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Hello everyone and welcome back to Spy Brewery.I'm Adam Brooks.And today we are joined by Barry Wirth, who is the author of Prisoner of Lies, Jack Downey's Cold War, America's Longest Held POW.
Barry is a writer and journalist based in Massachusetts in the United States.
His writing has covered topics from the pharmaceutical industry, to the human body, to laws governing pornography, to the Golden Age, and now to one of the most fascinating stories of Cold War espionage, the story of John T. Downey, or Jack Downey,
Jack Downey was a CIA officer who was captured in China in the early 1950s and who spent 20 years in a Chinese prison.Harry Wirth, welcome to SpyBury.Thanks for joining us today.Thanks for having me on.
Now, let's just start by setting the scene a little bit.In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party takes power in China and announces the formation of the People's Republic of China. Almost immediately, Chairman Mao throws China into chaos.
His revolution really begins, and almost immediately, he decides to go to war in Korea.So you have Chinese troops on the Korean Peninsula fighting Americans and other forces under the flag of the United Nations.
Tell us a little bit, to start with, about that historical moment.How did Americans see it, and what was at stake for Americans?
1949 was a pivotal year because it was also the year that the Russians exploded their first atom bomb.This threw many Americans back on their heels.Not too many years after World War II, suddenly there were these two colossal developments.
And I guess, you know, that essentially was where the Cold War alignment rigidified. So the United States had a brand new spy service, the CIA.Previous to then, there had never been a permanent spy service.
There had been, of course, the OSS during World War II.And there was great pressure to respond to these two developments.And primarily what this new spy service decided to do was to adopt
What had been MI6's posture during the waning days of the English Empire, which was to seed secret wars around the world against these new communist regimes.The first attempt was in Albania and it was catastrophic.The US and Britain together
recruited Albanian expats who were determined to go back into their country and fight the communist regime of Enver Hoxha.
It was an ill-conceived plan from the get-go, made worse by the fact that it was betrayed by Kim Philby, who was then in Washington and knew everything about all of this and was reporting back to the Kremlin.
And now we see this young CIA kind of adopt that same covert operations mindset against the new communist regime in China as well.
Yes, exactly.So this was referred to inside the agency as a kind of clinical experiment.See if we can do this.And almost all of the so-called pixies who were dropped into Albania were intercepted almost before they hit the ground.
They were punished severely, if not executed.What's worse is that up to 40 of their relatives were executed, to make them examples to others.But anyhow, As Philby said, it's probably a good thing that their squib turned to be so damn.
But the lesson was not learned in Washington.
I mean, that's the extraordinary thing.If it went so appallingly badly in Albania, why did they decide to do the same thing against?
Well, what they said to Philby is, we'll get it right the next time.We'll get it right the next time.And I don't know exactly how many of these efforts were made, but the big buildup
in 1951 and 1952 was to try to do something similar in China, to recruit expats, former military people, former Kuomintang officials, who would be willing to go back into China and try to hook up with dissidents on the ground and oppose Mao's government.
Now, it wasn't quite wasn't quite that binary because this was referred to as the third force.These were people who were opposed to the Chinese communists on the mainland, but also it chose to oppose to the nationalists on Taiwan.
So it's kind of a third way.In any case, the plan was to airdrop in teams of these operatives, Chinese nationals, and then support them from behind.In the summer of 1952, two teams were dropped into Manchuria.The first one never heard from again.
The second one after a period of time started radioing back and saying, we've established a base.We've made contact with a former Kuomintang general.He's eager to work with us.This was music, of course, to the ears of the people back at the CIA.
But you need to send in a courier.We need more supplies and you need to send in a courier.And that's where Jack Downey comes in.
And just before we get to Jack, I mean, the nature of this operation, when I've sort of read around this a little bit and the way that you describe it in Prisoners of lies.Frankly, I can't.My response is total disbelief.
You're sending in small groups of Chinese nationals who are supposed to be fomenting an uprising that will overthrow the Chinese Communist Party.The Chinese Communist Party has been working as an underground force since 1921.
They have conquered all of China.You know, they fought against the Japanese.They've fought against the nationalists.Covert operations, espionage, and the clandestine is in their blood.You know, they know interrogation.
They've got a nationwide intelligence apparatus that goes right down to the grassroots.And yet CIA A new spy service sitting in Washington thinks that they can affect events in China by dropping in groups of four people with a radio?
