News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: US and Chinese Veteran to Share Experience

Date: January 09, 2001

"Ex-Korean War GIs To Fly To Beijing
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - At China's invitation, six U.S. veterans of the Korean War are flying to Beijing to discuss their experiences with Chinese veterans - an unprecedented encounter that Pentagon officials hope will lead eventually to new information about the fate of Americans still missing from the war.

The arrangement is all the more remarkable for the fact that for decades China refused to discuss with the United States its role in the war. The war began when communist North Korea (news - web sites) invaded South Korea in June 1950. China entered the conflict four months later as American forces approached the Yalu River on China's border, and Chinese troops ran most POW camps in North Korea.

The six U.S. veterans are traveling with Robert Jones, the Pentagon official in charge of POW/MIA affairs. It was during Jones' talks in Beijing in September that China suggested the meeting.

Jones has pushed for China to open its military archives to U.S. researchers seeking clues to the fate of American MIAs. China has refused. Jones said the veterans exchange is a step in the right direction.

``I'm optimistic that this will take us another step toward our ultimate goal, which is getting more information'' about missing Americans, Jones said in a telephone interview before departing Tuesday. ``I see this as a major step forward in building confidence with the Chinese.''

Among the six U.S. veterans making the trip is Vince Krepps, of Towson, Md., whose fraternal twin brother Richard survived ferocious battles and won a Purple Heart before he was captured in December 1950, held as a POW, then reported dead by North Korea. The brothers arrived at the war front in August 1950 but were separated a month later and never saw each other again.

The five other veterans on the trip are Harley Coon, who spent 33 months as a POW in North Korea; Gerald Doyle, whose brother Lawrence is listed as missing in action; Jack Carney, a Navy corpsman who served with the 1st Marine Division; Kenneth Cook, who was with the 195th Ordnance Depot of the 74th Ordnance Battalion; and Donald Byers, who was with the Army's 2nd Infantry Division.

The People's Liberation Army has insisted that Korean War losses are a closed issue, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has declared wartime records to be classified. Declassified U.S. military records indicate some American POWs were taken into China and some never returned.

Among the Americans the Clinton administration has asked China for information about are Robert Snoddy and Norman Schwartz, pilots of an unmarked C-47 aircraft knocked out of the sky over northeastern China on Nov. 29, 1952, while attempting to pick up ananti-communist Chinese agent. On board were two CIA (news - web sites) officers, John T. Downey and Richard G. Fecteau, who were captured, imprisoned in Beijing and held until President Nixon publicly acknowledged they were CIA officers.

It had been generally believed that Downey and Fecteau were the only Americans aboard the plane. But a June 1998 Defense Department document - a cable to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing - identified Snoddy and Schwartz as Americans. It said they were killed and presumed buried at the crash site. The Pentagon wants China to provide any information it might have about the pilots' remains.

The June 1998 cable also mentioned three U.S. soldiers missing from the war: Roger Dumas, William Glasser and Richard Desautels. They were held in a Chinese-run POW camp in North Korea. Several repatriated American prisoners reported seeing the three alive and well at the close of the war in 1953.

Regarding Dumas, Glasser and Desautels, the June 1998 cable to the embassy in Beijing said China must be pushed to provide answers. ``We believe the Chinese should be able to account for these individuals,'' it said. So far it has not. "