 McCain was observed by a variety of North Vietnamese, including renowned Vietnamese writer Nguyễn Tuân and Defense Minister and Army commander-in-chief General Võ Nguyên Giáp.Many of the North Vietnamese observers assumed that McCain must be part of America's political-military-economic elite.Now having lost fifty pounds (twenty-three kilograms), in a chest cast, covered in grime and eyes full of fever, and with his hair turned white, in early December 1967 McCain was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp on the outskirts of Hanoi nicknamed "the Plantation".