Re: NAF Bits 'N' Pieces

Date: March 30, 2004

"BITS 'N' PIECES
THE NEWSLETTER OF THE
NATIONAL ALLIANCE OF FAMILIES
FOR THE RETURN OF AMERICA'S MISSING SERVICEMEN
+ WORLD WAR II + KOREA + COLD WAR + VIETNAM + GULF WAR +

March 28, 2004

Prisoner of War Were Left Behind At the End of the War In Southeast Asia..... American Prisoners of War from Korean War Transferred to the Former Soviet Union -- With new media focus on the Vietnam War, POW/MIAs and a certain individual's activities during and after the war once again news, we feel we must set the record straight.

The Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, chaired by Senator John Kerry, D-MA with former Senator Robert Smith (R-NH) as Vice-Chairman concluded:

"In 1976, the Montgomery Committee concluded that because there was no evidence that missing Americans had survived, they must be dead. In 1977, a Defense Department official said that the distinction between Americans still listed as "POW" and those listed as "missing" had become "academic". Nixon, Ford and Carter Administration officials all dismissed the possibility that American POWs had survived in Southeast Asia after Operation Homecoming.

This Committee has uncovered evidence that precludes it from taking the same view. We acknowledge that there is no proof that U.S. POWs survived, but neither is there proof that all of those who did not return had died. There is evidence, moreover, that indicates the possibility of survival, at least for a small number, after Operation Homecoming:

First, there are the Americans known or thought possibly to have been alive in captivity who did not come back; we cannot dismiss the chance that some of these known prisoners remained captive past Operation Homecoming.

Second, leaders of the Pathet Lao claimed throughout the war that they were holding American prisoners in Laos. Those claims were believed--and, up to a point, validated--at the time; they cannot be dismissed summarily today.

Third, U.S. defense and intelligence officials hoped that forty or forty-one prisoners captured in Laos would be released at Operation Homecoming, instead of the twelve who were actually repatriated. These reports were taken seriously enough at the time to prompt recommendations by some officials for military action aimed at gaining the release of the additional prisoners thought to be held.

Fourth, information collected by U.S. intelligence agencies during the last 19 years, in the form of live-sighting, hearsay, and other intelligence reports, raises questions about the possibility that a small number of unidentified U.S. POWs who did not return may have survived in captivity.

Finally, even after Operation Homecoming and returnee debriefs, more than 70 Americans were officially listed as POWs based on information gathered prior to the signing of the peace agreement; while the remains of many of these Americans have been repatriated, the fates of some continue unknown to this day.


Far From Settling the Question -- Were POWs left behind at the end of the war in Southeast Asia, the committee clearly stated: "There is evidence, moreover, that indicates the possibility of survival, at least for a small number, after Operation Homecoming..."

Only two Senator tried to answer that question, after the committee closed, and neither of them was John Kerry.


Prisoner of War Were Left Behind at the End of the Korean War -- Again, with media focus on the activities on a certain individual, the record needs to be clear.

The Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, chaired by Senator John Kerry, D-MA with former Senator Robert Smith (R-NH) as Vice-Chairman concluded:

"There is strong evidence, both from archived U.S. intelligence reports and from recent interviews in Russia, that Soviet military and intelligence officials were involved in the interrogation of American POWs during the Korean Conflict, notwithstanding recent official statements from the Russian side that this did not happen."

"Additionally, the Committee has reviewed information and heard testimony which we believe constitutes strong evidence that some unaccounted for American POWs from the Korean Conflict were transferred to the former Soviet Union in the early 1950's. While the identity of these POWs has not yet been determined, the Committee notes that Task Force Russia concurs in our assessment concerning the transfers. We are pleased that this subject was raised by the U.S. side in December, 1992 at the plenary session of the Joint Commission in Moscow."

