THE TRANSFER OF U.S. KOREAN WAR POWs
TO THE SOVIET UNION

Joint Commission Support Branch
Research and Analysis Division
DPMO

26 August 1993

WORKING PAPERS

This study was prepared
by
Mr. Peter G. Tsouras, DAC
Major Werner Saemler Hindrichs, USAF
Master Sergeant Danz F. H. Blasser, USAF

with the assistance
of

Second Lieutenant Timothy R. Lewis, USAF
Mr. Paul H. Vivian, DAC
Staff Sergeant Linda R. H. Pierce, USA
Sergeant Gregory N. Vukin, USA

WORKING PAPERS

This study is to be used for internal use only. It contains subjective evaluations, opinions, and recommendations concerning on-going analysis that may impact future U.S. foreign policy decisions. This document has not yet been finalized for public release.

WORKING PAPERS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

U.S. Korean War POWs were transferred to the Soviet Union and never repatriated.

This transfer was a highly secret MGB program approved by the inner circle of the Stalinist dictatorship.

The rationale for taking selected prisoners to the USSR was:

To exploit and counter U.S. aircraft technologies;

to use them for general intelligence purposes;

It is possible that Stalin, given his positive experience with Axis POWs, viewed U.S. POWs as potentially lucrative hostages.

The range of eyewitness testimony as to the presence of U.S. Korean War POWs in the GULAG is so broad and convincing that we cannot dismiss it.

The Soviet 64th. Fighter Aviation Corps which supported the North Korean and Chinese forces in the Korean War had an important intelligence collection mission that included the collection, selection and interrogation of POWs.

A General Staff-based analytical group was assigned to the Far East Military district and conducted extensive interrogatins of U.S. and other U.N. POWs in Khabarovsk. This was confirmed by a distinguished retired Soviet officer, Colonel Gavriil Korotkov, who participated in this operation. No prisoners were repatriated who related such an experience.

Prisoners were moved by various modes of transportation. Large shipments moved through Manchouli and Pos'yet.

Khabarovsk was the hub of a major interrogation operation directed against U.N. POWs from Korea. Khabarovsk was also a temporary holding and transshipment point for U.S. POWs. The MGB controlled these prisoners, but the GRU was allowed to interrogate them.

Irkutsk and Novosibirsk were transhipment points, but the Komi ASSR an Perm Oblast were the final destinations of many POWs. Other camps where American POWs were held were in the Bashkir ASSR, the Kemerovo and Archangelsk Oblasts, and the Komi-Permyatskiy and Taymyskiy National Okrugs.

POW transfers also included thousands of South Koreans, a fact confirmed by the Soviet general officer, Kan San Kho, who served as the Deputy Chief of the North Korean MVD.

The most highly-sought-after POWs for exploitation were F-86 pilots and other knowledgeable of new technologies.

Living U.S. witnesses have testified that captured U.S. pilots were, on occasion, taken directly to Soviet-staffed interrogation centers. A former Chinese officer stated that he turned U.S. pilot POWs directly over to the Soviets as a matter of policy.

Missing F-86 pilots, whose captivity was never acknowledged by the Communists in Korea, were identified in recent interviews with former Soviet intelligence officers who served in Korea. Captured F-86 aircraft were taken to at least three Moscow aircraft design bureaus for exploitation. Pilots accompanied the aircraft to enrich and accelerate the exploitation process.

Introduction1

Part I: Technological Exploitation3

The First Modern Air War3
The Technology Gap3
The 64th. Fighter Aviation Corps3
The Soviet Interrogation Effort4
The Soviet Hunt for F-86 Pilots5
The 15 F-86 Pilots That Came Home8
A Chinese Link in the Chain of Evidence11
A Special Air Force Unit11
Avraham Shifrin12
The Soviet Hunt for the F-86 Sabre Jet12
Sand in the Fuselage13
MGB and GRU: Who Did What? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
Three Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
The Case of Cpt Albert Tenney, USAF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
The Case of Roland Parks, USAF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
The Case of Cpl Nick A. Flores, USMC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Part II: The Hostage Connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26

POW Exploitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
The Stalin - Chou En-lai Meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Lieutenant General Kan San Kho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
Colonel Gavril I. Korotkov . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
Lieutenant Colonel Philip J. Corso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31
Lieutenant Colonel Delk Simpson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
John Foster Dulles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
Captain Mel Gile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35
CCRAK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Zygmunt Nagorski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
Turkish Traveler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Part III: Evidence From Within the Soviet Union . . . . . . . . 40

