dave@cylixd.UUCP (Dave Kirby) (10/23/85)
In the Wall Street Journal a year or so ago, there was an interesting article concerning the POW/MIA situation. Since it is likely copyrighted, I'll paraphrase and summarise. (1) There are 2,500 men still unaccounted for from the Vietnam conflict. But there are over 8,000 unaccounted for from the Korean War. (2) In testimony before Congress, Pentagon officials said they have 43 eyewitness accounts from Vietnam refugees, of MIAs that are still alive. They appear to be true, but the Pentagon wants further corraboration; however, a few refugees have passed polygraph tests on the subject. (3) Five months after the Korean War ended, after all the US prisoners were supposedly returned by Korea, a Senate subcommittee reported that "several thousand American soldiers ... were victims of war crimes, died in action, or are presently confined behind the iron curtain." (5) Steve Kiba, a Korean War veteran, tells of seeing his radar man, Paul Van Voorhies, in the prison camp near Peking - some time after the Pentagon says Voorhies was killed in a crash in North Korea. "He walked to within 6 feet of my prison cell." But when he told about this sighting to American intelligence officials, "They told me to forget about him and not to mention having seen him to anyone else." (6) In 1955 Air Force intelligence officer O'Wighton Simpson interrogated an emigre from China, who told him he saw a prison train stop at the Siberian border so workers could change the undercarriage. 700 prisoners were led off the train onto the platform. Many of them were black; the only blacks there would have to be Americans, Mr. Simpson notes. They were on their way to Siberia. Simpson wrote a report to U. S. intelligence concerning the matter; the Pentagon never followed up on the report. Mr. Simpson remarked that getting any Washington bureaucrat to listen was like "trying to punch holes in Jell-O." (7) In Canterbury, Conn., Robert Dumas won a lawsuit against the US Army, finally succeeding in getting them to change the status of his brother from MIA to POW after producing witnesses who said they had seen the man in a Korean prison camp. During this trial, dozens of official Army "data sheets" were found which listed many GI's as MIA when in fact they were POWs; Dumas had eyewitness accounts from repatriated former POWs who had seen the POWs in prison camp. The article goes on to speculate that it would be very embarrassing if talks led to the release of remaining Vietnam prisoners: embarrassing to Hanoi because it has long denied still having any, and embarrassing to the U. S. because people would wonder why the men didn't come home sooner. Therefore, in the eyes of the Pentagon and State Dept., it is not in the "national interest" to pursue this issue actively. If the accounts of Vietnam prisoners in (2) and (7), and accounts of Korean prisoners in (4), (5), and (6) are true, it would constitute weighty evidence to support the idea that there are still abandoned POWs, and that the US is covering it up. Perhaps Rambo was right? (Sorry, but I don't have the exact date of the article. It was written on National POW-MIA Recognition Day last year, so a little research might reveal the exact date.) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Dave Kirby ( ...!ihnp4!akgub!cylixd!dave) (The views expressed herein are the exclusive property of Dave Kirby. Any person, living or dead, found with the same or similar opinions will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of law.)
dave@cylixd.UUCP (Dave Kirby) (10/23/85)
Slight error: paragraph (4) is missing. The line eater has turned into a paragraph eater! Actually, it's probably just that I can't count, so amend the evidence sentence to say: If the accounts of Vietnam prisoners in (2) and (7), and accounts of Korean prisoners in (3), (5), and (6) are true, it would constitute weighty evidence... Probably nobody cares about this correction, but I posted it to avoid numerous postings correcting my error and questioning my educational background. (Actually, I went to a Parochial school run by a religious cult that taught that the number 4 didn't exist.) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Dave Kirby ( ...!ihnp4!akgub!cylixd!dave)