Jeremiah Denton, US POW held in Vietnam who became senator after TV interview fame
US prisoner held in Vietnam became senator after TV interview fame
1924 - 2014
Jeremiah Denton, a former US senator who was held as a prisoner of war by North Vietnam for more than seven years and revealed his treatment by blinking the word "torture" in Morse code during a televised interview, died on Friday aged 89.
Denton was most famous for spending seven years and seven months as a prisoner of war after his plane was shot down during a bombing mission from the aircraft carrier USS Independence in 1965. Imprisoned in brutal conditions in and around Hanoi, Denton encouraged fellow American prisoners to resist their North Vietnamese captors.
American POWs were sometimes paraded in propaganda films and in 1966, the captive Denton was interviewed for such a film apparently in the hope that he would denounce the US war policy.
"Well, I don't know what is happening," he told his interviewer. "But, whatever the position of my government is, I support it fully. And whatever the position of my government is, I believe in it - yes, sir. I'm a member of that government and it is my job to support it. And I will as long as I live."
During the interview, he pretended to have light sensitivity that caused him to blink his eyes. What he was actually doing was blinking in Morse code to spell out "t-o-r-t-u-r-e."