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Wole Soyinka
Nobel Prize for Literature
Wole Soyinka: Those elections were very violent and the people resisted. This was the Western Region at the time. I was then teaching at the University of Ibadan. Violent, and the incumbent government used its power of incumbency in the region, in alliance with the power of the center. It was a federal structure. In spite of that, they could not rig the election successfully. And so what they did was just start altering the results. And even that proved exceedingly difficult for them. Finally the premier of the region decided to just forget the whole thing and announce his victory on radio. And I happened, you know, by very fortunate coincidence, I learned that this was going to become a fait accompli. And since he had the support of the federal government, something drastic had to be done. And so with some assistance, some of my usual collaborators, I managed to stop the broadcast, substitute my -- I pre-recorded my own statement. So I went to the studio and I took the premier's tape off and substituted my own and went away. And so I was tried -- very, very nasty charge. I was charged with armed robbery, because apparently this event was supposed to have taken place with the aid of a gun, and so -- very cunning people, coming to frame a charge of armed robbery, for a tape! Costs under a pound or whatever, and I substituted one, anyway -- so it wasn't -- and I left that one. So where was the robbery?
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Wole Soyinka
Nobel Prize for Literature
When I realized that war really was going to happen, I tried to -- and he (Christopher Okigbo) had left, like the other Igbo that fled to the East, where they were more secure. Chinua Achebe was in the East. We had other writers like Gabriel Okara in the East, and I felt maybe by linking up and resurrecting that tight community we might be able to do something to prevent that war, and so I traveled. By then the firing had started, the early skirmishes had begun. And I traveled by road to the East. I was promptly arrested as a suspected enemy by the Biafrans whom I had come to see, but of course, some time after, the police realized who I was and I was released. And who had come into my police station? He didn't know I was there. It was Christopher Okigbo, coming from the war front, coming for more equipment. And so we were reunited for the last time. He went back to the front. So the leader of the secessionist enclave, Ojukwu, we spoke, and then when I came back I was detained for having traveled to the East. I was accused of all kinds of things, including trying to buy jet fighters for the -- I don't know why people like to cook, you know, fantasies, around one's individual existence.
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James Stockdale
Congressional Medal of Honor
We'd come in low and put a snake-eye fixture on a snake eye bomb. That meant as soon as it felt itself released, it would have a shield come up to slow it down so we wouldn't be getting hit with our own shrapnel. Now that's the kind of stuff you have to work with all the time, but even with all that, I could hear boom, boom, boom, boom. This little engine is right there. The cockpit is no wider than that, and it's very noisy inside, but I looked right there and I saw that damn plane and I thought ,"There's my Armageddon." And it was fireballs coming at me one after the other. And then now everything is out. The engine is shot up, the hydraulics are gone, and I've just got to get out of the airplane and I did. I didn't have my lip mike on. I had to get it up and say, "I'm going to eject."
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James Stockdale
Congressional Medal of Honor
It never got above 1,000 feet even with the trajectory, and I was low and I was going right into this little town. Straight -- it was a town that I could imagine being very similar to the places I saw in Illinois, a town of about 800 people with one thoroughfare and that's it. They're farmers or rice people or whatever. And I landed and got myself on deck, flipped off my protective -- the thing that held my parachute on -- and then I looked up and I had seen traces of this -- A thundering herd was coming down on me. All probably between 18 and 24. They were going to defend the honor of their town.
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James Stockdale
Congressional Medal of Honor
They got a couple of teams of torture guards and they had a special procedure. And the way it was done was to get a long iron bar and shackle your legs to it, and then the man on the back would start weaving ropes through your arms to bend them backwards. And then they -- getting as much leverage as he could -- what they're doing is shutting off the blood circulation in your upper body. And then he would push, he would bend you double and stand on your back and he would pull from this angle, giving him better leverage, and then he would find--you know, it's about over when you feel the heel of his foot in your--back of your head and he put your nose right on the cement and there you are. You're encased in ropes. Your blood is not circulating. You're in pain and you're in claustrophobia.
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James Stockdale
Congressional Medal of Honor
And so I said, "I've got to change the status quo," and with that I got off from my traveling irons and went over and shut off the light, pulled back these blankets, and exposing the plate glass window, using the palm of my hand, which was relatively free -- I had enough freedom there, to get the long shards, pull the curtains back, turn on the light, get back in my chair and sit down and just start going like this. And, first of all, I started getting blue blood and I said, "Where is the blue blood coming from? We've got to get some red blood." And so I said, "I don't " I said to myself, "Is this right? I don't know but I know I've got to " my hands -- I had run out of ideas and I had to explore the future. You wouldn't think I had a future if you saw me. I passed out in a pool of blood.
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Robert Strauss
Presidential Medal of Freedom
Robert Strauss: It was in their sitting room, right off their bedroom, in the small living quarters the President has up there. Not so small, but not very spacious, either. We got into this discussion, and the President started off by -- it took him about 20 minutes to tell his side of that and how there was nothing to these stories and how wrong they were. And he turned to this other fellow and said, "I trust you agree?" and he said, "Mr. President, I sure do. I think the press is blowing this all up. Eisenhower had his U2 problems, and they blew over, and Truman had his scandal problems, and they blew over, and this will blow over. All you need to do is hold your fire and hang in there." And the President turned to me and said, "I trust you agree, Bob?" I said, "As a matter of fact, I couldn't disagree more." After gulping a couple times, I said -- I told that story about the Lyndon Johnson experience -- and I said, "Before I came up here tonight, I asked Deaver if he wanted to hear the truth. The truth of the matter was Deaver's answer to me was " -- I hadn't told it before -- "He said, 'She wants him to hear it. I don't know whether he wants to hear it or not, but she wants him to hear the truth.'"
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