I mean, what on earth is going on here?
Well, part of it was hubris.We're America, we just won World War II, we can do anything.Part of it was great pressure to do something, anything.And part of it was, I believe, desperation.
There really wasn't... The Chinese, the Communist Chinese had fully consolidated control over mainland politics and society.There were no dissidents to Bill Gates movement where they'd left.
They'd gone to Taiwan or they were dead or they're in prison.Exactly.So, you know, it was preposterous as you say, but nonetheless, they had all these young
men who had not grown up in the shadow of World War II and had not been able to fight and were eager to get in the fight against international communism and wanted to prove their bravery.
So there was no shortage of people signing up to try to accomplish this, even as you say, it was outlandish to consider.In any case, in November of 1952, A decision was made to do what was called an air snatch.
They were going to get this courier who had been dropped in and they were going to pick them up by plane.Now they weren't going to land the plane.They were going to do a fly over and a snatch pickup, as it was called.
Fly over low and slow, treetop level, almost at stall speed, put a hook out the back of the plane and hook the agent back into the plane.
Which, again, when I read it, just makes my jaw drop.I mean, the guy is suspended in a harness on a pole on the ground at night in communist China, and an American C-47 is going to fly over and dangle a hook behind it.
and pick this guy up and then they're going to winch him into the airplane.Exactly.And had this ever been done before, had it ever succeeded?
Not in the field.They had trained to do this.Downey and Dick Fecteau, who was another young CIA officer, had trained to do this.The pilots, they had its own airline, CAT, C-A-T, and the pilots were, they were familiar with the Chinese radar networks.
They were familiar with the nationalist radar networks.They thought they could weave their way in there.They had a lot of confidence that they could actually pull this off.They practiced for a couple of days beforehand.
And then at the very last moment, two civilians who had been hired to operate the winch and hook apparatus in the back of the airplane decided not to go.They realized how perilous it was.And Downey and Fecta were ordered onto the plane.
And they were, as Downey said, I wanted to go.This was what I'd signed up for.This was
So let's just take a little, little pause here.We've got the scene.The plane is about to head into communist China and on board in order to snatch this agent off the ground and, and, and take him out of China.And on board this plane is Jack Downey.
Tell us a little bit about Jack Downey.Who was he?Where'd he come from?
Jack was then 22 years old, a recent Yale graduate with up to a hundred of his classmates.He had enlisted in the CIA during the Korean War.Even though the CIA was five years old, it had inherited the aura of the OSS.
These were going to be the bravest, smartest, most accomplished political operatives skilled in espionage and assassination.They were going to go behind enemy lines taking risks that nobody else would take.
And as I said, they jumped at the opportunity, many of them.So Jack himself was a scholarship student at Yale.His father had died when he was eight.He was the oldest of three kids.His mother was a school teacher.
He was a very smart, engaging, very good athlete, husky, strong, daring.In every cohort that Jack was in, he was the acknowledged leader.Everybody looked up to him.
Not because he was commanding so much as that he had this kind of quiet presence, self-deprecating humor. but model toughness, modeled all of the things that the people around him aspired to.So he was the captain of wrestling.
He was actually held back when, when they all got sent over to Korea, most of them got sent into action and Jack was held back because he had the highest ratings in in terms of leadership.
Jack was somebody who was generally acknowledged to be destined for greater things.
And he was frustrated by that.He wanted to get into the action, but he was held back to do training.
He was in a rear guard drone for most of the previous year, which I think explains how eager he was to actually go on this mission.
So how old is he at this point?So he's 22 years old.Yes.Yale graduate who's grown up in the United States. has never been near a war.Doesn't speak a word of Chinese.Doesn't speak a word of Chinese.
We're going to take a guess and say he probably has a very limited understanding of what's happening inside China because everybody at that point has a very limited understanding.
There were nobody outside of China.Nobody really did.
Yeah.So this guy suddenly finds himself ordered to get on the plane and to operate the winch on this clandestine mission flying into darkened Manchuria over northeast China in order to snatch an agent off the ground.
I mean, just an extraordinary situation for a 22-year-old American to be in.What happens next?
So even before the flight, there was some question about whether the ground the team on the ground had been turned.This was all conducted by Morse code.And the technique, the style of the Morse code signaling was referred to as a fist.
