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“THE CUBA PROGRAM: TORTURING OF AMERICAN POW'S BY CASTRO AGENTS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H11450-H11451 on Nov. 3, 1999.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE CUBA PROGRAM: TORTURING OF AMERICAN POW'S BY CASTRO AGENTS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman from New York (Chairman Gilman) for convening tomorrow's hearing on the Committee on International Relations on ``The Cuba Program: The Torturing of American POWs by Castro Agents,'' and for his ongoing leadership and commitment to veterans' issues.
This issue is particularly important to me for various reasons. But, more importantly, as I read through the accounts of what our men and women in uniform have endured through this century of war, I think of my husband, Dexter Lehtinen, who served in the special forces in Vietnam and was injured in combat. He was relatively fortunate, but so many of his colleagues were not.
The Geneva Convention prohibits ``violence to life and person, in particular murders of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture'' and ``outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.''
This is exactly what took place in a prison camp in North Vietnam known as ``The Zoo,'' seen here in a declassified photo, the site where 19 of our U.S. military officers were tortured.
During the period of August 1967 to August 1968, 19 of our courageous servicemen were psychologically tortured, some brutally beaten, by interrogators assessed to be Cuban agents working under orders from Hanoi and Havana.
Described by some to be a psychological experiment, the goals of The Cuba Program, as the torture project has been labeled by our Defense Department and by our intelligence agencies, has been described in different ways as an attempt to test interrogation methods, to obtain absolute compliance and submission to captor demands, or ultimately to be used as a propaganda tool by the international Communist effort, as Mike Benge will elaborate upon during tomorrow's congressional hearing.
Some POWs were tortured and then instructed to write a series of questions and answers given to them by their interrogators. These scripts on most occasions included statements declaring that the United States was waging an illegal, immoral, and unjust war. Prisoners were tortured, again some psychologically and others physically, to ensure cooperation in appearances they were forced to make before visiting dignitaries. Refusal to comply with the captors' commands usually meant that Fidel, Chico, and Poncho, as the torturers were called by the POWs, would be called in for intense beatings of the prisoners.
The ruthless nature of the interrogators and the severity of their actions led prisoners such as Captain Raymond Vohden, Colonel Jack Bomar, and Lieutenant Carpenter to question how human beings could so brutally batter another human being.
Captain Vohden and Colonel Bomar will offer compelling and detailed testimony to us tomorrow, describing the heinous acts committed against them by Cuban agents at The Zoo, acts which are in direct violation of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War.
Survivors of The Cuba Program have been eager to identify and trace the Cuban agents who systematically interrogated them and tortured their fellow Americans. Yet, despite their efforts, a successful resolution of this matter has not been achieved. We hope that tomorrow's hearing will be the first of many steps aimed at changing that outcome.
The first is to get leads that could take us closer to an identification of the Cuban torturers.
Our second goal is to provide the basis for an ensuing interagency investigation of the new evidence that has been uncovered, including a search for pertinent data and sources previously unavailable under the Cold War parameters.
We want our State Department, the CIA, the FBI, INS, and the Defense Intelligence Agency to coordinate a comprehensive approach to this case.
Lastly, this hearing will begin to establish the foundation for future action against the torturers. On a broader scale, this investigation will serve to highlight the brutal nature of the Castro regime and the historic and ongoing threat that it poses to the American people.
Ultimately, our hope is that tomorrow's hearing will serve to honor those POWs, and I will show my colleagues a poster that has their picture, 9 of the 19 who were involved in The Cuba Program. We hope that tomorrow's hearing will serve to honor these POWs, who were willing to give life and limb so that we may all be free. We will honor them by finding out the truth about Castro's participation in Vietnam known as The Cuba Program.
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