News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Bob Necci & Carol Hrdlicka, Andi Wolos
(POW-MIA FaxNetwork)

Re: Letter from DPMO Response

Date: November 18, 1997

From Donna Knox

Re: Chuck Henley [of DPMO] letter dated October 21, 1997:

Chuck Henley writes that DPMO is "unfamiliar with your claim that the North Korean Government has offered to negotiate with the United States Government for live American prisoners who have been held since the end of the war."

This is an interesting comment, considering that the U.S. National Security Council knows all about the offer, as do the families, and various media outlets. Perhaps Mr. Henley is not aware that news of the offer (as well as its hasty rejection by the U.S. Government)has leaked out, and that a denial that the offer was made can no longer be maintained with a straight face. Or perhaps we are supposed to think that DPMO somehow was just left out of the loop on this one. Isn't it comforting to think that the office whose mandate is to "lead and oversee the effort to locate, account for, and repatriate" missing American servicemen is not informed when North Korea offers access to 11 "survivors" of the Korean War?

This information is about as welcome as was the news that the NSC simply dismissed as "an empty gesture" the North Koreans' historical admission that they do in fact still have American POWs. It is as welcome as was the State Department's recent admission to me that President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright did not even mention our missing men to Chinese President Jiang at the recent U.S./Sino summit because of "time constraints," when they found time enough to give him "an earful" about his government's violation of Chinese peoples' rights.

Our government apparently sits in arrogant confidence that we are helpless to do anything about the hypocrisy that permeats the POW/MIA Full Accounting issue. Our mission is to prove them wrong.

Nota Bene: ( Editor - Donna Knox is a Korean War family member and Director of Counsel for the Korean Cold/War Family Association of the Missing.)