It was just a signature.And in this operation had recognized that at one point there had been a change in the fist.And another young CI operative thought it was probably 90% certain that the Chinese had
caught these men as soon as they hit the ground and that they had whatever threatened them, told them precisely what to report back to Atsugi where the operation was headquartered, and they did.
This was an ambush, as Jack said, just like in the movies.
Also, I mean, actually, I mean, again, just like happened repeatedly in France with SOE and OSS, right, where radio fists were recognized as having changed and They had plenty of experience with radio games and the turning of ages.
They were headstrong.They were hubristic.The winter was coming.They thought they're going to blow the whole operation if they don't do this now.So they just sent out the plane and assumed the best.
And as the plane came, on the first pass, they dropped the supply bundle that included the, um, the pickup apparatus.And then as they were coming in, three fires marked the way.Downey wasn't operating the winch.
Downey had a long wooden pole and he was hanging out the cargo bay door.And when the, when the hook, hook the, the courier, he was supposed to lock it into place.
If you're a certain age, you'll remember they used to have these long poles with self-closing hooks in school classrooms to get the windows.That's exactly what he was using.So he's out the door,
They're coming in, and then white tarps are removed, and underneath them, Red Army troops have American-made machine guns.They fire into the cockpit.They immediately kill the pilot and the co-pilot.
So they fire from the ground.
There are guns, there are anti-aircraft guns waiting for the... They're flying at maybe 60 feet.They're very, very low. And the plane starts to burst into flames.And incredibly, they're cutting through the treetops.
And as Downey said, amazingly, the plane did not cartwheel at Pancake.It hit the ground flat.He and Fetto stumble out of the back, trying to get their bearings.They're tearing off their parachutes.And they're immediately surrounded by Chinese troops.
And they're yelling at them, staccato.And then one of them is saying, you are Jack. you're in China, you are Jack.So they even knew his name.They knew his name because he had made an effort to befriend the Chinese agents.They knew a lot about him.
They knew he liked soy sauce.They knew he had bought a Victrola and American music and introduced it to his Chinese agents in an effort to befriend them.So they knew exactly what they were getting.
And then, and then message was sent back initially that the, that the mission had been successful and then nothing, the plane vanished.There was no further communication.
So the guys on the ground, the turned agents on the ground or, or their handlers sent a fake radio message back to base saying, it's all fine.
It's all fine.And, but then nothing.
Cause then the plane doesn't turn up the next morning.
Right.So what's happened to it?The plane is a burning wreck.Downey and Fecteau incredibly are unharmed. and they're marched off to first to a farmhouse and then to a makeshift prison in Mukden.
So back at the CIA, they immediately develop a cover story. a plane was missing, but it was a civilian plane with civilians on board, disappeared over the Sea of Japan.An intensive sea and air search was marshaled several days.
Not only did it make it look like they were searching for a real plane, but it also gave them some time.But the critical moment here was in order to preserve cover, the CIA made up a story.
And the story was that a civilian aircraft with two civilians on board, civilian employees of the army on board,
had disappeared over the Sea of Japan, and then everything went dark for... And that's, I mean, your title of the book is Prisoner of Lies, and that is sort of the first of the big ones, right?
I mean, this whole story is about the way that these lies ended up affecting the course of events for the next two decades, right?Not just for Downey-Infecto, but at sort of high political level.So this is the first sort of, yeah, foundational lie.
Right, that's right.Okay, so carry on.What happens next?
So now you have the action going on, and really in three places, with Downey-Infecto, who are shackled and interrogated harshly, and after a couple of weeks finally admit that they are
CIA, after denying it and saying that they were confused, they had been on a leafleting flight, had flown off course, they didn't know where they were, they finally acknowledged that they were CIA officers.
So again, just a sorry time, I know I'm sounding a bit like a broken record, but these guys went into denied territory without any counter-interrogation training, without any cover story, without any fake identity.
They had fake names.He was John Donovan, and in a very flimsy story with no preparation for what, and it was told, if you get captured, you're on your own.Don't expect anybody to come and help you.So anyhow, but then there's the CIA and Washington.
How do they respond to this?And then there's Stanley and Fecto's families who had been told actually on letterhead stationary by the director of the CIA that they were missing and presumed dead.
And this was the first inkling that the families had that they were in the Central Intelligence Agency.They thought that they were as everyone else was.