Sightings in the Komi ASSR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40
Sightings in Khabarovsk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Sightings in Irkutsk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45
Sightings in Taishet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46
Sightings in Mordova . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46
Sightings in Novosibirsk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47
Sightings in the Bashkir ASSR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Sightings in Norilsk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47
Sightings in Kemerovo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Sightings in Kazakh SSR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Sightings in Archangesk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Patterns Among the Sightings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Postscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51
Appendices

Appendix A: How Many Men Are Truly Unaccounted For? . . . . . . . 53

Appendix B: 31 Missing USAF F086 Pilots Whose Loss Indicates Possible Capture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . .57

Appendix C: Korean War USAF F086 Pilots Who Were Captured and Repatriated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Appendix D: Outstanding Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Appendix E: Individual Sources of Information Cited in this Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Appendix F: Soviet Officers Whose Names Appear On Interrogations of U.S. Korean War POWs . . . . . . . .76

TABLES

Table 1. USAF Korean War Pows On Whom the Russian Archives Should Have Information . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Table 2. BNR Cases Where Death Was Witnessed by Repatriates or Otherwise Documented . . . . . . . . . 55

The United States lists 8,140 casualties from the Korean War whose remains have not been repatriated. Some of that number are "truly unaccounted for" in that there is not evidence at all as to the circumstances of their loss or to their ultmate fate. One estimate is provided at Appendix A. (1) Since the Joint Commission was established, a mass of convincing evidence has accumulated that U.S. POWs were taken to the Soviet Union in a tightly controlled MGB operation and never repatriated.

We believe that the transfer of U.S. POWs to the Soviet Union involved two separate programs.

1. Technological Exploitation. This program was a pure intelligence collection program for the purpose of acquiring high-tech equipment and their operators technical exploitation. The F086 Sabre Jet was the great prize. However, we believe that Soviet intelligence collection requirements were not limited to the F086. There is growing evidence that other types of aircraft, including the B-29, were also the subject of intelligence collection.

2. The Hostage Connection. The other program was based on the collection of POWs as hostages and for general inteligence exploitation.

These programs are discussed in Parts I and II which present our assessment of the origins and operation of the transfers.

From the conduct of the transfer operation, we switch in Part III to the next stage in the issue: evidence of Americans actually within the Soviet concentration camp system. Here we discuss the mass of sightings by citizens of the former USSR of U.S. Korean War POWs.

Note 1: Throughout this document references will be made by various quoted sources to the primary Soviet security organ as the NKVD, the MGB, or the KGB. All references are to the same organization and represent only an organizational name change. At the time of the Korean War, the organization was titled the MGB and will be referred to as such. Quotations will not be altered where the speaker is imprecise. The MGB (Ministerstvo Gosudarstvenoi Bezopasnosti) was formed in March 1946 by the merging of the NKVD and the NVD (Ministry of Internal Security). This new organization was broken back into its original two parts in March 1953 after Stalin's death. That part that had been the NKVD was renamed the KGB.

Note 2: Task Force Russia was organized under the auspices of the U.S. Army in June 1992 to support the U.S. side of the U.S. - Russian Joint Commission on POW/MIAs. There were two elements in the Task Force: (1) The Washington-based analytical, translation, and administrative element (TFR-H), and (2) the Moscow-based research, interview, and liaison group (TFR-M). In June 1993, Task Force Russia was subordinated to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/MIA Affairs, and TFR-H was renamed the Joint Commission Support Branch (JCSB). The Moscow-based element will continue to be designated Task Force Russia - Moscow (TFR-M).

Note 3: Translations of documents provided by the Russian side of the Joint Commission were translated by TFR-H and are numbered as TFR documents, e.g., TFR-36, and are referred to as such in the narrative.

The First Modern Air War. One of the worst-kept secrets of the Cold War was the head-to-head clash in Korea between the two former Allies of World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States. Although the ground war was fought essentially with the weaponry and tactics of the new air power technologies of the postwar world. The Korean War was the first modern air war and was characterized by an entirely new techonology that was electronics intensive and depended not only on the keen wits and high mastery of the pilots flying the jet combat aircraft but on a host of advanced support activities such as air-intercept radar and airborne reconnaissance.

