(Note: The National Archives has responded, and the recording is apparently authentic. This post will be updated once a response is received. New Times has asked the National Archives whether it can verify the recording. And I still wince when I recall wondering if my father had heard of my disgrace." But I can summon up its feeling in an instant whenever I let myself remember the day. He adds, "I am recovered now from that period of intense despair. In his memoir, McCain admits his humiliation over the statements he made to the North Vietnamese, writing that "there is never enough time and distance between the past and the present to allow one to forget his shame." I refused, and was beaten until I consented. The next morning, they brought me back to the theater and ordered me to record my confession on tape. They took me back to my room and let me sleep through the night. I refused, and we argued back and forth about the confession's contents for a time before I gave in to his demand. He demanded that I add an admission that I had bombed a school. I started to print it in block letters, and he ordered me to write in script. He then handed it to me and told me to copy it out in my own hand. I used words that I hoped would discredit its authenticity, and I tried to keep it in stilted generalities and Communist jargon so that it would be apparent that I had signed it under duress.Īn interrogator had edited my last draft and decided to rewrite most of it himself. For twelve hours I had written out many drafts of the confession. I had been taken back to the theater after telling my guards I was ready to confess. The doctors gave me an operation that I did not deserve." I almost died and the Vietnamese people saved my life. "I am a black criminal," the interrogator wrote, "and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate. In one passage, McCain writes of an attempt at suicide, then a further beating, and finally, his acquiescence: In his 1999 memoir Faith of My Fathers, McCain discusses at length his five and a half years as a POW, describing in excruciating detail the torture he endured, admitting that his captors broke him after a series of beatings and prolonged physical abuse, not to mention dysentery and various other maladies. Although his 'confession' was coerced by days of extreme physical abuse, he always regretted it." "Senator McCain has spoken candidly for years, in media interviews and his own memoir, of making a false confession tape after being tortured as a POW in North Vietnam. Senate office could not confirm the authenticity of the recording, but one McCain aide, speaking on condition that his name not be published, told New Times the following: The man states that since being captured, he has received "humane and lenient treatment" from his jailers, and he expresses "gratitude" for the "kindness" of those holding him prisoner. The voice in the recording briefly details the circumstances of McCain's capture: how he was shot down during his 23rd bombing mission over North Vietnam on October 26, 1967, bailed out of his A-4E Skyhawk jet aircraft, breaking both arms and a leg, and ended up being pulled from a lake by Vietnamese citizens and taken prisoner. "I bombed their cities, towns, and villages and caused many injuries, even deaths, for the people of Vietnam." airman, am guilty of crimes against the Vietnamese country and people," the voice says in the recording. Navy" takes responsibility for flying bombing missions over North Vietnam and praises his captors for treating him well. In the recording, a man identifying himself as "John Sidney McCain, 624787, Lieutenant Commander, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C. During a recent TruNews segment, Wiles credits independent journalist Charles Johnson with uncovering the recording in a mislabeled file at the U.S. Rick Wiles, a Florida-based Christian minister who bills himself on his internet webcast TruNews as the "end time news man," has published audio online that he contends is McCain's voice as it was broadcast on North Vietnamese radio in 1969. Senator John McCain while he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. ***Please see updates at the end of this post.***Ī right-wing Internet radio host and conspiracy theorist has released a recording purported to be a propaganda radio broadcast of U.S.
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