For how long is it?It's like two years the family thinks they're dead.
Yes, for two years.So this is a really intriguing part.Downey did whatever he could to delay giving a full confession.He didn't know a lot, but he knew for nine months he had been in Atsugi and he knew the details of this entire secret war.
But after nine months, they started to make it very clear to him if he didn't come completely clean, his future, as they said, would be dark.
And he finally decided to give a full formal confession, but he asked if he could do it in writing rather than to give it verbally.And they said yes.And Downey was a very accomplished writer.He had taken many writing courses at Yale.
I think he's a wonderful writer, actually, elegant writer.But he took this as a challenge and he wrote for nine months, producing a 3,000 page document, which was his full confession.
He decided he was going to bury them in extraneous detail, that everything he knew would be in there, but it would be covered up with so much more that it would take them a long time to sift through it.
So that's one of the reasons it took two years to finally try it.Right.
Let me just ask a question here.We talked about his treatment after he was captured and a lot of it was clearly tough.It leans towards the coercive But I wonder if by the standards of the time in communist China, he wasn't actually treated T. Lelian.
They were giving him Chinese.
I knew they had a very valuable asset.He says he was never beaten.They never tried to brainwash him.He also concluded after a time that that he couldn't be brainwashed, as he said.
and you are you are you are who you are and you're well it was but they did they did do kind of those those hours and hours and hours have been communist indoctrination stuff they call it a thought word right yes but so they did plenty of that not like we recall from the Manchurian candidate where they turned into zombies this is right so right so um but we're getting a little ahead of ourselves
And he was in shackles for 11 months.This was not like punishment.And he was in isolation.He didn't know that FECTO was around.And it was very tough.So it's very tough indeed, of course.
But this is a time in communist China when millions are being shot in the countryside.
Yes, but he wasn't being brutalized.And as I say, the Chinese, I think they fully expected at some point that he would be of great value to them.So they were keeping both of them alive.
So finally, after two years, now we're into the end of 1954 and the build-up to the first Kimoi and Matsu confrontation, the first Formosa Strait confrontation, the Chinese tried him, convicted him, and sentenced him to life.
A couple of the agents were executed.A couple more were sentenced to life.Fekto was sentenced to 20 years.He didn't know nearly as much as Downey did.And as a propaganda blow, the Chinese announced this to the world.
And again, the government denied any knowledge of this.Now, the chief spokesperson for the government at that point was John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State, whose younger brother, Alan Dulles, was the head of the CIA.Close connections there.
And Dulles was indignant, sanctimonious, said, we don't know how the Chinese came into possession of these men.They disappeared over the Sea of Japan.They're not CIA.They were civilian employees of the armies. This is an outrage.
So they immediately classified them as wrongfully detained.
And the lie continues, right?Here's the second big lie.
Yeah, this is the second critical moment.And this is the one that set the stage for the next 18 years, because it became government policy that these were unlawfully detained civilians.
Dag Hammarskjöld, the Secretary General of the UN, was invited by the US to go to China to try to obtain their release.He did.The Chinese said, You know, these men are criminals.They were trying to foment a revolution against our government.
They had a legitimate trial.We can't pretend that none of that is true.And they were, of course, they were angry and perplexed by the fact that right and wrong and truth and falsity had been completely
turned on their heads by the United States government.So that's where things stood.There were a couple of years of negotiation, active negotiation, but as long as they were unacknowledged spies, there was no opportunity to swap for them.
Chao and I invited the families to come visit.He actually made at least one and possibly more
offers that if American journalists who were then banned from visiting mainland China were allowed to visit, they might release all of the American prisoners, including Downey and Fechtel.
There were opportunities to get them back, but Dulles... Joe Enlai, the prime minister of China, just wanted an acknowledgment that they were indeed CIA operatives, right?And then he would have been happy to release them.
And the United States continued to deny.The U.S.
Yeah, it's true.And that, as I said, it became our policy, State Department policy.So through the Kennedy administration and through the Nixon administration.
So this became State Department policy through the Eisenhower years, the Kennedy years, the Johnson years.And it was only until Kissinger and Nixon
started to plot their approach to the PRC that the issue of Downey Infecto was again raised because the Chinese insisted that the United States acknowledge the truth of what had happened.
