Conversation with Orson Swindle
Price of Paradise · Hawaii Public Radio · aired 1993-10-01
Guests: Orson Swindle (co-founder, Empower America; former head of Ross Perot's presidential campaign organization; Vietnam POW for six years)
Duration: 0:21:15

[0:00:00] Randall Roth: I'm Randy Roth. With me today is Orson Swindle, a former marine pilot, prisoner of war, and Ross Perot's top aide during the 1992 presidential campaign. Orson, I know you've been a guest during the last year or so on meet the press, McNeil Lair, Larry King, and just about every other national news program. What I want to know is whether you plan to put this appearance on the price of Paradise radio show on your resume.

[0:00:24] Orson Swindle: Randy, I'd be very pleased to do so, because I can assure you, having read your books, both of them, volumes one and volume two, the quality of what you've assembled here and the contributions of the many people that have assisted you is, I can assure you, there's a lot more quality there than in most of those radio and television shows.

[0:00:40] Randall Roth: Well, believe it or not, I wasn't fishing for that, but that's very nice to hear. On a more serious note, Orson, is it painful for you to talk about your experiences as a prisoner of war?

[0:00:49] Orson Swindle: Not really. I, in fact, I I think I've sort of unconsciously made a practice over the years, and it's been some 20 years now, I guess, since I was released in '73, to talk to or be available to talk to groups about it, and particularly young people, because I think there's it's quite an inspirational story, not about me, but about the circumstances and what we accomplished. And it also, by talking about it and reflecting on the ordeal that I went through, the trials, tribulations, and also the losses of friends, it helps me keep things in perspective and and realize that although sometimes I think things are going badly for me, they really aren't that bad. I know I really know what bad is and I'm a very fortunate person.

[0:01:28] Randall Roth: How long were you held captive?

[0:01:30] Orson Swindle: A little over six and a half about six and a half years, six years and four five months, there we go.

[0:01:34] Randall Roth: What was it like on a day-to-day basis?

[0:01:37] Orson Swindle: Uh as I say about flying fighters in the Marine Corps, it's hours and hours of boredom, occasionally interrupted by a few seconds of stark terror. And it was a lot like that. A lot of boredom, uh of just we had no nothing to read other than propaganda, no contact with the outside, often living alone or in small groups, one or two or three people. Uh very austere not that's not even the right word, very terrible living conditions, lousy food. I got down to less than 120 pounds, and all that just made for a very boring and miserable existence and of course, no communication with family in most cases but and then there's a few those few moments of stark terror that would come floating by once a month or frequently and the torture and the abuse it was rather rather difficult.

[0:02:21] Randall Roth: Did it change you?

[0:02:23] Orson Swindle: No doubt that it did. I I uh see a lot of my friends that were in prison with me and I think we all recognize it changed us forever and and and depending on personalities and quite different ways. It caused me to be considerably more reflective. I think I was a person who kept track of current events. I was very interested in politics and being involved in a war, you certainly tune to what the politicians are doing and we could do another show on that subject alone. But in in in sitting there and you know day after day and month after month, uh recognizing how important politics is to us as people, not just because not just those of us who are in war, but each of us. It made me committed to come back home and try to make a difference in the the future of our country and to see that we don't do things wrong that that when we do things, we do them for the right reasons and do them the right way and I think I've done that. I've been involved quite heavily since.

[0:03:19] Randall Roth: I think a lot of people associate your name with Ross Perot, but I know you did a number of things before you you got associated with Ross. What are some of the things that you had done?

[0:03:28] Orson Swindle: Well, I had that career in the Marine Corps, which I enjoyed thoroughly, except for a few years in Vietnam. I was assistant Secretary of Commerce under President Reagan. I was also the state director of the Farmers Home Administration in Georgia, my home state, original home state, and enjoyed that public service and in in the process of doing it, learned even more about how our government works, and learned some of the horrible stories that you you get to know when you're involved in government, how the taxpayers are abused constantly, the absurdity of a lot of government programs that we are burdened with that we can never get rid of. And it caused me to be even more dedicated to continuing to try to do something about those kind of problems.

[0:04:12] Randall Roth: You had evidently been appointed by a by a Republican president. What attracted you to Ross Perot?

