While in Vietnam, Jane Fonda thought she might be able to appeal directly to the American men dropping the bombs, she made a series of ten broadcasts over Radio Hanoi, urging American soldiers to renounce the war. On one, she said, "Tonight when you are alone, ask yourselves: What are you? Accept no ready answers fed to you by rote from basic training... I know that if you saw and if you knew the Vietnamese under peaceful conditions, you would hate the men who are sending you on bombing missions... Have you any idea what your bombs are doing when you pull the levers and push the buttons?" On another broadcast, she accused President Nixon of "betraying everything the American people have at heart, betraying the long tradition of freedom and democracy."

Jane's visit to Hanoi, and especially her broadcasts, outraged supporters of the war, who labeled her "Hanoi Jane" and demanded that she be indicted for treason. The rage that Jane's action elicited in many people cannot be overstated; they saw her as a "pinko slut" who appeared nude in movies, smoked pot, smuggled drugs, used profanity publicly and now, worst of all, was aiding and abetting the enemy during wartime. Several members of the United States Congress called for her prosecution as a traitor.

At a tumultuous, hastily called press conference in Paris immediately upon her return from North Vietnam, Jane defended herself against all charges. "What is a traitor?" she asked angrily. "I cried every day I was in Vietnam. I cried for America. The bombs are falling on Vietnam, but it is an American tragedy... The bombing is all the more awful when you see the little faces, see the women say, 'Thank you, American people, for speaking out against the war.' I believe the people in this country who are speaking out are the real patriots."

To her credit, during a 20/20 television interview sixteen years later in 1988 with Barbara Walters, Jane Fonda acknowledged that her trip had offended many veterans. Jane Fonda offered the following as an apology and conceded that she may have allowed herself to be used in the propaganda war between both sides of the North Vietnam conflict debate.

"I would like to say something, not just to Vietnam veterans in New England, but to men who were in Vietnam, who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of things that I said or did," she began. "I was trying to help end the killing and the war, but there were times when I was thoughtless and careless about it and I'm . . . very sorry that I hurt them. And I want to apologize to them and their families."

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