Responses to “Tweets on 2010-02-28”

1. Dell Hancock says:

   March 5, 2010 at 7:05 pm

   I am your age, Jane. I don’t know what the circumstances were that fateful day in Viet Nam but could never understand your actions. As far as I know you never explained. You were so talented, so attractive, so fortunate. What was behind a betrayal of this magnitude? Was it your painful childhood, your unhappy marriages?

   I recently received an email, to be sent to my mailing list, about you being named by Barbara Walters as one of the outstanding American women of the past 100 years. Do you feel you should receive this award?

   I have not forwarded this email because I would like an honest answer from you about that time so long ago, but still fresh in many American minds. I always choose to be fair.

   Thanking you in advance for your truth.

   Dell Hancock

   Reply
   • Jane says:

     March 6, 2010 at 3:14 pm

     Dear Dell, the Barbara Walters award thing was maybe twenty or twenty-five years ago. Those who would paint me as a traitor should update the context of their complaints. But, more importantly, they should pay attention to the thnigs that have shown their accusations to be falsehoods. None of what is said about my interactions with POWs are true. The once- president of the largest MIA/POW organization, Mike McGrath, said so himself—no one was tortured or killed on my account, No POW gave me “little slips of paper” with their social security numbers on them. I never called POWs “baby killers,” I never spat on them. I had spent the previous 2 1/2 years working on behalf of U/S/ servicemen in all branches of the military including the Air Force, listening to their stories. I probably knew more about their experiences in the military and in Vietnam than most civilians. I helped create the GI Office in Washington DC. I made “Coming Home,” which was voted (along with “Green Berets”) veterans favorite film because it depicted the reality they faced when they returned home. I think it’s important to understand that almost 300 Americans (including journalists, poets, the U.S. Attorney General and Vietnam vets themselves) had gone to North Vietnam in an effort to end the war. By the time I went, there were only 24,000 American soldiers in South Vietnam. The war there was essentially over. When I came back to my country and for almost two years, there was hardly a mention of my trip in the media Nothing about my being a traitor. No “Hanoi Jane” myth. It wasn’t until the Reagan administration that right-wing politicians created that myth and raised this black propaganda to an art form. It was all a skillful, revisionist ploy to hurt me and thereby to make the anti war movement look bad. I have said all this publically on many occasions. I have written about it extensively in my memoirs, “My Life So Far.” The one thing I did that is true was to sit on an anti aircraft gun–it was inoperative and the circumstances were far different than is suggested by the far right. It happened on the last day of what was a 2-week emotional roller coaster and I wasn’t thinking what I was doing. Who I am, why I was there, my concern for US soldiers is belied by that image and I will regret it till the day I die. I write about this and what I feel about it in my memoirs. I wish you would go to a book store or library and take a look at the chapters on my trip to Vietnam. I wish those who circulate these letters filled with lies bothered to check their facts. It’s not hard to do. The fact is that they DO NOT CARE ABOUT WHAT IS TRUE OR FALSE. I have apologized many times about sitting on that gun seat– privately to vets and publicly (including during a Barbara Walters interview and on “Sixty-Minutes.”) The people who continue to propagate the falsehoods do not want to let go of their hatred. Who would they be without their misplaced hatred. I very much appreciate the fact that you read one of their letters and bothered to ask me for my side. I cannot take the time to write everything in detail but, again, take a look at my book. There is another one worth reading, “Jane Fonda’s War”, by Mary Hershberger, that also goes into great detail about what really happened and how the government sought to destroy me. peace, Jane

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