Did McCain lift his cross-in-the-sand anecdote from Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago"?

Excerpt:

John McCain told a story about a Vietnamese guard who made a sign of the cross in the dirt while he was a POW. The story is very similar to a story about Alexander Solzhenitsyn from his times in the Soviet Gulags. Did John McCain steal this story?

There's no such story in "Archipelago." There is a somewhat similar story attributed to Solzhenitsyn, which we've traced back to Rev. Billy Graham by way of former Richard Nixon aide Charles Colson. But that's not proof that McCain's story isn't true.

The stories aren't exactly the same. In McCain's telling, a Vietnamese prison guard shows him kindness one night by secretly loosening his cruelly tight bonds, then draws a cross in the sand with his foot to indicate that he is a fellow Christian. In the various versions attributed to Solzhenitsyn, the cross is drawn by a fellow prisoner, not a guard, and with a stick, not his foot. The story certainly does not appear in the place that some of McCain's detractors are suggesting that he got it.

The Controversy

The Internet controversy was touched off when McCain repeated his often-told story during an August 16 question and answer session at Saddleback Church in California:

McCain: Because it was Christmas day, we were allowed to stand outside of our cell for a few minutes. In those days we were not allowed to see or communicate with each other, although we certainly did. And I was standing outside, for my few minutes outside at my cell. He came walking up. He stood there for a minute, and with his sandal on the dirt in the courtyard, he drew a cross and he stood there. And a minute later, he rubbed it out, and walked away. For a minute there, there was just two Christians worshipping together. I'll never forget that moment.

Within hours the Internet was littered with blog entries hinting at the possibility Sen. McCain had lifted the anecdote from Nobel Prize-winning Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago" and lied about it.

Solzhenitsyn's "Archipelago" was originally published in 1973 - the same year McCain returned from Vietnam. But "The Gulag Archipelago" contains no such story. We searched all three volumes of the work through an online version for several key words, and we found nothing remotely similar. It's just not there.

Just to be safe, we also checked the author's novel, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch." It's not there, either.

Tracing a Story

Many earlier blog entires don't quote Solzhenitsyn's "Archipelago" directly. Instead they quote a story told about Solzhenitsyn in a 1997 sermon from Fr. Luke Veronis, a Greek Orthodox priest:

Veronis: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian author who spent many years in the gulag of Siberia, bears witness to the power of the cross. . Laying his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a crude work-site bench and sat down. ...

Slowly, he lifted his eyes and saw a skinny, old prisoner squat down next to him. The man said nothing. Instead, he drew a stick through the ground at Solzhenitsyn's feet, tracing the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work. As Solzhenitsyn stared at the sign of the Cross, his entire perspective changed. He knew that he was only one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. ... Solzhenitsyn slowly got up, picked up his shovel, and went back to work. Nothing outward had changed, but inside, he received hope.

So we asked Veronis where he had acquired the anecdote. At first he said he had gotten it from Solzhenitsyn's "Archipelago," but later corrected himself. "I know I've read that story before. But I thought I had read it from Solzhenitsyn directly." Eventually, Veronis told us, "I don't know where I got it from." .....

But we see no evidence that McCain pilfered the quote. The two stories are markedly different, for one thing. In one version, it's a fellow prisoner drawing with a stick; in the other, it's a kindly guard drawing a cross with his foot. Furthermore, in Graham's version, Solzhenitsyn was contemplating suicide at the time. McCain says in his book that he did consider suicide while a prisoner, but that was on an entirely different occasion when he had been beaten for days and was about to sign a false confession to end his torture. It had nothing to do with the cross-in-the-sand story.

We asked the McCain campaign about the accusation, and a spokesman pointed us to a campaign blog entry with quotes attributed to Bud Day, a close friend of McCain. Day said that McCain told him the story prior to the publication of "Faith of My Fathers":

McCain Report: ...[Day] did confirm that "not long after we all got back together [in the camp]," McCain told him the story of the prison guard who drew a cross in the dirt one Christmas.

Another blog entry from the McCain camp says that Solzhenitsyn did tell the story but goes on to say: "The only similarity between the two stories is a cross in the dirt, but it is hardly an unlikely coincidence that there were practicing Christians in both Russia and Vietnam, or that in the prisons of those two Communist countries the only crosses to be found were etched in the dirt, as easily disappeared as the Christians who drew them." That entry quotes another former POW, who told the campaign that McCain told him the story sometime around the summer of 1971.

Ultimately, it's far easier for McCain's detractors to question his story than it is for McCain to prove it's true. Only McCain and the long-ago prison guard, if he exists and is still alive, know for sure. But in a world where there are hundreds of millions of Christians, we see no reason to believe that both the McCain story and the one attributed to Solzhenitsyn can't both be true.

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Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don't forget your roundup of Obama news and commentary at OBAMA WATCH