FTC watchdog, ex-POW focuses on lifting spirits
By Jayne O'Donnell, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Orson Swindle survived 20 sleepless days of beatings while chained to a stool. Compared to that, snarky academics and regulation-happy bureaucrats are nothing.
A professor's suggestion in 1998 that Swindle wasn't qualified for his appointment to the Federal Trade Commission didn't rattle the former Marine, who had been a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Neither do attempts by FTC colleagues to interfere with what Swindle views as the free market's ability to regulate itself.
Last month, Swindle celebrated the 30th anniversary of his release from six years of captivity in Hanoi. When a colleague asked how he was doing, he simply noted that he was a lot better than on March 4, 1973, when his battered body finally was heading home.
At the FTC, Swindle and four other commissioners cast votes on consumer protection and antitrust matters ranging from mergers to Internet spam and eye-surgery scams. The agency sues companies that it believes defraud consumers, engage in anti-competitive behavior or otherwise break laws designed to protect consumers from bad business practices. It is one of few activist regulatory agencies in this administration.
It's also an odd spot for the man who ran Ross Perot's populist presidential campaign, helped launch Jack Kemp's free-market Empower America and nearly discontinued loans to Georgia farmers when he ran Georgia's slice of the Farmers Home Administration under President Reagan.
But along with being a watchdog for bureaucratic excess, Swindle is a spirit booster for FTC's staff in the nation's capital, where fears of war-related terrorist attacks have many on edge.
In an e-mail to managers, Swindle wrote, "We are gonna be fine now and in the future." He added: "The war in Iraq will be over soon. We can be proud of our forces. Our cause is just, and war is unfortunate, but necessary from time to time."
Patriotism buoyed Swindle during his years at the so-called Hanoi Hilton. Fellow POW and close friend Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., says that because Swindle "resisted hard they singled him out ... he had it worse" when it came to doling out torture.
Told of McCain's comment, Swindle winces, embarrassed.
"We all screamed at the same time," he says. "If I have a toughness, it's a mental toughness."
In an interview at his photo-filled FTC office, Swindle calmly details the low points of his captivity. At one point, he says he was forced to sit yoga-style while captors stood on his back and tightened rope around him, folding his 6-foot-2 frame in half. Then they rolled him around the room, trying to get him to write propaganda statements.
During his two 10-day stints on the stool, a bright light shone constantly over his head and a guard beat him with bamboo if he shut his eyes. At the end of the 20 days on the stool, a hallucinating Swindle did write a letter to anti-war senators expressing agreement, but he purposely made the wording unintelligible. He says he was "at the end of my rope."
Swindle's horrifying POW experience made him stronger, he says, and better prepared for a career as a free-market conservative inside the federal government. He still believes government action should be the last resort, but many say he has proved to be an effective commissioner by working closely with staff lawyers and economists to influence drafts of FTC lawsuits, settlements and rules.
He's the lone dissenter on votes far more often than any other current commissioner. His votes never have killed commission actions — about 97% of the votes are unanimous, he notes — but he believes his dissenting opinions carry weight. His 27-page dissension on the FTC's Internet privacy report in 2000 was longer than the majority opinion. Though he was the only opponent, Swindle notes that the report was criticized by the administration, and the recommendation for legislation was ignored in Congress.
"He brings the Reagan free-market perspective to his job, but he supports much of the FTC's antitrust and consumer protection enforcement actions because they involve bad behavior," says former FTC antitrust chief William Baer, now head of antitrust at law firm Arnold & Porter. "He instinctively gets to the essence of a problem without getting caught up in the confusing rhetoric we antitrust lawyers and economists often use to describe simple problems."
While some antitrust lawyers privately scoffed that Swindle was unqualified for the job, only former George Mason University professor William Kovacic lashed out publicly at Swindle's lack of antitrust experience. Kovacic was quoted as saying appointments including Swindle's were damaging to the agency and could keep the courts from respecting it.
Now FTC general counsel, Kovacic is more circumspect. Quoting former Baltimore Orioles baseball manager Earl Weaver, he says, "It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.
"I've done a lot of reflecting," Kovacic says. "I've learned a lot that demonstrates to me what an impressive person he is."
It's tough to find anyone who will publicly criticize Swindle — because of both his good nature and his position. And those who know him best have unyielding respect for Swindle.
Just as his friendship with McCain and other POWs helped him get through captivity, Swindle says camaraderie at work can get people through today's war-related stresses.
"Keep in mind that we are really a family, a team, a unit in every respect, in our workplace and at home," Swindle wrote to FTC managers in his March 21 e-mail. "If difficulties arise, we will get through it together by helping one another."
McCain, a naval aviator, and Swindle got to know each other by tapping information about fellow POWs in code through a prison wall. When they met in person, McCain joked that he had always wanted to be a Marine but wasn't eligible because his parents were married.
McCain calls Swindle "the toughest, ugliest, finest guy you'll ever know."
About Orson Swindle
Age: 66.
Education: Bachelor's degree in industrial management from Georgia Tech, 1959; MBA from Florida State University, 1975.
Personal: Wife, Angie; a son from his first marriage and a son from Angie's previous marriage.
Recent books read: The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk; What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East by Bernard Lewis.
Favorite movie:Stalag 17.
Most admired people: Ronald Reagan, Thomas Jefferson.
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