The Technology Gap. This was the backdrop for an even more insidious form of warfare. The Soviet Union cloaked its participation in the Korean War partly to conceal its urgent need to bridge the techonological gap with the West, which was widening geometrically even then. Based upon a precedent repeatedly acknowledged by senior Soviet officers, which began with the wholesale reverse engineering of the Massey-Ferguson tractor by the State Automobile Factory in the 1930s, the Willys Jeep in the 1940s, and a variety of propeller technology aircraft during World War II, the Soviets sought to avert the inevitable by systemized theft of design.

The 64th Fighter Aviation Corps. The Soviet Union initiated its battlefield testing in the Korean War with the activation of the 64th Fighter Aviation Corps Headquarters in Antung: (now Dandong), Manchuria, in November 1950, just as North Korea teetered on the edge of destruction. The Corps was charged with a threefold mission: (1) air defense of the area north of the 38th Parallel; (2) protection of the trans-Yalu bridges; and (3) training of North Korean and Chinese pilots. Analysis of documents provided by the Russian side, however, shows that the 64th had yet another mission: the management of the overt and covert Human forces. A review of the documents provided by the Russians reveals regular and intense coordination between Moscow, the senior advisors to the Korean General Staff, and the Commander of the 64th Fighter Aviation Corps (General Georgii A. Lobov) on a variety of topics related to prisoner of war interrogation and control. The gaps in this document insinuate a direct role which the Russian side to date denies.

The air-focused Soviet priorities are perhaps best summed up by the comment of retired Colonel Aleksandr Semyonovich Orlov, a veteran of the 64th, and the chief (note above says not a chief) of intelligence for one of its divisions. He casually dismissed the significance of ground forces personnel with the comment that he knew more about the operations of the American infantry battalion that a U. S. Army captain would. Orlov, himself a captain at the time of the Korean War, then described in painstaking details Soviet intelligence collection requirements which were focused on aircraft technical parameters. (2)

The Soviet Interrogation Effort. The Soviet interrogation effort was largely disguised. Soviet interrogators, when present for interviews, wore Korean and Chinese uniforms without visible rank, and in some cases were ethnic Koreans or other oriental Soviet nationalities. One such officer is Colonel Georgii Plotnikov, who called himself by the Korean translation of his name Kim-Mok-Su, which means carpenter in both languages. (3) Another Soviet officer was a Buryat Mongol. (4) Most Soviet involvement was probably concentrated on the preparation and translation of collection requirements to be filled by their North Korean and Chinese allies. Some, however, appears to have taken place without the Chinese and North Koreans. One such case is that of escaped POW Marine Colonel Nick A. Flores who was mistaken for an F086 pilot when captured by Soviet anti-aircraft troops and sent directly to Soviet interrogation at a Soviet airbase in Antung. This case is developed in more depth at the end of this section. Additionally, General Lobov, Commander of the 64th Fighter Aviation Corps, has stated that at some point in the war, the Chinese and North Koreans became somewhat less cooperative in turning over captured U.S. POWs for interrogation. As a result, Lobov had 70 Soviet teams out looking for shot down U.S. pilots. (5)

According to one report, Stalin had singled out U.S. Air Force POWs to be held as hostages. (6)

All USAF Pows already held in the camp system were segregated from other POWs, held in separate camps under Chinese jurisdiction on North Korean territory, and subjected to interrogation by Chinese and Soviet personnel. One such POW was USAF Sergeant Daniel Oldewage who has stated that he and a number of other captured USAF NCOs were transported to Antung for interrogation by the Chinese and the Soviets. Oldewage stated that the Soviets were dressed in Chinese uniforms and appeared to be pilots based upon their thorough professional understanding of air operations against the B-29. (7)

The Soviet Hunt for F-86 Pilots

According to U.S. Air Force data, 1,303 USAF personnel were declared missing for all reasons between 25 June 1950 and 27 July 1953. After reclassification, this figure had been reduced to 666 whose bodies were not recovered (BNR). (8) Of that number, the argument can be made from an analysis of their circumstances of loss, that several hundred survived their crashes and were potential candidates for transfer to the Soviet Union. There is almost blatant evidence that this was, indeed, the case for a number of technically proficient, well-educated, and highly-skilled pilots of the F-86 Sabre jet. Most captured American pilots who did not die in the prison camps did in fact return. However, these is one major statistical aberration: the F086 pilots.

