Chapter Two: It Can’t Happen to Us …
1. “Virginia Beach Drive-In,” Drive-Ins.com, accessed March 31, 2017, http://
2. Jane Maury Denton diary, July 17–18, 1965, JJDPC.
3. Jeremiah A. Denton Jr. with Ed Brandt, When Hell Was in Session (Clover, SC: Commission Press, 1976), 20–21.
4. Jane Maury Denton diary, July 18, 1965, JJDPC.
5. Denton, When Hell Was in Session, 10.
6. Bill Tschudy, in conversation with the author, April 11, 2017.
7. Vice Admiral B. J. Semmes Jr., Chief of Naval Personnel, to Jane Denton, telegram, July 23, 1965, Jeremiah Denton CACO (Casualty Assistance Calls Officer) file, collection of Mike Denton.
8. Jane Maury Denton diary, July 23, 1965, JJDPC.
9. Janie Tschudy, in conversation with the author, March 21, 2017.
10. Denton, When Hell Was in Session, 21.
11. Jane Maury Denton diary, August 27, 1965, JJDPC.
12. Stockdale and Stockdale, In Love and War, 79–84.
13. Ibid., 83.
14. Ibid., 83–87.
15. Katherine Kennedy Clark obituary, September 16, 2005, collection of Doris Beatty.
16. Stuart I. Rochester and Frederick Kiley, Honor Bound: The History of American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia (Washington, DC: Historical Office of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1998), 99.
17. “Under Difficult Circumstances: Jeremiah Denton and Military Service During the Cold War. Particularly in Vietnam and During the Era of President Lyndon Johnson,” 19, Jeremiah Denton CACO file, collection of Mike Denton.
18. Robert G. Angevine, “Hiding in Plain Sight: The US Navy and Dispersed Operations Under EMCON, 1956–1972,” Naval War College Review 64, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 80–81.
19. Jane Maury Denton diary, July 29, 1965, JJDPC.
20. Merle Pribbenow, “Treatment of American POWs in North Vietnam,” Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, February 14, 2012, www
21. Bill Tschudy, in conversation with the author, April 11, 2017.
22. Jane Denton, written notes, n.d., Jeremiah Denton CACO file, collection of Mike Denton.
23. Rochester and Kiley, Honor Bound, appendix 3, 598–618.
24. Ibid., 5.
25. Marc Leepson, in conversation with the author, 2016–2018.
26. “Ngo Dinh Diem,” Encyclopedia of World Biography, accessed August 2, 2018, www
27. Dr. Luke Nichter, email message to author, October 30, 2017.
28. Larry J. Sabato, The Kennedy Half-Century (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013).
29. H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam (New York: Harper Perennial, 1997), 5.
30. Mark K. Updegrove, Indomitable Will: LBJ in the Presidency (New York: Skyhorse, 2012), 190.
31. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 63; Denton, When Hell Was in Session, 23.
32. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 108.
33. David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1992), 229.
34. Robert S. McNamara with Brian VanDeMark, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Vintage, 1996), 357.
35. Halberstam, Best and the Brightest, 247.
36. Janie Tschudy, in conversation with the author, March 21, 2017.
37. Richard Capen, in conversation with the author, March 30, 2017.
38. Ibid.
39. Halberstam, Best and the Brightest, 247.
40. Janie Tschudy, in conversation with the author, March 21, 2017.
41. Debby Burns Henry, in conversation with the author, May 2, 2016.
42. David J. Morris, The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015), 48–49.
43. Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History—The First Complete Account of Vietnam at War (New York: Penguin, 1984), 366–76; Stockdale and Stockdale, In Love and War, 3–36.
44. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 125.
45. Ibid., 133.
46. Stockdale and Stockdale, In Love and War, 36, 499–505.
47. Howes, Voices of the Vietnam POWs, 238.
48. Ibid., 101–14; Townley, Defiant, 2–3.
49. Townley, Defiant, 18–19.
50. Eagles, “Hotel California,” composed by Don Felder, Glenn Frey, and Don Henley, on Hotel California (Asylum Records, 1976).