John Perkins - The New Confessions of an Economic Hitman

inside. A cave-like cell. Although it was totally empty, I had a vivid impression that it had been filled with frightened women, ones who had already been raped and tortured or were awaiting their turns. I shut off my light and looked down the corridor toward the courtyard.

A shadow bisected the halo of doorway light. “I’ve seen enough.” Judy’s voice echoed off the walls. “This place creeps me out. I’m going back to the hotel.”

“Okay. I’ll stay a bit longer. See you at the dinner tonight.”

Her shadow slipped away. I glanced back at that dark cell. A shudder ran through me. I turned toward the doorway, let out a long breath, and headed down the corridor, beating my cane against the floor.

Once in the sunlit courtyard, I changed my mind. I, too, had seen enough. I started for the entrance doorway, and then the uniformed attendant appeared. He solemnly beckoned me toward another corridor. I hesitated. He beckoned again, more insistent than before. Obediently, I followed him.

As we arrived at a dimly lit room, I was shocked to see that it was populated by two lines of people, sitting facing each other. Then I realized that these also were manikins — replicas of Vietnamese men whose legs were shackled to the floor. I walked between the two lines. Each manikin was different from its neighbors, and amazingly lifelike. Some, despite their shackled legs, were holding others in compassionate poses, obviously offering solace to despairing comrades. One was ministering to the wounded arm of another. All of them were emaciated; their protruding ribs told the story of famished men.

At one end of the two lines was a platform with two holes in the floor and buckets underneath — the toilets. I wondered how often each man got unlocked from his shackles and led, probably in chains, to these.

I felt despondent and alone. I glanced toward the doorway I’d entered. No sign of the attendant. I was, in fact, alone. I had a strong desire to get out of this place. However, I forced myself to take a last look at those two lines of manikins. They seemed alive. I could feel both their sense of desolation and their determination to survive. I lifted my cane in a salute to them and then slowly walked away.

The attendant was waiting for me in the courtyard, at the bottom of a metal staircase that led up the outside of the building to the floor above the guillotine. Although my injured knee throbbed, I followed him up the stairs. He opened a door at the top and flipped on a dull light. I went inside.

The room was a gallery of photographs, taken long after the French had departed. In the ghostly light, they showed US military men, mostly pilots. Some were standing in lines at attention; others performed chores around the prison. There was a particularly touching series of the men preparing a Thanksgiving dinner and sharing it with one another at a long table. This was followed by scenes from the end of the war, of the prisoners marching out to be greeted by US officials, to freedom. There was no attempt in any of the photos to gloss over the fact that the men in the prison were a somber and unhappy lot; yet the contrast between them and the guillotine and manikins in the rooms below delivered a clear message: the Vietcong had treated American prisoners far more humanely than the French had treated the Vietnamese. I had no idea whether this was true. I did know that US soldiers had been tortured into confessing that what they and their country had done was criminal.