Kitchen Diplomacy

In 1990, Egan traveled to Vietnam, but he failed to bring back any POWs. In 1992, a Vietnamese diplomat defected to the United States and wound up living in Egan's apartment. Egan and the defector were interviewed by John McCreary, an investigator for the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs.

Now retired, McCreary remains amazed at Egan's ability to befriend America's enemies. "He's friendly, he's generous and he doesn't judge them," McCreary says. "He just makes friends easily."

About 15 years ago, Egan decided to make friends with the North Koreans. He'd read reports of American POWs held in North Korea, and he decided to investigate. He courted the Koreans the same way he'd wooed the Vietnamese -- by feeding them barbecued ribs and taking them on hunting and fishing trips and to Giants football games. He also cooked for the North Korean team at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

Egan's hospitality was reciprocated. In 1994, he was granted permission to travel to North Korea, an isolated Stalinist dictatorship that rarely welcomes foreign visitors, particularly Americans. When Egan arrived, he says, he was given what his translator called a "chemical interrogation" -- an injection of a drug that made him woozy and talkative and caused his nose to bleed, followed by a lengthy interview that he barely remembers.

"The act of trusting them is important to them," he says. "Being willing to get sedated said more than anything I might have said when they did it."

Egan claims that a North Korean official told him that all their diplomats are required to undergo a "chemical interrogation" when they return home. Alas, that's impossible to confirm: The North Korean mission to the United Nations declined to return repeated calls requesting an interview about Egan.

Two years later, in December 1996, Egan returned to North Korea, this time accompanied by several Americans -- Mark Sauter, author of a book on American POWs; Eugene "Red" McDaniel, a former Navy pilot who had been a POW in North Vietnam for six years; and Pennsylvania state Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, who took a container of medical supplies for victims of a flood in North Korea.

The travelers changed planes in Beijing, where North Korean customs officials tried to charge Greenleaf duty on the medical supplies he was donating to their country. Irate, Egan launched into an expletive-studded tirade.

"He was very animated," Greenleaf recalls, dryly.

As Egan argued, Greenleaf recalls, the duty dropped from $1,000 to $500 to nothing.

"Sometimes you have to raise your voice," Egan explains. "What are you gonna do? I'm from Jersey, you know?"

When they arrived in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, Egan, Sauter and McDaniel met with a North Korean official to discuss the issue of American POWs. The official was maddeningly evasive, Sauter recalls. When Egan asked to meet with an American defector known to be living in Pyongyang, the official refused and Egan exploded.