<Begin Segment 9>

TI: So I want to follow up with two times during that period. So the time after they were, they were captured, again, you're a young man just starting your career, and you see something like this happen, where someone, a friend of yours, is either killed or captured. How does that affect you in terms of thinking, is this the right kind of line of duty for you? Do you ever think about those things?

LH: Oh, yes, of course. But if anything, I think -- and I'll get into it later -- being single, it just made the job and work that I did more interesting, more exciting, more challenging. And I say, because I was single, later when I went to Vietnam, and I was there during a very horrendous period, '68 to '70 was truly the worst period of all militarily, and I was in danger physically in any number of the provinces, and even in Saigon itself, which was being shelled daily. But because I was married, had a child, I worried so much about them if something happened to me. But being single, no thoughts like that ever occurred to me. If anything, it was an added incentive to do better, to work harder, to accomplish things for the government.

TI: So the second time period, when your friend was released after twenty-one years in captivity, what do you say to a friend after twenty-one years under those circumstances?

LH: You know, a lot of it is, like in some relationships, less said the better. And until they bring up certain subjects, you just don't delve into it. Of course, you ask the obvious questions, especially when they walk by a drinking fountain and they're not even thirsty, but they stop at every drinking fountain to take a drink of water. It's obvious why, because they were limited as to how much drinking water they had. Or how much trouble they had just using the telephone, because they hadn't used one for twenty-one years. It was really... I guess vicariously, one who had worked with these people would understand that what they had gone through was so horrendous that in many ways, everything was so sensitive, you didn't want to bring up anything unless they did. And literally, we've just become closer as the years go by. But I just throw this out because people should know that all the novels and books they read, and all the movies and television programs they may view about U.S. diplomats or members of the intelligence community like the CIA, they're there to do a job for our country. And sometimes it may bring death or permanent damage to them psychologically or physically.

And then again, I know from Iran-Contra, from Watergate, from the Iraq War to Abu Ghraib, we do things that are -- and I say it's an aberration -- that we do things that are so foreign to the central core of our beliefs, that it's very difficult to accept. But yet we know from fact that a lot of it is true. I even read in the New Yorker magazine a month ago, an article about Machiavelli, how he had been, hands tied behind him, and then his arms raised above his head and lifted twenty feet high with a rope holding him, and dropped. And that was called strappato. Strappato. And after six strappatos, he wrote out a confession. And usually it broke arms, dislocated joints. And the same article states that this is now called the "Palestinian Hanging," and one prisoner in Abu Ghraib was killed in that fashion. I find that not only disgusting, but horrible and unbelievable, and I don't want to believe it, but... I'm going to have to read it from other sources as well to accept it, but I find it believable. I find that this respected writer, I've forgotten his name, would not have written such an article, or the New Yorker would have published these so-called facts unless they were true.

TI: And what, when you said that, I thought of all the foreign service officers, the U.S. diplomats, in all these different countries around the world, when as you call it, aberrations happen like this, what's the impact on the people on the ground around the country?

LH: Yes. Well, as a fact, I know that any number of foreign service officers midlevel, and some fairly high up, ambassadorial and below, resigned because they could not accept some of the policies coming out of the White House. And I would say for the average person, whether it was me or whoever, would, you know, not do these things themselves, but accept the fact that probably on rare occasion, something horrible like this may occur. And hopefully it only occurs once and never happens again. But it's like we talk about what we went through during World War II, let's get the information out, let's have the history books show it, let's continue to teach it in schools so that it won't happen again. Well, it might very well happen again. I mentioned that in my last interview with you, with the Muslims and the Arabs here in this country. But we just pray and hope that the checks and balances work between the three powers, meaning, you know, the judiciary, legislative and the executive. And the last several years, the balance hasn't been there. Now, others, like I say, some have quit, others accept it, others may ask for transfers. And you do have people like Vance, who, as Secretary of State, resigned. You have (Secretary of State) Powell, who was buffaloed, meaning given misinformation about what was occurring in Iraq, and went in front of the U.N. claiming that they did have weapons of mass destruction, and then fighting the administration, meaning the President, Vice President and the Secretary of Defense to the degree that he was shut out. He remained in office until the first term was over, and then, as you know, Condoleeza Rice then rose from National Security Advisor to Secretary of State.

TI: Yeah, because this, it's interesting listening to you, because it does give me some insight. Because here you have these very well-educated, bright people going into public service, oftentimes at a huge financial sacrifice. I mean, you don't make a lot of money going into government service, you want to do good. And when all of a sudden your country has a pattern of these, what you called aberrations, I mean, it must be very difficult, very painful to be in that situation. You have to start questioning what you're doing and while you're doing it.

LH: You're absolutely right.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.