News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Fraudulent POW?

Date: November 28, 2000

"After Public Salute, Air Force Employee's POW Tale Questioned
Ed Offley Stars and Stripes Washington Bureau Chief

Four weeks ago, the Air Force publicly saluted civilian employee Jim Spohn for his suffering as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and for his heroism as one of just 26 servicemen to escape captivity. News media coverage of the POW-MIA Day ceremony created worldwide publicity for the veteran's tale.

Jim Spohn in the military

But embarrassed Air Force officials, challenged by a POW-MIA advocacy group that has questioned the accuracy of Spohn's account, have yanked a glowing news article profiling the 55-year-old employee at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, and are searching for documentation in the federal archives to verify Spohn's military service.

The controversy over Jim Spohn goes far beyond one veteran's assertion about his wartime experience, says Mary Shantag, co-founder of the non-profit POW Network, based in Skidmore, Mo. Even though the Vietnam War ended 25 years ago, she said, an endless procession of "frauds and phonies" continues to plague the Vietnam veterans community and families of POWs.

"Bar stories are not illegal," Shantag said. "But if you don the uniform, wear the medals or alter the records that is a crime."
Shantag said it is premature to pass judgment on Spohn pending the search for his military records, but she and her husband, a former Marine rifleman, alerted the Air Force and a Fairbanks newspaper when they failed to find his name in the Pentagon's official database of Vietnam-era POWs.

No Records

In an interview with The Stars and Stripes on Oct. 10, Spohn insisted that his story was true: In December 1965, he says, he and another American soldier were captured by Viet Cong guerrillas. While the second American died of injuries the next day, Spohn held out against starvation and torture and managed to escape three months later, when he was rescued by an Australian Army patrol.

The problem, Spohn and Air Force officials agree, is that he has no records verifying his service in Vietnam, his capture, his escape or the Purple Heart medal he says he was awarded while recuperating from his injuries in a field hospital.

"I want my credibility not to be damaged by this," Spohn said. "I know what I went through."

It all started when Eielson AFB officials decided to honor Spohn at the formal ceremony commemorating POW-MIA Day. While this annual event has been observed for many years in other communities, this was the first time the air base had held such an observance.
In an account published by the Air Force News, Spohn told interviewer Capt. Don Lewis that he was serving in South Korea with the 833rd Ordnance Company at a base near the city of Taejon when, in December 1965, he was sent north to the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea.

Several days later, he was placed in a group of soldiers and rushed to South Vietnam as part of an advance guard of the 1st Cavalry Division. The assignment was supposed to last only two weeks, he recalled.

Spoke German

According to Spohn's recollection, he was in Vietnam only three days when he and a dozen other American soldiers were ambushed. Ten of the 12 men were killed in the firefight and Spohn and another soldier were taken prisoner, he said. The other American died of his injuries the next day.
"I thought I was going to die, that they were going to try to get whatever they wanted to know from me, and then kill me," he told the Eielson base paper, The Goldpanner. Spohn added that to confuse his captors he only spoke German to them.

Spohn claimed that in his three months of captivity he lost 62 pounds, but one night was able to free himself from the ropes used to bind his arms and legs and overpower a guard. He said he fled into the jungle and wandered around for two weeks until he was rescued by a patrol of Australian soldiers.

Recovering in a hospital, Spohn says he was visited by an officer one day who handed him a Purple Heart medal. "That one [medal] really means something to me," Spohn said in the Air Force interview. "It means I spilled my blood on the ground for our country."

Spohn said he does not have any records of his movement from Korea to Vietnam, or of his subsequent rescue.

Shantag and other veterans who have studied Spohn's story cite several points that call Spohn's story into question:

* Spohn does not appear on the Pentagon "Personnel Missing in Southeast Asia" (PMSEA) roster, the authoritative list of all known POWs.

* Spohn said he earlier tried to get copies of his service records but was told they had been destroyed in a 1974 fire at the National Military Records Center in St. Louis, Mo. In fact, the blaze did not destroy Vietnam-era records but damaged part of the WWII archive.

* In the Air Force News interview, Spohn said he was carrying an M-1 Garand rifle when his squad was ambushed. Soldiers in Vietnam carried either the M-14 or M-16, but not the M-1, veterans say.

* Spohn claimed to have been rescued by an Australian army patrol, but veterans who have reviewed historical records say that in 1965 there was only a small contingent of Australian troops stationed near the Bien Hoa air base.

* Spohn could not recall the names of any fellow soldiers in Korea or Vietnam who could verify part or all of his story.

Spohn told The Stars and Stripes that his transfer from Korea to Vietnam was conducted as a last-minute affair and admitted that his unit's morning reports--which include personnel rosters--will show he never left Korea. "They show me in Korea the whole time so I never got credit for it," he said of his alleged Vietnam tour.

"I was thankful to be alive when I was out of there," Spohn said of Vietnam. "I could care less about paperwork."

Spohn said he returned to his unit in Korea after being released from the hospital in Vietnam and transferred to Germany, receiving his discharge in 1968. He said he enlisted in the Air Force in 1971 and served until his retirement in 1989 as a senior master sergeant.
"When I was in the Air Force I never said anything about it," Spohn said of his POW experience. After his retirement, Spohn said, he visited several VA counselors who advised him not to suppress his memories.

'Wait and See'

Shantag said the absence of Spohn's name from the PMSEA roster is the most significant item challenging the credibility of his story.
"In the 30 years that the Pentagon has held its roster there never has been an occasion where anyone not listed by the Pentagon had evidence that he had been held [as a POW]," Shantag said.

Eielson spokeswoman Maj. Valerie Trefts said the Air Force is taking a "wait and see" approach toward the incident. She noted that Spohn had agreed to a joint request with Air Force officials for his service records.

Trefts declined to speculate whether Spohn's account--if untrue--would violate any Air Force regulations or federal laws.
"There won't be an investigation into him unless his story is proven to be not factual," Trefts said.

Shantag said one positive aspect of the incident has been the alacrity with which both the Air Force and civilian newspapers that reported the original POW story have revised and corrected the record when approached by the POW Network and another group, NAM-POWS.
In many previous incidents, Shantag said, news organizations have been unwilling to correct the record when articles about veterans claiming such experiences have been challenged.

(In its October issue, the journalism review Brill's Content has published an in-depth article by investigative reporter Mark Bowden examining the issue of editors and reporters who are conned by fake veterans http://www.brillscontent.com/October2000/lies.html.)"