Jeremiah Denton: The POW Who Blinked TORTURE and Became a Senator

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Jeremiah Denton was born in Mobile, Alabama, in 1924 and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946 in the same accelerated class as Jimmy Carter. Over a 34 year Navy career he was a test pilot, flight instructor and A-6 squadron commander, and in 1957 he developed the Haystack concept of hiding aircraft carriers among commercial shipping to confuse enemy radar. In July 1965, leading a bombing mission over North Vietnam, a bomb exploded as it left his A-6A Intruder, and he and navigator Bill Tschudy ejected and were captured. He spent nearly eight years as a prisoner of war, four in solitary confinement, and was beaten along with more than 50 other Americans in the Hanoi March of July 1966.

In a 1966 televised interview with a Japanese correspondent he voiced support for his government while blinking T-O-R-T-U-R-E in Morse code, confirming abuse to naval intelligence. In 1967 he was sent with ten other resisters, including James Stockdale, to the prison the Americans called Alcatraz, with cells three feet by nine and frequent leg irons. Promoted to captain in captivity, he was the first prisoner off the plane in Operation Homecoming in February 1973 and closed his remarks with "God bless America." He retired as a rear admiral in 1977, won Alabama's U.S. Senate seat in 1980, and narrowly lost reelection in 1986.

• He wrote When Hell Was in Session and consulted for the Christian Broadcasting Network.
• He was the first retired Navy admiral elected to the Senate and Alabama's first popularly elected Republican senator since Reconstruction.
• His 1981 Adolescent Family Life Act, nicknamed the Chastity Bill, funded $30 million in programs promoting teen abstinence.
• As chairman of the Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism he investigated alleged KGB infiltration of left wing groups, drawing comparisons to the Red Scare.
• He died in 2014 at 89, was buried at Arlington, and has an Alabama airport and the future destroyer USS Jeremiah Denton named for him.