One of the things I really like about the book is the way that you relate the granular story of Downey's imprisonment and his day-to-day life in prison and his conditions and his state of mind and the way that he kind of
fought through this extraordinary episode with incredible endurance and psychological resilience.But you relate it up into the larger areas of policymaking and of the domestic story in the United States at the time.
So your book is actually a pretty good primer on those presidencies, on Watergate, and on the run-up to the normalization of relations between the United States and China, which was a world historic event.
So, the book is great at pulling between the general and the particular and zooming in and then pulling out, and I really enjoyed that side of it.I learned a lot. Well, thank you.
We come up to the normalization of relations towards the late 60s and early 1970s.Just tell us a little bit about how Downey's life has played out during those two decades.
So, of course, he's isolated.They're censoring the material that he receives.After his family, they were stunned and shocked.After they discovered he was alive, they were able to send him books and eventually magazines.
He, of course, knew none of this.It took him another 18 months after the Korean War was over to find out that the war had ended.
So he's in, as he said, the Chinese character for, as he noticed in the prison, the Chinese character for prison was a man in a box.He was a man in a box while all these titanic events were unfolding all around him.
And what's really remarkable when you start to probe the history of this is how and when and to what effect his case enters into the overall, the general history of that area, and particularly U.S.-Sino relations.
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In 1966, this 15th class reunion, I remember many of these guys went into the CIA.
Many, many of them almost immediately came right out when they found out that the CIA could not assure them that after they were done with their clandestine service, they might be drafted.
They were very, very close class and Downey was their hidden hero.He was always the man who wasn't there.In 1966, they anointed one member, Jerry Cohen, who was a Harvard Law professor,
fluent in Mandarin, probably the leading expert, the American expert on the Chinese legal system with getting Downey out.This is 15 years after he's been, and as he said, it was going to be a very tough case.First, he knew the truth.
He had been at one of these recruiting meetings.So he knew from the get-go that Downey was a spy and that what the Chinese were saying was correct.
But he said, you know, the only opportunity for getting him out was that we had to move closer to China.
And of course, that wasn't happening until after the 1968 presidential election, when Richard Nixon was elected and chose Henry Kissinger as first as his national security advisor, and then as his secretary of state.
Cohen, who was on the Harvard faculty with Kissinger, started lobbying Kissinger very hard, saying, wherever you resolve this issue, which is one of the thorniest issues we have with the Chinese,
we're going to have to acknowledge the truth and apologize.They've made it very clear this is what they need to be able to save face.They can't just let somebody go who they have given a fair trial to.It would compromise their sovereignty.
So from the moment he got to the White House, Kissinger started pushing Nixon on this.And when Nixon started to make moves towards China, this became the linchpin of many of those discussions. as it was a surprise to me.
But in fact, when Kissinger made his first visit to China, he raised it and he said, listen, we're ready now to reconsider.We'll look at this again.We know that the Chinese have been telling the truth.He told this to Zhou Enlai.
And then when Nixon went, the famous China trip, if you remember, the culmination of that was a grand banquet at the very end.And Nixon toasted and said, this is the week to change the world.He had just been in a meeting with Zhou Enlai.
half hour earlier where he said, listen, we have finally examined this case fully.We agree with you.We've reconsidered our position.We're ready to acknowledge that Downey was a spy.
And Xiao Enlai said, well, we have our own internal judicial practices.We don't know if we can release him right away, but we can we'll start to look at that.And they commuted the sentence down for another five years.
And then it was three months later when Downey's mother had a very serious stroke that at the highest levels discussions were held and it was decided to let him come home.So he came home in 1973.
And you write very interestingly and rather movingly in the book about how he, you know, the world changed big time 20 years away between the 1950s and the early 70s.America looked like a very different place.
And you write very movingly in the book about the way that he reintegrated himself into American life and very successfully and became a lawyer and a judge.When you sort of stand back and look at the story as a whole,
What do you... Well, first of all, let me ask you this.When you were writing the book, what were the surprises that you found?When you write nonfiction, things always surprise you, right?So what were the surprises that you found?
I only knew the bare bones of this when I got started, and I got no help from the CIA.None.After four years of intensive requests, I got one document from them, which I had already found on the State Department website.
They stonewalled me and closed me out.That's bizarre.
Why?Why do you think?Well, it's interesting.