A total of 56 F-86 aircraft were downed in aerial combat or by anti-aircraft artillery. From these aircraft, 15 live pilots (Appendix C) and one set of remains were repatriated. Of the 40 remaining losses, for whom no pilots were repatriated, the circumstances of loss indicate a high probability of death for nine. Of the remaining cases (Appendix B), conditions were such that survival was possible. The 55 percent missing in action rate is unusually high compared to missing rates for pilots flying other airframes.

In late Summer 1992, the Russian side provided two lists of U.S. POWs that they stated had been provided to them by the Chinese and/or North Koreans. (9) One list had 59 names and the other 71 names. There were 42 names that appeared in both lists and in almost identical sequence. The list of 59 names purported to be of those POWs who had transited an interrogation point. On a number of documents provided by the Russian side (translated in TFR-76) were the names of Soviet officers who had had some role in interrogations or the reporting process. The most prominent of them was a Lieutenant General Razuvayev whose position was such that he could report on occasion directly to the Defnese Minister and the Chief of the General Staff. (10) The names of these Soviet officers are at Appendix F.

At the request of the American side, the Russian side provided the interrogation files associated with these two lists. However, the Russians provided files for only 46 individuals. By reviewing the archival data handwritten on the files, Task Force Russia determined that 120 pages were missing. In those cases where interrogation material was missing, another 41 names can be correlated from the two lists. (11) Analysis of ancillary information and coordination with Air Force Casualty Affairs indicates that the 120 missing pages should contain data on eight identifiable MIAs. In addition to these eight, a ninth MIA was identified in the interrogation files who name was not on either list. The nine MIAs are listed below. (12)

Of the seven pilots in this group, three flew the F-86 and one the experimental RB-45C reconnaissance aircraft, types of aircraft in which the Soviets had high interest. In addition to the F-86s, the Soviets would have had an equally high inerest in the RB-45C flown by Major Charles McDonough. The North American RB-45C was the first operational U.S. multi-engine jet bomber employed by the U.S. Air Force, and its reconnaissance configuration would have made it doubly interesting. (13) The Russians have even provided evidence of their interest in the B-45 series in a document dated 6 February 1951 in which intelligence collections requirements against U.S. forces in Korea were listed (TFR 34-46). (14) U.S. records also show that SSgt Bergmann, a radar operator on a B-29, was interrogated at least once by the Soviets.(15) Furthermore, retired Soviet Colonel Viktor A. Bushuyev, Deputy Chief of Intelligence for the 64th Fighter Aviation Corps stated that they had attempted to interrogate an F-86 pilot named Neimann or Naiman that most likely was 1LT Robert F. Niemann, USAF, shot down on 12 April 1953. (16) Another pilot among the 31 missing was mentioned in an interview by Colonel Valentin Sozinvo. He stated:

The name of Major Delit came up in my conversation with Lobov. I don't know what his position is. But he also ejected and was captured and then escorted somewhere. I think he was on the People's Republic of China territory.(17)

We believe this individual is Major Deltis H. Fincher, USANG, shot down on 22 August 1952.

The 15 F-86 Pilots That Came Home

Colonel Valentin Sozinov, an advisor to the Korean General Staff, admits to having interrogated one of the leading F-86 personalities, Colonel Walker `Bud' Mahurin, a World War II ace and a wing commander in Korea who was eventually repatriated. (18) However, in a recent interview, Colonel Mahurin recently stated that he had no memory of being interrogated by Soviet personnel.(19)

