 Jeremiah Denton in 1966 interview with Japanese TV |
Adm. Jeremiah Denton was introduced to the nation in an extraordinary TV interview in 1966 in which he blinked in Morse code the word “t-o-r-t-u-r-e” to alert military intelligence to his plight at the infamous Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War.
Denton, whose Navy A-6E Intruder jet was shot down over the North Vietnamese stronghold of Thanh Hoa, recounted his remarkable struggle to survive eight years of brutal captivity in a classic book that WND Books is reissuing today, including a major new section written by Denton for today’s generation.
In the new “When Hell was in Session,” the former U.S. senator and legendary American military hero tells the rest of the story, starting with the shock he experienced upon his return to the United States in 1973 to find his beloved nation had drastically changed since his capture in 1965.
Get “When Hell was in Session” – AUTOGRAPHED BY ADM. JEREMIAH DENTON – at WND’s Superstore.
“I saw the appearance of X-rated movies, adult magazines, massage parlors, the proliferation of drugs, promiscuity, pre-marital sex, and unwed mothers.”
That scenario, he writes, was coupled with “the tumultuous post-war Vietnam political events, starting with Congress forfeiting our military victory, thus betraying our victorious American and allied servicemen and women, who had won the war at great cost of blood and sacrifice.”
See the ABC News report with video of Denton’s 1966 “t-o-r-t-u-r-e” interview, as well as his stirring comments upon touching down back in America after 8 years in captivity:
Denton, who eventually attained the rank of rear admiral, didn’t just talk, however, forming a foundation to engage America’s cultural and national security ills and winning a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1980 to work with President Reagan to end the Cold War and quell the spread of communism in Latin America.
The new material in “When Hell was in Session” includes an inside account of a little-known, but highly influential and intriguing chapter in the nation’s battle against communism.
Denton writes that when he began his Senate service he was not optimistic, recognizing he was “joining a Congress that had voted to sell out the freedom-loving people of South Vietnam, a Congress that voted, in spite of our military victory, to abandon Southeast Asia to the Communists.”
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But he received an “an amazing lift” to his “morale and hopes” when President Reagan took him aside to tell him of his great admiration and respect and to invite him to call on him personally if he had anything he believed the president needed to hear.
Denton took up Reagan on his offer, hatching a plan to thwart the rise of communism in Latin American led by Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega, who was riding a wave of popularity in U.S. media and academia even as he worked to spread revolution to El Salvador.
Denton secured permission from the State Department to divert a scheduled trip to El Salvador and, instead, fly to Nicaragua to put Ortega’s boasts of freedom and democracy to the test.
Denton describes his ambitious venture as a nervy game of single-hand poker with Nicaragua’s leadership. With confidence borne from dealing with “similar people” during his eight years of communist captivity, he held his own, warning Nicaragua’s startled regime, face to face, that any further acts of aggression would be met with a “reaction from the United States under President Reagan different from what you found under President Johnson in North Vietnam.”
Later, Denton found himself in the Oval Office with Reagan, proposing a comprehensive strategy for confronting communism in Latin America that the president accepted and successfully implemented.
‘Misinformation campaign’
Denton observes that since Reagan’s time, “things have not gone as well.”
“One malady continues to worsen: the on-going influence exerted by the misinformation campaign waged by the liberal media/academic community continues to confuse the citizenry,” he writes.
In an interview with WND, Denton said one of the problems he sees today is the disdain for “ideology” by many of the nation’s most influential leaders and lawmakers.
“They are acting like ideology shouldn’t be the point for any discussion of policy,” he said, with energy in his voice belying his 85 years. “[Balderdash!] Ideology is the basis for which you evaluate any policy.”
The most basic principle that distinguishes America as a nation, he said, is the Declaration of Independence’s assertion that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with inalienable rights.
 Jeremiah Denton after his return to the U.S. in 1973 |
“Nobody is interpreting rights now in terms of the Creator,” he said. “He endowed the rights.”
President Obama, Denton contended, is usurping the rights of God, “as did Hitler and Stalin and the emperors of Rome.”
“They all had gods – but when they didn’t have good enough gods to constitute a culture, they went to hell,” Denton told WND. “And we are too, if we continue to believe that man, all of us individually, or our government, can determine what the rights are and set up everything else to match that. We’re done.”
Denton said he believes the U.S. is in its worst security position since World War II, when Hitler was sweeping across Europe.
He explained that in the aftermath of that war, the U.S. didn’t have to worry as much about its conventional weapons and forces because of its nuclear might and the doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” with the Soviet Union.
But now, he said, with a decreasing percentage of America’s GDP devoted to defense – coupled with China’s and Russia’s buildup of conventional forces – America’s security is at risk.
“If Russia were to take over first Georgia, then Ukraine – and maybe China moves into India – we couldn’t go there with a conventional force and stop that, and we wouldn’t have the guts to use nuclear, for good reason,” he said.
Denton says that while military leaders he speaks with agree with his analysis, President Obama doesn’t recognize the problem.
“We don’t really have the proper national intelligence the way we used to have,” he said. “We had people like Clare Boothe Luce and brilliant people from many different fields come in, but we don’t do that anymore. It’s done on a haphazard basis.”
To book Adm. Jeremiah Denton for interviews, call Stephen Dreikorn at (703) 994-4314 or e-mail [email protected].