As you said, you know, as you said up top, they had looked at this themselves.They not only was there the Dumevich article in the Intelligence Journal, but they made a video, which is a kind of a docudrama about it.
So they have for their own reasons begun to celebrate this case, which I can talk a little bit about later.But for whatever reason, I think their default position is deny that's gonna cover the
The sine qua non of American intelligence is that you never- But that's not, but it's not, it doesn't seem to be an attitude that stretches across the US intelligence community in as much as I hear or get it again that people who go to the CIA historians have a terrible time getting any information out of them.
But if you go to National Security Agency, they're actually much more helpful and much more accessible.That seems to be- I didn't know that.
I think it's particularly CIA.
I don't really know why.Yeah.
So they do anything to preserve cover.And, you know, I didn't have any particular access inside the agency, so I got nowhere with them.But you were asking about surprises.
One of the things that surprised me, it didn't surprise me, it confirmed something that I had already suspected about Richard Nixon, which is that he was just a genius at serving himself.
In the sense that he knew, Kissinger knew, that the Chinese wanted acknowledgment and B, an apology. So the way that the acknowledgement was rolled out was surprising, very surprising.
So at the end of the Vietnam War, now we're, you know, we're another war removed from the Korean War.At the end of the Vietnam War, Nixon held his first press conference in four months. Watergate had already happened.The investigations were underway.
Two questions were about Watergate.He was asked whether he was going to assert executive privilege.
Almost all of the questions were about the returning POWs from Hanoi, including, of course, John McCain and some of the others whose names we may remember.And the very last question was a plant.
It was literally at the end of a 45-minute press conference, at the point where people probably had stopped taking notes, Clark Mollenhoff, who had worked in the White House and was now a reporter outside, raised his hand and said, well, what about Downey?
We're bringing home the POWs from Hanoi.Downey's been in Chinese prison for 20-plus years.Nixon said, Downey is a different case, as you know.Downey involves a CIA agent.And that was it. There was no formal announcement.There was nothing else.
But this was the single, without an apology, the single indication that the United States had reconsidered and was now willing to address the truth about this.So that communicated to the Chinese that our policy of 20-plus years had changed.
But he did it in such a deft way that he just almost kind of flicked it off.And it had been such a source of contention and such a source, it had stuck in the craw of the Chinese for such a long time.
And so it was the skill with which he handled this kind of reminded me of his brilliance.Now, he was a low figure, don't get me wrong.
And I don't want to exalt him for this, but man, that man had a certain kind of political talent that we don't see anymore.
I mean, you know, arguably, tell it for statesmanship too, if we consider the normalization of US-China relations and the way, the extraordinary intricate way that that story played out with secret talks in Warsaw and Paris, and then these tiny little public indicators of willingness to maybe just a word or a photograph, you know, thinking, you know, Edgar Snow standing on top of Tiananmen Gate with Mao, supposed to be a signal
that yes, Mao is open to a warming of U.S.-China relations.These weird little indicators that drop out into that.
It was a dance.It was a very, very elaborate dance.And Nixon and Kissinger handled it very skillfully, just say.
When you look at the story as a whole, and you look back at everything that you sort of learned about the conduct of the CIA during this time, what do you take away from that?
Well, I don't cover the CIA.
I came to this story because I was interested in Downey and how he endured given these particular circumstances, which is that the last 15 years he was in prison, it had to do much more with America's obstinacy than it had to do with anything the Chinese were doing.
So that made him a prisoner of lies.And I wondered about how he would react to that.And also I wondered how he would react after being in prison during these very pivotal, tumultuous years in our history.
And what I discovered was because he didn't experience them, he was not in any way as disillusioned as so many others of his generation.You know, they all came roaring out of World War II thinking, we're going to take on the world.
You know, we've shown were the best.And we discovered during the fifties and sixties that we were good, but we were, you know, that we had a lot of problems as well.Downey didn't experience any of that.
He didn't, where Vietnam was so visceral for people in our country.He had to read about Vietnam when he got back.So he was, he was undisillusioned in some ways.He was just more the young, aspiring Yale grad, that he had been in 1951 only deeper.
And he was also, remarkably, to use again another of his words, bitter.
And that was a surprise, because you would imagine, and he did eventually find out that it was Foster Dulles and not the Chinese who was mostly accountable for keeping him there as long as he was.He got angry for a time.
