Jeremiah Denton

Who was Jeremiah Denton?

Jeremiah Andrew Denton, Jr. was a Rear Admiral and Naval Aviator in the United States Navy and, following his retirement from naval service, was a United States Senator from the state of Alabama.

He spent almost eight years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam and later wrote a book that became a film about those experiences. Denton is best known from this period of his life for the 1966 televised press conference in which he was forced to participate as an American POW by his North Vietnamese captors. He used the opportunity to communicate successfully and to confirm for the first time to the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence and Americans that American POWs were being tortured in North Vietnam. He repeatedly blinked his eyes in Morse code during the interview, spelling out the word, "T-O-R-T-U-R-E".