"The Committee further believes it is possible that one or more POWs from the Korean Conflict could still be alive on the territory of the former Soviet Union. The most notable case in this regard concerns a USAF pilot named David "Markham" or "Markin", who was reportedly shot down during the Korean Conflict. According to several sources, this pilot was reportedly alive in detention facilities in Russia as late as 1991. Although Task Force Russia has thus far been unable to confirm these reports, we note that the investigation is continuing."


Both Committee chairman Kerry and Vice-Chairman Smith were appointed to the U.S./Russian Joint Commission.

Only one Senator fulfilled his obligation to that Commission and it wasn't John Kerry.


Volunteer for the Media Truth Patrol - When you see an article stating that Senator Kerry and the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIAs settled the question on POW/MIAs, fax or email the article's author the above quotes from the Committee's final report.

Far from settling the question of POW/MIAs, no one has ever answered the all important questions...... What happened to that "small number" of POWs from Southeast Asia? What happened to the "one or more POWs" from the Korean War that could still be alive in the former Soviet Union.?


More on the Second Set of M S S Initials -- March 28, 2004, an article by Wes Allison of the St. Petersburg Times reports: "Late last year, soldiers found another set of MSS initials on the post of a carport at a detention center near Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, an aide to U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., told the St. Petersburg Times last week."


Did The Pentagon Mislead Two Senators,

the Speicher Family,

the Press and,

the American Public About the Reward for Navy Capt. M. Scott Speicher?

It looks that way! In order to get a clear picture on the question of the reward for Capt. Speicher, we have to go back to May of 2003. Let's start with an Associated Press article, by David Goldstein, titled "U. S. will use reward, posters in effort to find downed Navy pilot."

According to the article: "Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas and Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida backed a "sense of the Senate" resolution urging Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to use his authority to offer rewards for information about missing military personnel."

"We've pretty well hit a dead-end street," Roberts said of the need to try new methods to recover the pilot shot down over Iraq in 1991. "It's a little hard not to be discouraged. We had hoped by this time that we would have had more specific word. That doesn't mean we aren't persevering, that we aren't making every effort." The Senate provision, included in the defense authorization bill passed last week, calls for publicizing a $1 million reward for information "resolving the fate" of Speicher."

Quoting Senator Roberts the article continues: "It might flush somebody out who knew about Scott," said Roberts, a leader in the efforts to recover Speicher. "There were probably three, four or five people who even knew about him. He was more or less a pet prisoner of Saddam."

"....Roberts, who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, acknowledged that in a recent closed-door briefing with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz he had pushed the idea of circulating posters with Speicher's photograph because he wanted "every Iraqi citizen to know exactly what Captain Speicher looks like." The posters and the prospect of a reward should produce a flood of information, Roberts said, although much of it is likely to be useless."

Based on the comments of Senator Roberts contained in the May 2003 Associated Press article, Senator Pat Roberts certainly spoke as though a reward was in place, or about to be put in place.

While we have no direct quotes, it would seem Senator Bill Nelson also believed the reward was in place. We base this assumption on a quote from Senator Nelson's March 1, 2004 letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. In that letter Senator Nelson states: "During a recent briefing I was told your office has decided not to continue offering a $1 million reward for information leading to the resolution of Capt. M. Scott Speicher's fate."

"....Not to continue offering....." To us that sounds like Senator Nelson believed the reward was being offered. For the full text of Senator Nelson's letter visit http://www.nationalalliance.org/gulf/nelson.htm

Another Associated Press article filed March 9 2004, by Libby Quaid, states: "Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., on Tuesday urged Pentagon officials to offer money and other incentives for information on a Navy pilot who was shot down on the opening night of the 1991 Gulf War."

"Offering a reward "is the least we can do," Roberts wrote Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a letter released Tuesday. "Given the past handling of Capt. Speicher's case to date, the refusal to offer this reward would add insult to injury," Roberts wrote."

The article continued, clarifying the reward stating: "Lawmakers asked the Pentagon to offer a $1 million reward as part of last year's defense spending authorization. They urged the reward be offered in a non-binding "sense of Congress" provision in the bill."

