Luce in his book Hostages of War, were Saigon's First District police, who used false documents and signatures
to prove guilt, and used torture and drugs to extract confessions.
The case of the students prompted two congressmen to investigate conditions at Con Son Prison in July 1970.
Initially, Rod Landreth advised station chief Shack1ey not to allow the congressmen to visit, but Shack1ey saw
denial as a tacit admission of CIA responsibility. So Landreth passed the buck to Buzz Johnson at the Central
Pacification and Development council. Thinking there was nothing to hide, Johnson got the green light from
General Khiem. He then arranged for Congressmen Augustus Hawkins and William Anderson and their aide
Tom Harkins to fly to Con Son accompanied by Public Safety adviser Frank Walton. Acting as interpreter for the
delegation was Don Luce, a former director of the International Volunteer Service who had been living in
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Vietnam since 1959. Prison reform advocate Luce had gained the trust of many Vietnamese nationalists, one of
whom told him where the notorious tiger cages (tiny cells reserved for hard-core VCI under the supervision of
Nguyen Minh Chau, "the Reformer") were located at Con Son Prison.
Upon arriving at Con Son, Luce and his entourage were greeted by the prison warden, Colonel Nguyen Van Ve.
Harkins presented Ve with a list of six prisoners the congressmen wished to visit in Camp Four. While inside this
section of the prison, Luce located the door to the tiger cages hidden behind a woodpile at the edge of a
vegetable garden. Ve and Walton protested this departure from the guided tour, their exclamations prompting a
guard inside the tiger cage section to open the door, revealing its contents. The congressmen entered and saw
stone compartments five feet wide, nine feet long, and six feet high. Access to the tiger cages was gained by
climbing steps to a catwalk, then looking down between iron grates. From three to five men were shackled to the
floor in each cage. All were beaten, some mutilated. Their legs were withered, and they scuttled like crabs
across the floor, begging for food, water, and mercy. Some cried. Others told of having lime buckets, which sat
ready above each cage, emptied upon them.
Ve denied everything. The lime was for whitewashing the walls, he explained, and the prisoners were evil people
who deserved punishment because they would not salute the flag. Despite the fact that Congress funded the
GVN's Directorate of Corrections, Walton accused the congressmen of interfering in Vietnamese affairs.
Congressman Hawkins expressed the hope that American POWs were being better treated in Hanoi.
The extent of the tiger cage flap was a brief article in The New York Times that was repudiated by U.S.
