 McCain reached Hỏa Lò in as bad a physical condition as any prisoner during the war . His captors refused to give him medical care unless he gave them military information ; they beat and interrogated him , but McCain only offered his name , rank , serial number , and date of birth ( the only information he was required to provide under the Geneva Conventions and permitted to give under the U.S. Code of Conduct ) . Soon thinking he was near death , McCain said he would give them more information if taken to the hospital , hoping he could then put his interrogators off once he was treated . A prison doctor came and said it was too late , as McCain was about to die anyway . Only when the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a high @-@ ranking admiral did they give him medical care , calling him " the crown prince " . Two days after McCain 's plane went down , that event and his status as a POW made the front pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post . Interrogation and beatings resumed in the hospital ; McCain gave the North Vietnamese his ship 's name , squadron 's name , and the attack 's intended target . This information , along with personal details of McCain 's life and purported statements by McCain about the war 's progress , would appear over the next two weeks in the North Vietnamese official newspaper Nhân Dân as well as in dispatches from outlets such as the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina . Disclosing the military information was in violation of the Code of Conduct , which McCain later wrote he regretted , although he saw the information as being of no practical use to the North Vietnamese . Further coerced to give future targets , he named cities that had already been bombed , and responding to demands for the names of his squadron 's members , he supplied instead the names of the Green Bay Packers ' offensive line . 
