The Spy Who Loved Us_ The Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An's Dangerous Game ( PDFDrive )

The Spy Who Loved Us 247
are chained to a concrete bench. Bars form the roof and above
these is another roof made of tile. Thirty cells flank each side of
this ominous shed. These are the famous tiger cages, whose discovery
in 1970 and exposure in a Life magazine photo essay
marked another turning point in America’s disillusionment with
the Vietnam war.
Mounting a staircase at the end of the building, we walk
onto the parapet that allowed guards to stare down through the
bars at the prisoners chained below. Placed along the parapet
are facsimiles of the wooden barrels that used to hold anhydrous
lime powder made from coral. When thrown on the prisoners
below, the lime would burn or blind them. The walls of the tiger
cages are made of quarried stone eighteen inches thick. The
metal doors, each weighing three hundred pounds, could have
been recycled from the Bastille. Bagne trois bis was clearly
meant to last through years of steady use. Graffiti carved on the
walls record the names of prisoners and count down the days
when they would be released for a breath of fresh air, once
every six months.
Behind the tiger cages is another camp, bagne five, built in
1928. In a massive stone structure consisting of one large room
with two windows pierced high in the looming walls, we find
graffiti dating from as recently as the 1980s, when boat people
trying to flee Vietnam were detained here. Kyle translates one
of the inscriptions: “A sad night remembering my parents.”
Built in the courtyard of camp five is a latter-day addition to
Poulo Condore, an American cellblock with concrete walls and
tin ceilings that throb in the tropical heat. Gray sheds like these
were thrown up across South Vietnam by RMK-BRJ, the Texassunbelt
consortium of America’s four largest construction companies:
Raymond International, Morrison-Knudsen, Brown &
Root, and J. A. Jones. Melded into a huge juggernaut that
thrived on no-bid contracts, RMK-BRJ built the airfields,
harbors, highways, and prisons that went into creating the