We believe that there were four critical factors that could have led to Colonel Mahurin's eventual repatriation, as well as the return of the other 14 F-86 pilots who were repatriated (Appendix B): (1) In the case of Colonel Mahurin and the other 14 pilots, one critical factor may have been that they had been seen by too many people in the POW camp system. Having been formally enrolled in a prisoner of war camp, moving them to another country might have been considered too obvious. It is doubtful that there was any contact at all between the aviators who are still considered missing and those who were repatriated. (20) Whereas prisoner of war status may not have assured survival, it possibly assured accountability. (2) The second critical factor was the nature of the intelligence collection requirement for F-86 pilots. A collection requirement like this probably was specialized and probably changed over time. An example of this interrogation over a short period of time of all B-52 crewmen in Camp # 2, described in a U.S. report as bing "prompted by an intelligence requirement. (21) Documents provided by the Russians (TFR-76) of interrogations show a great interest in the advanced models of the F-86. In this case, there would have been no need to take all the F-86 pilots. (3) The third factor may have been a matter of quality. Initial interrogations of F-86 pilots may have indicated which would have been the most useful in meeting intelligence requirements. Repatriated pilots may not have been suitable. (4) Pilots shot down over China were eventually turned over to the Chinese. Of the fifteen F086 repatriated pilots, three were detained by the Chinese and released with the Arnold B-29 crew in 1955. They were 1Lt Roland Parks, 1Lt Edwin Heller, 1Lt Harold E. Fischer. All three had all been shot down and captured in China. (22)

The fact that the Soviets did not transfer these fifteen pilots to the Soviet Union does not mean that the Soviets did not take an interest in them. Of the 15 repatriated F-86 pilots, the Russians have provided information showing that the following seven were interrogated.

1Lt Charles E. Stall
1Lt Daniel D. Peterson
1Lt Vernon D. Wright
1Lt Michael E. Dearmond
1Lt Vance R. Frick
1Lt Roland W. Parks
Col Edwin L. Healer
One of these pilots, 1Lt Roland Parks, will have an interesting tale to tell later in his narrative.

Soviet pilots also had interesting stories of contact with U.S. POWs. Lieutenant Colonel (ret) Roshchin stated that an American pilot named Muller had also been shot down. Roshchin described Muller as a "real master, the number one American pilot" who "shot down more than ten planes." Roshchin described a photo of the pilot standing next to the tail of his aircraft.(23) We believe he was describing 1Lt Harold E. Fischer, the only Korean War ace with ten kills to his credit, and the only ace among those at any time carried as missing. Fischer stated that the only contact he had with Soviets was right after his shoot down and capture in China. Two Soviets arrived and confiscated his only two possessions, his ID card and a photo of his crew chief standing next to his F-86. Subsequently, this very photo was produced by the Soviet ace who claimed to have shot 1Lt Fischer down.(24)

A Chinese Link in the Chain of Evidence. An interview with Shu Ping Wa, a former head of a division-level POW collection team (164th Division) in the so-called Chinese People's Volunteers (CPV) serving in Korea, showed that a policy existed to turn over pilots to the Soviets. As he testified in the video recording shown at the April 1993 Commission meeting in Moscow, he himself turned over three American pilots to the Soviets just north of the front lines some time in the Winter months between November 1951 and March 1952. He stated that his superior told him that the "Russians wanted the pilots."(25)

A Special Air Force Unit. According to Dr. Paul Cole's interview with General Lobov, a special Soviet Air Force unit was organized and deployed, under the command of General Blagoveshchenskii, with the mission to capture F-86 pilots. Its mission was to force down Sabre jets in order to capture the pilots alive. The unit was composed of flyers from units in Mary, in the Turkmen SSR, and from the Primorskii Krai along the Pacific coast. Nine expert pilots were assigned to this mission, each of whom was required to sign a secrecy statement.(26)

The mission was to cut a Sabre jet out of a dog fight, then force it to land intact. If the plan worked, the plane and the pilot could be captured simultaneously. In 1951 the mission was a failure. In the course of the operation the Soviet pilots in this unit were forbidden to engage American aircraft in combat. The Soviets managed, however, to damage one Sabre jet which then made a forced landing. It is not known what happened to the pilot, though the Soviet pilots participating in the mission were told the American pilot managed to escape to the Yellow Sea where he was picked up by U.S. search and rescue forces. Some of the Soviet pilots doubted this version of events since they saw the American land several kilometers from the sea.(27)

Senior Lieutenant Vladimir Roshchin, author of the Korean War memoirs cited by Major Amirov in the publication, Na Strazhe, distinctly recalls seeing documents in the office of his regimental commander about the capture of an American pilot named Carl Crone in conjunction with a special operation in 1951 to capture an F-86. One of the 31 missing F-86 aviators believed likely to have survived is Captain William Delbert Crone.(28)

Major Avraham Shifrin. The most specific comments by former Soviet officers concerning the transfer of F-86s and their pilots to the USSR were those made by former Major Avraham Shifrin, at that time a lawyer in the Ministry for Military Production. Shifrin discussed his relationship with renowned aircraft cannon designer A. Nudelmann and General (NFI) Dzhakhadze (29), commander of Vasilii Stalin's support regiment at Bykova, near Moscow.(30)

