News-Info-Alerts

Re: Phony Korean POW Goes to Prison

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: September 14, 2002

"No Gun Ri figure receives 2 years in fraud case

Associated Press

An Army veteran who figured in the exposure of the refugee killings at No Gun Ri, South Korea, in 1950 must spend nearly two years in prison and repay more than $400,000 for defrauding the government.

The sentence against Edward Lee Daily of Clarksville was announced yesterday by the U.S. Department of Justice. Daily must spend 21 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. He must also repay $412,839 to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

''This was an amazing fraud perpetrated by Mr. Daily, ... baldly perpetrated upon a lot of people,'' said U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger during Daily's sentencing.

Daily was one of a dozen U.S. Army veterans cited by The Associated Press in 1999 as witnesses corroborating the accounts of South Korean survivors that the 7th Cavalry Regiment killed a large number of refugees at No Gun Ri.

He later acknowledged he could not have been there at the time and had learned about the killings secondhand.

From February 1986 through the end of 2001, Daily received compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs and its predecessor, the Veterans Administration, based on an application he filed listing an injury and claiming POW status, according to the Justice Department.

Benefits included $324,911 in payments wired to his bank and $87,928 in medical care for his claimed service-related disabilities.

When Daily pleaded guilty in March, he admitted in court that he falsely claimed he was a first lieutenant, a Korean prisoner of war and was wounded by shrapnel.

Sumter Camp, Daily's public defender, declined to comment on the sentencing.

A Pentagon investigation last year confirmed that U.S. troops killed refugees at No Gun Ri. At least 35 ex-GIs have described the events to the AP or Pentagon investigators or both.

© Copyright 2002 The Tennessean"