[0:04:18] Orson Swindle: Well, Ross is an old friend. I came to know him shortly after coming home from Vietnam. He invited a whole crowd of us that were POWs out at a camp called Son Tay outside of Hanoi that was the special forces came in and tried to rescue us. Unfortunately, we had been moved a few weeks earlier. And when we came home, all of us said, you know, we'd like to meet the the Americans that would have that kind of guts to come and get us out of prison so close to Hanoi, like 21 miles, if I remember correctly, and Ross threw a party for us out in San Francisco and I got to know him there and a friendship developed and over the years we keep in touch see each other, reunions and I've never worked for him, but just a close friendship. I think one of the fine one of the nicest things that was ever bestowed on me is when Colonel Bull Simons, who led that raid, incidentally, on Son Tay, an army Colonel of special forces type when he died, Ross called me up he was a close friend of Ross's help Ross get his two guys out of Iran to make it more know people understand who he is. Uh Ross asked me to deliver part of the eulogy in Colonel Simons's funeral, which was quite an honor for me, and we just had a close friendship and when he got into the thing, I wrote him a letter and said, hey, if you need any help out here in Hawaii, let me know and and sure enough, in last summer, he asked July of '92, asked me to assist in running the campaign out here, and then before I know it, I'm sitting in front of cameras on a national basis.

[0:05:35] Randall Roth: You were in charge of the whole thing.

[0:05:37] Orson Swindle: Well, that's probably an overstatement. I think Mr. Pro is always in charge of the whole thing. Tell us about Ross. What's what's he like?

[0:05:44] Randall Roth: Tell us about Ross. What's what's he like?

[0:05:46] Orson Swindle: He's a great guy. You know, there are all these myths about Pro, and I guess about all public figures, but first and foremost, he is a very warm, generous, and kind, uh caring human being. Uh he has the best intuitions of anybody I've ever been around in politics and he of course is obviously no politician. No politician would do the things that we did trying to get elected president, but he is a a a very strong minded person, obviously a very bright person. You don't succeed in business without to the level he has without being extremely bright and he is extremely bright. He's devoted to his family. Uh he's a good friend, and and we disagree on a lot of things.

[0:06:30] Randall Roth: Is it true that he got out of that campaign initially because people threatened to doctor a photo of his daughter or disrupt her wedding or something like that?

[0:06:39] Orson Swindle: Randy, I guess that's the most frequently asked questions uh after the first when you asked what kind of a guy is he? Well, I saw Ross right after he pulled out of the race there in mid mid July of last summer. And uh I asked him, what's wrong? And he said, well, I can't talk about it. It's personal. And then he told me, it has to do with the family. And that's all I ever heard. You know, his statement that the Democrats have got their act together it looked like. I didn't buy that. But when I talked to him on a personal private basis, he told me that it had to do with his family. I never heard anything to the contrary. Uh I don't know whether there was truth in what he was led to believe, but if he believed it, and knowing his love and affection and care and concern for his family, I can see him reacting exactly the way he reacted. You don't go near his family and abuse his family and he would give up anything to protect them, and I think that's what he did. At least that's the way he saw it.

[0:07:35] Randall Roth: I I have to admire someone who would put in charge of his campaign, somebody with the name Swindle.

[0:07:41] Orson Swindle: Well, that uh that is a little bit of a liability, but we had so many liabilities that one that one failed in insignificance, and it became sort of a novelty, I guess.

[0:07:48] Randall Roth: Uh have you ever been tempted to change that?

[0:07:50] Orson Swindle: No, I I I'm the third, and my my grandfather was the first, are obviously the senior, and my father the junior, and I had great admiration for both, and I I wear it proudly.

[0:08:02] Randall Roth: Wonderful. You're listening to the Price of Paradise radio show. I'm Randy Roth, and my guest is Orren Orson Swindle, a former POW who was Ross Pro's chief spokesperson during his presidential campaign, and currently is senior advisor to empower America, a conservative public policy advocacy group. Orson, can you tell us just a little bit about empower America, who else is involved, and what you're trying to do?

[0:08:25] Orson Swindle: Uh this is an organization that sort of grew out of uh the frustration of a number of good Republican friends of mine with the way things were going in the Bush administration, not so much at Mr. Bush, but just the general lay of the land and the way things were changing. Strong believers in what we like to refer to as a Reagan Revolution, which got off to a great start and there in 1981 and after about two years started to fizzle out as as other uh voices became heard and started to go for the the compromise and the uh the, you know, doing deals and trying to work with government, we were very much a trying to stop or change the way government was operating. And uh it's obvious that uh the the progress we had hoped to make had not been made so a group started talking and Jack Kemp, being the leader of the group with Vin Weber, former congressman from uh Wiscon uh Minnesota, former Secretary of Education, Bill Bennett, and uh former Ambassador Jean Kirk Patrick to the UN and some others, including a number of governors and they included me in the conversations after the elections, I said, let's get something going here and let's start a good group that will try to bring back together that uh great coalition of uh conservatives and moderates, Democrats and Republicans that Ronald Reagan brought to brought to the political scene, and we felt it very necessary that we put this together and go about advocating that it's the people who can change and improve the way we live as opposed to the government. And with the election of Bill Clinton and his activity since he's been in office, I think uh it bears out our concerns. Uh we have uh a a group of people in the White House today, who would suggest that government is the answer and the people are the problem and they want to grow government, not the economy. They want to grow government, build bigger government with more taxes and that's a burden on the American people.