Shifrin recalls that Nudelmann expressed regular concern about the F-86, and about the recurring jamming problems with the cannon he designed for the MiG-15. He also recalled that Dzhakhadze related having to fly to Korea in his "Douglas, in order to pickup crash parts of MiGs and F-86s." Dzhakhadze had related to Shifrin that while he was in Korea on such a mission, the `security organs' had asked him to transport a group of American F-86 pilots to Kansk in Western Siberia. The move had been done clandestinely, with the pilots travelling in civilian clothes under security escort.(31)

The Hunt for the F-86 Sabre Jet

Practically all Soviet officers interviews about Human Intelligence collection in Korea have concentrated on the F-86 in more or less detail. A significant number of documents provided by the Russian side likewise focus on this airframe.

Two senior Soviet officers distinctly remember a specific mission to capture an F-86, preferably intact, for the purpose of technical exploitation. Several others have commented on knowing about such missions. In a December 1991 interview, Colonel Georgii Plotnikov stated "our troops were hunting for F-86. (32)

On 30 March 1992, Colonel Valentin Sozinov recalled a specific order to capture an F-86. Even General Lobov has stated:

We wanted the F-86 gun sight at all costs. One F-86 crashed after it was hit. The aircraft lost fuel which prevented the pilot from ditching in the sea. The other F086 landed in shallow water at low tide, the only problem was the gun sight had been damaged by gun fire by the crash.(33)

Major Valerii Amirov, writing in Na Strazhe on 30 June 1992, again describes the arrival in North Korea in 1951 of the special detachment charged with the specific mission of taking an aircraft intact:

This was very difficult to do, even though the best pilots joined this newly formed unit. During a battle, nine planes tried to force a Sabre to the ground and to force the pilot to land. But it didn't work and our men took losses... During a routine raid by American aviation, a fragment of an anti-aircraft shell damaged the rudder of one of the engines and the pilot landed on the seashore... Around the downed Saber, a lively aerial battle was declared right away. The Americans rushed in to destroy the plane with bombs, the Soviet pilots to protect it until the ground forces could access it. Finally, we succeeded in saving the Saber; it was disassembled, and was shipped to the Soviet Union. The fate of the American pilot remained unknown.(34)

Sand in the Fuselage. In addition to officers of the 64th Fighter Aviation Corps in Korea, other former Soviet officers had memories of the seashore landings. On 30 March 1993, Task Force Russia of Moscow (TFR-M) interviewed a retired KGB lieutenant colonel Yuriy Lukianovich Klimovich, who had served in Korea and recounted that there was an effort to capture intact F-86s.(35) He also stated that he knew of an F-86 that had been forced down on a beach and transported to the Sukhoi Design Bureau in Moscow for exploitation.

Klimovich had appeared on the Ostankino 1 TV News Magazine show "Chorta S Dva" and told of two F-86 "Sabre" fighters being brought to Moscow in 1951/52. Klimovich told TFR-M that a very close friend and confidant, now deceased, had confided to him that a U.S. F-86 and an American pilot had been brought to Moscow. His friend reportedly told Klimovich that one of the aircraft was in excellent condition and disassembled at the Sukhoi Design Bureau in an attempt to copy it. Klimovich said that neither his friend nor he knew what happened to the alleged American pilot since he fell immediately into KGB hands.(36)

Lieutenant Colonel Klimovich then escorted Task Force Russia interviewers to the Sukhoi Design Bureau where they met designers who clearly remembered that an F-86 had been brought to the bureau during the Korean War. These designers confirmed Klimovich's assertion that two F-86s had been brought to Moscow, one in good and the other in poor condition. They recounted that it had been stripped of markings and serial numbers. None of them had spoken to an American pilot but they concluded that a pilot would be invaluable in helping them discern operational characteristics during reverse engineering. They did, however, receive information from a member of the project that appeared to be from a pilot. One of the designers remembered that this individual had once told him he was participating in the interrogation of the aircraft's pilot. The designers also stated that the aircraft had been at the Mikoyan-Burevich (MiG) Design Bureau.

