a little prison a mile north of the hanoi hilton, 13 cells, and i'm not sure why they left two empty. probably forgot to include a couple of these guys in there. and they lived -- these 11 guys lived for two years in nine-by-four foot cells. so think about this. this is your world for 23 hours and 15 minutes a day. so nine feet is about that. this is about four feet. this is where those guys lived for two years. there were no windows. theyed a walk in the space. if they had enough energy -- they didn't get much food so they couldn't do pushups. this was their world. all they had. they couldn't see out of it. it was cold in the winter. and it was like a furnace in the summertime. and they had nothing to do. so when i was writing the book i thought the worst part about being a p.o.w. might be the torture. when i told him i was writing the book, commander george coker said, why? it was boring? i got a friend who built me a replica alcatraz p.o.w. cell in my garage in my backyard. one night he came and kidnapped me. and i had a bucket and a blanket, a pair of pants and a t-shirt. and a li

s called hanoi hilton, the zoo, and alcatraz. he endured merciless beatings as well as solitary confinement for four years. as a senior officer, he was a leader among the prisoners and rebelled against their brutal efforts to extract propaganda. he refused, explained in an interview to "the new york times" -- quote -- "i put out the policy that they were not to succumb to threats but must stand up and say no. we forced them to be brutal to us" -- close quote. he wrote a memoir "when hell was in session" which is a fabulous book. too little appreciated, really. recounting his time as a p.o.w. he describes a torture session in which his captors placed him in a nine foot cement-filled -- placed a nine-foot cement-filled bar across his shins. he wrote that his captors stood on him and took turns jumping up and down and rolling it across my legs. then they lifted my arms behind my back, by the cuffs, raising the top part of my body off the floor and dragging me around and around. this went on for hours. they were in a frenzy, alternat