From what we have learned, it is our understanding that while voted on as part of the Defense Authorization Act the reward was included as a "Sense of the Senate" which is a recommendation, rather then binding law.

While it seems Senator Roberts and Nelson believed the reward had been offered, the Pentagon did nothing. Nor, did they correct the misunderstanding that there was a reward.

If Senators Roberts and Nelson believed the reward in was effect, we can only assume the Speicher family also believed there was a reward.

As for the media, no correction to the original May 2003 article could be found, leaving the impression that there was a reward. Based on this the American public was also misled.

As it stands now, there is no $1 Million reward for Capt. Scott Speicher. There never was!

The Pentagon mislead two Senators, the Speicher family, the press and the American public.

Imagine, the Pentagon allowing misleading information on an American POW/MIA to stand.... What are the odds.................


Support the $1 Million Reward -- We urge all reading this to visit htttp://www.petitiononline.com/01171991/ Sign the petition calling upon Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to offer the reward for Capt. Speicher.

If Saddam is worth $25 million how much is an American Serviceman worth? Right now, the Pentagons answer to that is..... nothing!

Call the President at 202-456-1414 and let your voices be heard. E-mail the President at president@whitehouse.gov Ask him to direct Secretary Rumsfeld to honor the "Sense of the Senate" authorization of the reward for Scott Speicher.


U.S. Seeks Records of Siberia Camps -- from the Associated Press.... "The Pentagon wants Russian help in searching records of forced labor camps from the Arctic Ocean to central Siberia and the Soviet Far East. Among camps cited by a Russian emigre as having detained World War II or Korean War GIs:"

Peveka, near Strelka along the Angara River in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia. Four unidentified Americans were said to have been held at Peveka, apparently in the early 1950s.

Rybak, well above the Arctic Circle near Chelyuskin Bay on the Taymyr peninsula. GIs freed by Soviet soldiers from German prison camps during World War II reportedly were taken to Rybak.

Kirovskij, a mining camp along the Kamenka River north of Krasnoyarsk and west of Lake Baikal. At least 22 Americans were seen at Kirovskij in the winter of 1951-52.

Bodaibo, along the Vitim River north of Lake Baikal. An unspecified number of GIs from World War II reportedly were executed here."


Unusual MIA case among Pentagon family briefings - February 24, 2004 from the Honolulu Advertiser, by Mike Gordon - "When Pentagon officials meet tonight with relatives of Hawai'i servicemen missing in action from the Korean and Vietnam wars, they'll bring files on U.S. Army Pfc. Chan Jay Park Kim, whose incredible case sounds as if it came out of a spy novel. The closed-door briefing at the Hilton Hawaiian Village is part of routine updates by the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office. Relatives of 13 MIAs from Hawai'i are expected."

"Kim's case is anything but routine. Kim was captured by North Korean forces on July 8, 1950, and his family knew little about what happened to him except that he was in a POW camp with a brutal warden. In 1999, however, Pentagon investigators obtained the memoirs of a Russian emigre who claimed that 22 American servicemen from World War II and the Korean War were detained in Siberian labor camps."

"Kim, who used the alias George Leon, was the only person who could be matched with a missing American serviceman. Soldiers who knew him have said Kim used that alias because he was of Korean descent. The memoirs have not led to any further revelations, recovery of remains or repatriation of missing servicemen. Still, Kim's nephew, Gordon Kim, believes the memoirs are true."

"It is not improbable," Kim said. "In fact, I think it could have happened pretty easily. For that one name to be on a list and for members of his unit to connect it to him ... How do you make up a name like George Leon?"

"Kim does not think that his uncle will ever be found, however. "I think that if he went to this gulag place we will probably never recover his body," he said. "I don't think he could be alive. That's my gut feeling. But if

he ended up buried somewhere in a battlefield, in that case, I have confidence that his remains could be recovered some day."