The Task Force Russia interviewers then visited the Zhukovskii Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute (Tsentral'niy Aerohydrodynamicheskiy institut imeni Professora N. Ye. Zhukovskogo-Tsagi) (formerly MiG Design Bureau) on 1 April 1993 escorted by Lieutenant Colonel Klimovich. There they spoke to Professor Yevgeniy I. Rushitskiy, Chief of the Institute's Information Division and Chairman of the History Section.

During the course of the interview, Professor Rushitskiy confirmed that an F-86 had been delivered to the institute to be disassembled and copied. According to the professor, when they were finished, all parts from the F-86 were destroyed or recycled. He also stated that when the aircraft was delivered to them from the State Red Banner Scientific-Research Institute of the Air Force (37) at Chkalovskiy airfield north of Moscow, there were no longer markings or identification numbers of any kind on it.

One of the designers distinctly remembered the study and disassembly of a sand-filled fuselage of an F-86 at the design bureau. This source also remembered an American pilot having been available at another location for follow on questions. This story was repeated by other personnel from the Design Bureau.(38)

The remarkable central fact of this episode is that at least two and possibly three F-86 were captured and returned to Moscow for exploitation. At least one of the F-86s was captured by being forced down on a beach. This same information is provided by three separate sources: General Lobov, the retired KGB officer, and the designers from the Sukhoi and MiG Design Bureaus. The inescapable follow-on question deals with the presence of the pilots of the aircraft, held to assist in the exploitation of the aircraft. That presence is maintained by both the retired KGB officer and the designers. Who were the pilots? What became of them after they provided this information? Likely candidates are shown at Appendix 8.

MGB and GRU: Who Did What?

In interviews with numerou former officers of the GRU (Military Intelligence) who served during in the Korean War, a distinct picture emerges of the specific roles of both the GRU and the MGB in the handling of POWs. The military intelligence officers uniformly describe a division of labor in which Army personnel capture POWs, GRU officers conduct tactical and operational interrogations, and then POWs are turned over for custody and final disposition to the MGB. This system operated from before World War II to the present. These officers repeatedly assert that if any POWs were taken to the Soviet Union, it would have been a closely controlled operation of the MGB at the time.

Colonel Georgii Plotnikov was asked hypothetically if it would have been possible to effect such a transfer without GRU officers being aware of it. "Yes," he answered without hesitation. "It would have been a KGB [MGB] operation in cooperation with North Korean intelligence. The Soviet Army had no Gulag and was not prepared to deal with a stream of prisoners. The KGB [MGB] could do all these things." The Soviets had the capability to move POWs, the Koreans would have permitted such an operation, and transport across the PRC would have been no problem, in Plotnikov's view. "At the time there was train service from Pyongyang to Moscow with a stop in China." The POWs, he stated, "would have been loaded into trucks with canvas drawn around them, then transferred to trains at night... The North Koreans hated Americans. They would have cooperated in such an operation if asked by the Soviets. The North Koreans could have not said no to a Soviet request." In Plotnikov's view, "specialized organs" in the Soviet Union would have made requests for particular types of Americans. "Design Bureaus might have made such requests," he said. The Deputy Chairman of the KGB [MGB] would be the lowest political level that could have approved such an operation that kept the GRU out of the picture.

Grabbing American POWs [would have been a] political decision in response to a request. Infantry was of no interest to Soviet intelligence. There would have been no regular transfer. American POWs would have been moved as specialists fell into the camps. They would be identified and moved. The interst would not have been in people who operated equipment as much as it would have focused on people who understood the principles of how things worked.(39)

Plotnikov's `hypothesis' conforms to Avraham Shifrin's account of transfer of POWs by the "security organs" as well as the accounts of the exploitation of F-86s and at least one pilot by the Sukhoi and MiG Design Bureaus.

Further confirmation of the MGB role was provided by Major Valeri Amirov.

The intelligence center in Sarashogan (Sary Shagan) belonged to the KGB [MGB]. (handwritten note says NOT IN CHARGE) A task was [started] from 1949-1950. Soviet engineers started to design Soviet anti-aircraft and missile equipment and weaponry. In other words the SA-75 (SA-2 Guideline) complex that later provoked such noise in Vietnam. They had to creat a radar system for that complex and secondly, a missile system. The American Air Force then was better than the Soviet one, but its flying characteristics. They were mostly interested in teh Sabre planes, the F84 [the Sabre was the F-86], it was also called "Cross." They were interested in weak points of the American planes. How to guide a missile in order to make Air Force actions more difficult. Second, they were interested in flying characteristics, materials used for building these planes and so on.