He thought, God, I could have been out 15 years earlier.But it didn't stop him.It didn't daunt him.It didn't make him any less patriotic or more angry about his fate, he just kept going.And as he said, maybe I'm just a clod.
It's a little surprising to hear somebody with that much talent and that much ability describe himself that way, but maybe the thing that really got him through the most was that he was just game.
Going back to how did he endure all those years, about four and a half years, he said, I just said to myself, enough of this crap, pull yourself together. And he made himself, as he said, the busiest man in Beijing.
In his little cell, he scheduled every day down to the last minute with voluminous reading and intensive calisthenics and exercise.He ran 10 miles a day in place.
And when they let him out into a courtyard in tight circles, meticulous cell cleaning, he got himself through.He just, he marshaled all his inner strength and he got himself through. very admirable.You know, I've I've thought about this a lot.
How could I have endured this?He believed that anybody could have.I don't think so.
Yeah.I mean, I wonder when I when I've sort of spoken to people who have been through kind of very extreme experiences like that.
I'm struck by his comment, maybe I'm just a clod, because I feel like I've been struck in the past by the idea that some of these guys who show incredible self-discipline and extraordinary resilience are people without very active imaginations.
Does that resonate for you at all? I don't know.
I never thought of that before without active imaginations.
They're not people who allow their imagination to take off.They are extremely disciplined about what's in front of them and they just don't let themselves think very hard about it.
He was a wrestler in college.He was a very tough sport.He had to lose 15 pounds every week just to be able to make weight. and wrestle in his class.As I said, his father died when he was young.He was religious.
He finally, you know, he found some strength in stoicism.He really, really disciplined himself.I discovered some prep school short stories that he had written, and they were extremely imaginative.
I mean, well, you know, had life turned out differently for Jack Downey, he could have been a great novelist, seriously. So I'm not sure that he just he put it in its place.
And then and then when he when he came back and had to rediscover it, that was hard.And he went into law, which is also another way of.
looking at things in a rigid framework.Mason Yale was very important to him.Yale pops up throughout the book.What is it about Yale?What is it about Yale and its relationship with power and a particular vision of masculinity and authority?
Well, I don't know what it's about now.I can tell you a little bit about what it was about in 1951 when he and his cohort graduated.
So for already nearly 300 years, Yale had a mission to educate, make men of, and Christianize America's future leaders.That's how it saw itself. building leaders here, these are the elements that we need to address.
And secrecy has a role at Yale, right?
Yes, it does, because they have these secret societies.The best known, of course, is Skull and Bones.And Jack was not in one of the secret societies.He was in a so-called semi-secret society, a more literary secret society.But yes, they have these
There's a whole code there that, for generations, had been shared by many of the men who went on to lead this country in government and business and art and politics.So it's a self-selected group.
But in this particular case, there were not only, I don't know what percentage of the class came from prep schools, but I'm sure it was 80% or more, 99% white. the expression, pale male in Yale.So it was very homogeneous.
But I think what's most important to recognize about Downey and his cohort is that these young men had grown up in the shadow of World War II.They were in puberty when their older brothers and cousins and even their fathers were going off to
defeat world fascism.We remember that generation now as the greatest generation, thanks to Tom Brokaw and others.
But these were boys, young men who saw this was happening and wanted to go out and prove themselves and show that they could do something just as brave and just as honorable.
So they had the prep school orientation, but they also had this great desire to serve.
And as one of them said to me, we were the last generation of American men who were intensely patriotic and also sexually deprived, because this was before the pill. girlfriends in college, but it was all very chaste.
So there was a peculiar intensity and drivenness about this particular group that I think also helped him get through.He talks a lot in his memoir about making a strong showing or making a brave showing.That's how they were educated.
You know, we're giving you first-rate education here, and then you're going to have to go out and show that you deserved it.
to prove to their fathers that they were as good as their fathers.
Well, and that's interesting that you say that because the fathers were very important to this group.
They all had daddies who were financing them or they were pushing against or they wanted to prove themselves to, but Jack's father had died when he was eight.So he was kind of self-motivated in a way that some of the others were not.
The book is Prisoner of Lies, Jack Downey's Cold War.The author is Barry Wirth.Barry, thanks so much.It was a wonderful discussion and it's a fabulous book and thank you so much for joining us on Swybrie today.Thanks so much.
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