"....And yet, Gordon Kim would like to give his uncle's two surviving siblings a bit of closure in the waning years of their lives. "For my dad and my uncle, I wish they could put it to rest," he said. "Either find his remains and bring them home or at least know for sure what happened to him."

"The briefings will take as long as required tonight with each family receiving one-on-one discussions tailored to their case, said Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office."

"..... The Siberian labor camp memoirs are intriguing. Even though they have not yielded much, military officials cannot dismiss them, Greer said. "It's like a 50-year-old detective case," he said. "We're not discounting any of it. There is a match, tenuous though it may be."


For More on the Russian Memoir Visit -- http://www.nationalalliance.org/korea/memoirs.htm


Giving a Home to Remains -- More and more we are finding families who, worn down by years of uncertainty, and outright lies, are accepting questionable remains identifications. The following comes from an article published March 13th in San Jose Mercury News. The article, by Brandon Bailey and Betty Barnacle, reports on the remains "identification" of Air Force Col. Louis F. Jones.

According to the article "As a uniformed trumpeter played taps on a sunny spring afternoon, a small amount

of remains from Col. Jones' 1967 crash site were solemnly laid to rest. The funeral was held nearly two years after the fragments of bones and a tooth were discovered on a site near the old Ho Chi Minh Trail, and only after family members reconciled their mixed feelings about the right thing to do."



"This is for my children," said Marian Jones, now 77 and a retired Los Gatos real estate broker, whose search for her husband drew headlines in the 1970s. "We decided to make it a closure."

".....Marian Jones said she still questions the official identification of the remains. But she finally accepted her son Jonathan's desire to have a Christian burial for his father, a Texas native who was an ordained Baptist minister as well as a decorated fighter pilot."

"We have conflicting opinions," acknowledged Jonathan Jones, a soft-spoken, 46- year-old Fremont businessman, who was just 9 when his father's plane was shot down."

"His mother and older sister, Rhonda Jane Jones of Monterey, had reservations. But Jonathan Jones said talking with a military pathologist and reading the government's scientific report had convinced him the remains are his father's."

"....The discovery of remains at Col. Jones' crash site provoked a new debate. The bone fragments and tooth did not provide a lot of evidence. The government compared dental records but did not perform a DNA test. Marian Jones felt it was all too circumstantial."

"Her son disagreed. Jonathan Jones said he also felt, "if there was the remotest possibility that this was my father, that he deserves a Christian burial. And regardless of whose remains they are, they deserve to be buried and not sit on a shelf in the morgue."


Why does Johnnie Webb Still Have A Job???????????????


The National Alliance Of Families Fifteenth Annual Forum is scheduled for June 24th - 26th, 2004. Our forum is conducted to coincide with the Governments annual Vietnam POW/MIA Family Briefings. We urge all family members to attend this years government briefings. A separate briefing for Korean/Cold War families will be held April 30 - May 1. The government will provide free airfare to two family members to attend the government briefings. There is no charge or registration fee to attend the government briefings and you do not have to belong to an organization to attend these briefings.

This year the Alliance meeting will be held at the Sheraton Crystal City (same as last year) located at 1800 Jefferson Davis Highway, in Arlington Va. Rate for single or double occupancy is $99.00 per night plus tax.

The hotel is located across the street from both the Crystal City Underground Food Court and the Metro Stop. The Sheraton is within walking distance of the hotel hosting the government briefings. The Alliance is working on transportation between hotels for those who prefer to ride. To make your reservations, call 703-486-1111 and remember to say you want the special National Alliance of Families rate.

The Alliance is an all volunteer organization. Our meetings are open to all, without charge. At this time of year, we actively seek contributions to finance our forum. If you wish to contribute, donations may be mailed to:

National Alliance Of Families
P.O. Box 40327 Bellevue, Wa. 98015.



DOLORES ALFOND - National Chairperson (dolores@nationalalliance.org)
425-881-1499

LYNN O'SHEA - Director of Research (lynn@nationalalliance.org)
718-846-4350"