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

248 THOMAS A. BASS
country called South Vietnam. The successor corporation to
RMK-BRJ was Halliburton, whose CEO, before he was elected
vice president of the United States, was Dick Cheney. Halliburton
thrived on its own no-bid contracts to build prisons at
Bagram air base in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba, and other CIA “dark” sites around the world.
Farther out of town we come to bagne seven, Phu Binh
camp, which holds the American tiger cages that were built in
1971, after the Life exposé closed down the island’s original
torture cells. We enter a narrow passageway that cuts down
the middle of a long gray barracks and start opening the iron
doors that lie on either side. We peer into cells with bars on the
ceiling, like the French tiger cages, but here there is no overhead
parapet for surveillance, just a narrow space for ventilation.
The cells have no concrete shelves for sitting, so prisoners slept
on the floor. With three hundred and eighty four cells, the
building once held two thousand people. It is so hot inside
these metal-roofed cages that within minutes we are forced
outside, gasping for air.
Heading farther out on the island, we search for bagnes
eight and nine, reported to be the latest American additions to
Con Dao’s penal regime. We pass through a small forest to discover
the remains of bagne eight. Local islanders are squatting
in a clearing and cultivating vegetables. All that remains of the
old prison are the metal guard towers that once stood at its
four corners and are now rusting into oblivion.
After entering another forest and passing the low stone
wall that marks the northeast corner of Con Dao’s extensive
cemetery, we discover bagne nine, the half-finished prison that
RMK-BRJ was building up to the last day of the war. Metal reinforcing
bars and concrete pillars rise in the jungle like a mysterious
temple, an American Angkor Wat, now overgrown with
vines and flowers. Flying through the ruins are dozens of snowy
egrets, large white birds that glide silently through the green
trees. The islanders believe that these birds are the souls of dead