POWs Under Duress Gain More Leeway : Survival: To minimize psychological damage, captured Americans are no longer under orders to divulge nothing beyond name, rank, serial number and date of birth.

In earlier wars prisoners such as Marine Corps Chief Warrant Officer Guy L. Hunter were under military orders to divulge nothing beyond their date of birth, name, rank and serial number.

But the psychological damage to American POWs who buckled under the emotional and, at times, physical pain was finally recognized, and the military’s Code of Conduct was changed in 1977 to help servicemen endure the hardship of imprisonment.

Hunter’s halting and stilted denunciation of America’s war in the Persian Gulf was among the first examples of how giving in to coercion no longer carries the stigma it once did, although not all military officers feel that way.

“Rather than be turned into a vegetable, prisoners of war should do what is required to stay alive--it’s a practical way to approach a problem in today’s world,” said Lloyd (Pete) Bucher, former commander of the spy ship Pueblo, who was imprisoned and tortured by the North Koreans for 11 months beginning in 1968.

Bucher signed a phony confession to save his men and was later condemned as a coward for that action.

According to the new code, a POW will “evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability.”

The old code said an individual is “ bound to give only name, rank, service number, and date of birth.”

“It’s a big change in the psychological approach to how you react to the enemy, because it is a tremendous psychological burden if you are only able to give your name, rank and date of birth because the enemy won’t accept that,” said Capt. Rod Knutson, commander of the Naval Training Center in San Diego and a prisoner of war from Oct. 17, 1965, to Feb. 21, 1973.

When Vietnam POWs began to return in 1973, military officials quickly realized that, in addition to being physically abused, many suffered tremendous guilt over releasing information that was not necessarily important, said Cmdr. Jim Mitchell, a Navy spokesman in Washington.

The new code “was determined to give the POW more latitude so, if he breaks, he doesn’t have to bear the burden,” Mitchell said. “He is going to work as hard as he can to avoid questions, but if they are breaking his arm off, he need not carry the mental load along with the physical load of what he is already taking. It is less of a hard line that would be crossed.”

Iraqi television broadcast interviews with three Americans, two Britons and an Italian pilot. And, although the voices were real to their anxious families, the words did not ring true.

“I think this war is crazy and should never have happened. It is an aggression against peaceful Iraq,” said Hunter, 46, a Camp Pendleton-based Marine who spoke slowly, pausing awkwardly.

Another, Navy Lt. Jeffrey N. Zaun, 28, told his audience: “I think our leaders and our people have wrongly attacked the peaceful people of Iraq.”

For these men, their plight is far more difficult than it will be for others captured later in the war, said Fred Frostic, a senior defense analyst with the Rand Corp. During the Vietnam War, a hierarchy developed inside American POW camps that helped POWs, no matter where they were in the camp, to communicate with one another. It led to a camaraderie that helped the men endure hardship. The recently captured pilots won’t have a similar support system to fall back on.

The men, all air crew or pilots, were paraded on television shortly after they had suffered the trauma of a crash, an event that would further weaken their emotional state and make them more willing to read Iraqi-provided scripts, experts said.

Nonetheless, these POW statements surprised some military officials and defense analysts.

“They really pissed me off when I heard that stuff,” said one Navy admiral, who requested anonymity. “I wondered what the hell the guys were doing. But then I figured there might be a guy there with a bayonet or they cut off a finger--I suspect they were being coerced.”

In the days ahead, officials will be carefully scrutinizing the tapes of these first POWs, searching for any indication that the men were attempting to signal information. During the Vietnam War, one POW came before the cameras and as he confessed to “crimes,” he used Morse code to blink out a message that he was being tortured.

Bucher and his men used to flash their middle finger at their captors, telling them it was a “Hawaiian good luck sign.” But the scheme backfired when the crew was photographed giving the Hawaiian sign and the picture was sent back to the U.S, where it was published in a news magazine with the caption: “The Navy has made fools of (North Korea.)” The men were beaten and tortured after the North Koreans got a copy of the magazine.

“We have to understand that anything said in captivity is not to be taken at face value. Anything derogatory is obviously being coerced,” Bucher said. “They are trying to survive in a very hostile environment.”

Today, all American pilots and crewmen are trained to survive a possible crash in enemy territory.

Classes are held on escape and knowing how to pick the right time. But Navy officials declined to disclose specific information on these courses for fear of inadvertently assisting the Iraqi military in their efforts to find downed U.S. fliers.

“We don’t need to make the Iraqis any smarter than they already are on this,” said Cmdr. Jim Mitchell, a Navy spokesman in Washington.