[0:10:10] Randall Roth: Orson, you've been a a resident of Hawaii, I believe about four years. Uh what brought you to Hawaii?

[0:10:15] Orson Swindle: I married a lady who lived out here and uh no seriously, I I have a delightful wife who'd been out here for about 15, 16 years at that point in time and uh having left the Bush administration and uh more or less at at liberty to choose where I would live, uh we could have lived in Washington. I could have pursued things there, but I chose to come here. I'd been through Hawaii, been to Hawaii on a number of occasions. Really fell in love with the beauty of it. It's a it's a great place to live, the people here have uh a hospitality about them that I particularly liked, and uh I thought it'd be I like the Pacific. I've done a lot of work out in the American-affiliated Pacific islands. I brought some programs from my agency, the Economic Development Administration out there that helped them and I felt this would be a great place to look for something interesting to do with a lot of nice people and I very calculatingly chose to come out here.

[0:11:03] Randall Roth: What's what's your reaction to life in Hawaii, especially uh the political side of things?

[0:11:08] Orson Swindle: Well, let's talk about the good side of things. Hawaii is a delightful place to live. The environment is uh I've been all over the world and I've not run any into anything quite like Hawaii. It's a great place to live and they're great people here. Politically, I think it uh is perhaps one of the least uh nice places I've ever I've ever lived because I I think we're we're suffering from the inevitable burden of domination by a single party. Uh you know, I've read a lot about the revolution of the mid-50s when the Democrats took over and uh they did it for good reason. Uh the Republican Party was not responsive to the people and those were noble crusaders that came in and changed things and now guess what, they've been in power for 40 years or whatever the number adds up to and they've got the same problems and I think uh we definitely need to change the political scene out here because it's not very Hawaii is not recognized as being a very great state in that standpoint, it does not have good leadership in the Congress and uh the people suffer for it.

[0:12:07] Randall Roth: I know there's a movement nationally and and a group just formed here in Hawaii addressing uh the notion of reinventing government, somehow improving government. Uh are you optimistic at all with respect to um what we could do here in Hawaii?

[0:12:21] Orson Swindle: Well, there there are millions of things we could do. Uh whether it will be done by this group in power here in Hawaii or this group in power in Washington, DC remains to be seen. I'm not very optimistic that they will change anything because we tried to change a lot of things uh back in the early '80s and start cutting out the waste in government, the corruption in government, and and the very people who are now, not specifically Mr. Clinton, because he was doing other things at that point in time, but those who support him in Congress, sometimes uh they're the very people that stopped us from reinventing government because they didn't want anything to do with cutting out their pork barrel programs and things of this nature in the way they would like to control the American people and that's through big government. I'm not very optimistic. I think the Vice President Gore's reinventing government initiative is just a bunch of smoke uh we didn't have to do a study on that. The Grace Commission came out with a list of four pages long of things we could do to make things better for the government nationally. In Hawaii, uh you got the same players. I think the only way you're going to change anything in Hawaii is literally for the people to say they've had enough of the disgusting performance of this government, the disgusting burdens of excessive taxes, excessive cost of living and the corruption that is now coming out almost on a daily basis. The people will have to change it.

[0:13:10] Randall Roth: But why would people think the Republicans uh could offer anything more?

[0:13:15] Orson Swindle: Well, they obviously couldn't offer anything less and I don't think you necessarily have to look and say the Republicans like who are the Republicans? They're not a lot of Republicans out here as everyone knows. Why why hasn't the party been more effective as a party? I think the Democrats have been very effective in cultivating a following that is dependent upon jobs. Uh I hear repeatedly uh stories of uh the machine threatening uh uh people employees of of the Democratic uh the Democrat government apparatus uh and and no one dares to challenge it. Uh there have been some great myths promoted. I keep hearing people talk about Republicans, all those plantation owners, you know, I I know there are not very many Republicans out here and I met a quite a few of them and I have yet to run into a plantation owner. You know, it's just amazing the way this mindset is set in out here, but I would say to the people of Hawaii, forget the the the pre-1954 or mid-'50s Republican Party. Let's create another party and if if it's Republican so what? That's just a name. You do need, if you're going to be a party, or be involved in politics, you've got to have continuity between the state and Washington, so it would help if it was a Republican Party. But the most important thing is that the people have to say we've had enough of the corruption, we've had enough of the excessive taxes, we've had enough of the excessive government. We've had enough, you know, it's time for a change and if the people will act, we can have a revolution out here next year and elect some people that will change all this. And I frankly think if we don't change it, Hawaii will not be a very nice place to live in the future because number one, the young people can't stay here. Unless they want to stay here and be uh you know, be children of the state, they can't afford to buy a home, they can't they they've got to work two and three jobs to just make a living. They can't educate their kids. We get one of the lowest education systems in the world. There's a lot of reasons for the people of this state to rise up and say we've had enough, let's change things.

