied behind his back (p. 135-136)

... a public display of electrical torture ... the wires were attached to the necks and armpits and genitals of these two detainees, and they were asked questions and there was a toggle switch which an American sergeant held underneath the table, and every time an answer was not forthcoming or the captain didn't like the answer, he would nod to the sergeant, who would turn on the switch and charge the suspects with electrical charges, and they would scream and jump up and down (p. 136)

... they had small detention cells which were barbed wire cages that they kept prisoners in for twenty-four hour periods. These were about the size of a coffin. It was nothing but a few stakes driven into the ground and barbed wire wound around it and a prisoner would be stripped nude and one end would be opened and he would be slid into this barbed wire and it would be wound closed on both ends. And he would lie in there through the sun, during the entire day, at temperatures of 105 or 110 ...... in one instance where I watched, a Special Forces sergeant sprayed him with some kind of mosquito attracting liquid ... I don't know, sugar water or whatever, and it actually attracted the mosquitoes to him and by morning he was swollen with mosquito bites. Also every time he turned in his cage, his flesh was punctured by the barbed wire, because it was very tight (p. 137)

... after speaking to many other veterans who have returned from much larger Army units, from less elite units, from average combat infantry units, they have used the same types of torture, or some of the same types ... (p. 139)

I do know that in every unit where this happened, it was either the commanding officer who was actually doing the interrogation or torturing or it was right outside of his window (p. 141)

No one was saying 'Now we take the wires and attach them to the genitals.' This had been done before, I imagine, they were going through the motions as if it were standard operating procedures (p. 142)

I proceeded to beat the man about the face, and got no effect from this. The lieutenant came in and asked me if I had broken the prisoner--that is the term, to break a prisoner--asked me if I had broken the prisoner yet, and I replied that I hadn't, and he says, 'Let's wire him up and see what happens.' ... This was applied to this man's genitals (p. 144)

After every class you have a smoke break and then you ask the instructor, an officer or senior enlisted man, 'How do you interrogate a prisoner who will not talk?' And the answer is invariably, you take a field telephone, wire it up around the man's testicles, you ring him up and he always answers (p. 144)

... the man had been tied to his chair and with his hands laid out on the table and the interrogation officer was putting bamboo splinters into the man's fingernails. At the same time the Specialist 6, who was the interrogation section chief, had telephone wires wrapped around the man's ears and was ringing him up (p. 145)

... do anything you want to get the information, but don't leave marks. And this was on men, women, and children.... I personally participated in it, which I am not proud of the fact. And everyone else in the unit that I worked with participated in it. (p. 145)

... during that time I saw a man who had been tortured to death electrically ... He said, 'I was just ringing him up, he was about to break, and he keeled over and died.' (p. 146)

And in all of these 600 or so interrogations, some form of force, stress, or harassment was used and this was against men, women, and children. (p. 146)

... he had been involved in a fire fight ... one foot almost completely severed from a hand grenade and the other leg fairly mauled ... So I told the doctor, no more 'phene,' no stitches, no nothing, no food or water, just put a tourniquet on and keep him alive, which the doctor did, and I interrogated the man ... (p. 147)

... it occurred all over Third Corps area ... I personally witnessed it with the First Military, 25th and Fourth Military Intelligence Detachments and it became a prevailing pattern and the officers as well as the enlisted men were involved in it (p. 147)

This is just a hint. It doesn't say you take a field telephone and wire it around the man's testicles and ring him up. That is taught after the classes. Then it is allowed. (p. 148)

But invariably it was used.... the use of torture (p. 149)

... I think I can fairly safely say it was a tacitly condoned policy, a de facto policy, if you will, of torture, and it was carried on throughout the III Corps area in Vietnam (p. 152)

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