Defense POW/MIA Weekly Update
November 19, 1997
PLANS UNDERWAY FOR FUTURE NORTH KOREAN OPERATIONS
In anticipation of future meetings with the North Koreans to discuss an operations schedule for 1998, U.S. officials met last week in Hawaii to formulate a plan which would include joint recovery operations, archival research, and possibly a technical exchange of forensic experts.
On November 13, the U.S. ArmyÕs Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii (CILHI) hosted an after-action review of joint accounting efforts recently concluded in North Korea. Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs J. Alan Liotta chaired the meeting. Representatives from DPMO, United Nations Command, Pacific Command, and Casualty and Memorial Affairs Operations Center participated.
During the next round of talks the U.S. side will focus on the three principal areas of concern to our accounting efforts: archival access, remains recovery and contacting the four known American defectors from the 1960s-80s, which is vitally important to fully investigating reports alleging American POWs are or were held back in North Korea after the Korean Conflict.
TECHNICAL TALKS IN RUSSIA OFFER PROMISE
American and Russian members of the Vietnam War Working Group of the U. S. - Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs concluded two weeks of technical talks in Moscow last month.
In a meeting with a Russian author and researcher, he indicated that the issue of American POWs was of interest to Soviet intelligence organizations, in spite of previous testimony to the contrary. This information may offer leads to related documentation in selected archives. However, assertions recently by a senior GRU officer that Soviet intelligence officers were not interested in American POWs further complicates investigation of the issue by the U.S. side.
In a key session with the working group, the team met and interviewed a Soviet GRU officer who was familiar with documents relating to Soviet involvement with the North Vietnamese during the war. He provided insight into two papers, the "1205" and the "735" documents, both of which remain of keen interest to the Commission. The originals of both documents, he reported, were destroyed in keeping with GRU regulations governing the handling of such materials. He reasserted the long-standing Russian position that the documents are genuine, but that he could not vouch for the accuracy of the numbers contained in them.
A number of other Russian witnesses provided information related to ongoing inquiries of the Commission. Officials in DPMO, both in Washington and in Moscow, continue to pursue leads which developed during these technical talks in preparation for a plenary session in September 1998.