McCain Never Tortured, Prison Guard Claims

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ROME - Nguyen Tien Tran, 75, revealed in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that McCain was never treated inhumanely during his captivity in Vietnam.

"We never tortured McCain," he said. "On the contrary, we saved his life, curing him with extremely valuable medicines that at times were not available to our own wounded."

McCain fell into the hands of the Viet Cong when his plane was gunned down in 1967. Ever since his release in 1973, he has frequently referred to the torture he received at the hands of his captors.

His experiences were cited as a contributing factor to his sharp opposition to the Bush administration's use of torture tactics against terror suspects.

Tran said that McCain's status as son of the US naval commander in Vietnam made his too valuable a target to lose to harsh interrogation, and thus treated him with extreme care.

Even though McCain's injuries sustained in the crash were immense, Tran still hoped to use him as a propaganda weapon.

Tran also told Corriere that upon McCain's arrival at Hanoi, he was checked into a hospital for a month. "I never lost him from sight. I was frightened a doctor or nurse might do him harm."

An anecdote from McCain's 1999 autobiography, Faith of My Fathers, was branded as "absolutely impossible" by Tran.

McCain wrote that during one Christmas, a prison guard drew a cross in the mud in front of him. "My men were all communists and atheists," Tran said, dismissing the story.