The North Central Highlands, North Korea, Two years ago

Jason Randolph Scott woke, something startled him. He was alone and in total darkness.

Slowly he realized where he was although he couldn’t see two feet ahead of him. He’d lost track of time not caring anymore. He felt forgotten, alone. The perceived sensation of abandonment swept over him as it did day after day.

It was three years ago when he’d thought they’d discovered his identity; that of a spy working for the CIA while acting as a reporter for the New York Times newspaper.

Coming for him in his sleep, they dragged him away, beating him senseless. The Koreans struck, kicked and threatened his live-in girlfriend, a fellow reporter, Jenny Addams, when she tried to intervene on his behalf. He’d seen her all curled up in a fetal position on the floor bleeding and crying as they dragged him away.

 With the air cool and moist, it was as if being in a cave down in some deep hole in the middle of nowhere, with no one to hear your screams. Every day they came, twice a day, sometimes more, as they’d tied his hands and feet and stretched him on the cold floor, naked. Then they would place a plastic tube down his mouth, filled it with water until he was near drowning. They’d wait a few seconds and start in again; always asking the same questions over and over:

“Who do you work for?”

“What is your connection to the CIA?”

“What is your name?”

“Admit you’re a spy and we’ll let you go.”

Jason knew that last question was a barefaced lie! 

They beat him senseless until he could only open an eye. Then clipping electrical leads to his hands and feet, an electrical current would flow through his body, always with the same effect—total blackout—which he always welcomed like a long-lost brother. The dungeon he had called home for the last three years was almost unbreathable. They’d beaten him over and over, compelled to confess time and time again to whatever they wanted.

Jason Randolph Scott was thirty-six when he died at the hands of his captors; never seeing the light of day.

In July, marking the three years of his captivity, they turned his body over to the Americans, during a prisoner exchange between the two countries.

His father Lieutenant General Thomas Randolph Scott, Deputy Commander, USEUCOM, received his son’s body at the DMZ and had it transported to their home in Texas, there vowing that someone would pay for his son’s death.

US Military in Germany and the White House along with the  CIA did nothing to secure his release; General Scott had knowledge of who they were, although they knew the North Korean Government held his son as a spy against their state.