[0:15:26] Randall Roth: You're listening to the Price of Paradise radio show. I'm Randy Roth, and my guest is Orson Swindle, a former POW, who was Ross Pro's chief spokesperson during his presidential campaign, and currently is a senior advisor to Empower America, a conservative public policy advocacy group. Um, Orson, have you read our chapter on congressional representation? How well are we, people of Hawaii, represented in Washington, DC?

[0:16:03] Orson Swindle: Yeah, I've read it and uh we aren't represented very well, but that that comes to no surprise to me. I spent uh four little over four years actively involved in Washington on a relatively high level and of course four years prior to that, I was associated with a a federal agency. And uh the delegation is known is basically not providing a heck of a lot of leadership. In fact, I would go so far as to say almost none.

[0:16:22] Randall Roth: By delegation, you're talking about our congressional delegation. I'm talking about our two senators and two representatives. Uh certainly, the current group are uh fall considerably short uh in in being what the national uh uh consensus would have us be, I think. We've got In fact, just recently, I think one of the uh think tanks in Washington referred to them as the most liberal and the most tax and spend oriented delegation in the country. That's not a good image to have for any state and especially in this time where we have so many problems economically and we've got the the the the antics of this delegation spending money lavishly and for the damnedest things, you know, it's interesting uh Senator Inouye on two occasions, or three occasions that I know of, he he tried to shuffle through on the pork barrel list some eight or nine million dollars for a Jewish group in France a few years ago and then it seemed like in 1990 he tried to hustle something through for his Alma mater, George Washington University to the tune of $50 million. Didn't succeed and here just recently just a matter of a week or two ago, he tried again. I think those things have all been pulled out of the fire, but uh I you know, it's just fascinating to me the way this group works and the way they keep going back to Washington.

[0:17:22] Randall Roth: What about the uh military's involvement in Hawaii? Uh there are cutbacks across the nation, and uh we're fairly dependent on the military, I think from an economic standpoint. What do you see happening there?

[0:17:33] Orson Swindle: Well, I would go further than saying that Hawaii is dependent upon the military economically. It certainly is, it certainly is, but I think the United States of America is dependent upon Hawaii and the military association. As we all know, we no longer have the outpost in the Pacific in the Philippines. Guam and Saipan are kicking around the idea they don't want to be uh that active with the United States. Hawaii is our outpost in the Pacific. It's probably one of the most strategically important places in the world. I think we always will have to have the United States will have to have a strong military presence in Hawaii. I think Hawaii has a great relationship with the military, and the country needs it.

[0:18:07] Randall Roth: Orson, we're we're getting down to the last minute or so. You've been pretty critical of things here in Hawaii. What uh what is Orson Swindle going to do about it?

[0:18:15] Orson Swindle: Randy, I'd like to be very active in what we do in the future in Hawaii. In fact, I would go so far as to say if we can't change things, I I I will probably lose interest in staying here, because I don't see a very uh prosperous outlook for the people of Hawaii. We can't sustain what we're doing now with big government. I'd like very much to be involved uh in any way I can to try to change things. I truly believe we have to have a revolution out here and change the players. Nothing's wrong with systems and government. 99% of the time, when government goes awry, it's because of the people running things.

[0:18:48] Randall Roth: What are some of the ways you could get involved?

[0:18:50] Orson Swindle: Actively uh helping elect people. I would even consider running for office uh at the right time and place uh if if the people of Hawaii really interested in changing things and I think it's got to come from the people. You think it's going to? Surely we can't put up with this much longer. We're seeing more and more discussion of the things we don't like, and there's obviously a great reception to your book, which I think is all about changing Hawaii, at least identifying the things that have to be changed. I would very much be interested in being a very active part in that.

[0:19:20] Randall Roth: Thank you very much, Orson. My guest this week was Orson Swindle, a former POW, chief spokesperson for Ross Perot and co-founder of Empower America. This show was produced by Jill Sinner with technical assistance from Rick Stanley. We would like to hear your thoughts about what we've said or not said. Those comments can be sent to me in care of Hawaii Public Radio, 738 Kaka Street, Honolulu, Hawaii 96814. You've been listening to the Price of Paradise Radio Show. I'm Randy Roth. Aloha.

[0:19:53] Announcer: This program is produced by the Consortium of Price of Paradise Authors in cooperation with Hawaii Public Radio. The Price of Paradise is a best-selling book that has become a must read for every concerned citizen of Hawaii. A sequel, Price of Paradise volume two, has just arrived in Oahu bookstores. Please tune in next week when Randall Roth, a special guest, and one of the 65 co-authors from the two Price of Paradise books, will take on another question of importance to listeners in Hawaii. Cassette copies of this program are available from Hawaii Public Radio for $10 by calling 955-8821.