The source [of the requirement] was one of Beria's [Chief of the MGB] deputies, who was curator of that complex's construction. The construction of that rocket complex was a state task. In other words, it was like Komsomol [Young Communist League] construction. It was one of the most important directions of the engineers activities. Since Korea was a first encounter of the Soviet and US Military equipment and technology, and the US Air Force was stronger then, there was a classified directive issued by the KGB... on collecting all the information concerning the US Air Force...

The First Directorate of the MGB was responsible for collecting information, and the other one, whose number I don't know, was in charge of providing security. Discipline was very strict. Pilots could not cross certain parallels in order to fall on thier own territory. In order to collect all the necessary data on the aircraft technology the first group was organized. They would collect planes' fragments and send them back through a window on the border. There was a window on the Soviet - [Chinese] border. Otpor station. This was the window for transporting planes, their fragments. They would transport equipment, all documents they could find. They transported all this through Otpor (40)- Alma Ata - Sarashogan [Sary Shogan]... (41)

Major Amirov further stated that in January-February 1952, the MGB issued a secret directive through the Ministry of Defense to forces in the field in Korea to not only try to shoot down planes but to also capture pilots. (42)

So far in the work of the Commission, most of the information provided by the Russian side has been from former officers of the GRU. There has been a traditional rivalry and animosity between the GRU and KGB that have influenced the uniform finger pointing by the GRU officers interviewed by the U.S. side. Unfortunately, the Russian side has provided no former officers of the MGB/KGB as sources of information. The only former officers of the MGB/KGB that have provided information have been those discovered through the research efforts of TFR-M. One was Lieutenant Colonel Klimovich who led TFR-M team mebers to the design bureaus. The other was KGB Lieutenant Colonel Valerii Lavrentsov whom TFR-M team members met in their early December visit to the Khabarovak Krai. He confirmed much of the information provided by the GRU officers.

Lavrentsov stated that during his research on Japanese and Korean POWs he ran across some interesting information that suggests that some Americans may have been held in Khabarovsk in "special houses" until they were able to recover from their wounds and were then sent on to Moscow and other places; however, there is no evidence in Khabarovsk who these people were.

Lavrentsov agreed with the TFR-M assertiong that the MGB would have been the only organization with enough resources to accomplish that mission, even if only a few Americans were involved. Although he did not exclude GRU participation, he speculated that the Americans could have been moved by either train, ship or air to the USSR, and that when they were in Soviet custody, their names would most certainly have been changed to Slavic ones. Lavrentsov suggested that an entire false background would have been concocted for each prisoner.

Lavrentsov said that the Americans would have been mainly pilots, taken for their technical expertise . . . According to Lavrentsov the GRU would have been interested in the technical information, however, the security and movement of the POWs would have been handled by special MGB troops sent from Moscow . . . The reason he knows this occurred was because he was able to find records of "unknown" people ordering food, drinks for "special houses."(43)

From the American side of the war, Lieutenant Colonel J. Philip Corso (Chief, Special Projects Branch of the Intelligence Division, Far East Command) was able to put together a picture of the personalities who ran the POW operations for the Communist side. This picture is reflected in the following statements:

The control system for POW camps in North Korea shows the extent of involvement of Soviet "Advisors." The Secretary General of the top secretariat was a Soviet officer named Takayaransky, Director General of the POW control bureau was a Colonel Andreyev, USSR; its Deputy Director, Lt. Col. Baksov, USSR; for the North Koreans, General Kim III, North Korean Army (alias Pak Dok San, USSR) and General Tu Fing, Chinese. The Chief of the Investigation Section (one of the three components of the bureau) was Colonel Faryayev, USSR). (44)

Three Case Studies:
Inadvertent Glimpses
into the Soviet Handling of POWs

The following three cases of Capt. Albert G. Tenney, 1Lt Roland Parks, and Corporal Nick Flores are examples of special handling of U.S. POWs by the Soviets. Capt. Tenney was never identified by the Communists during the Korean War as having been captured. 1Lt Parks and Cpl Flores were captured directly by the Soviets, interrogated, and, for unique reasons, turned over to the Chinese. We believe that save for these special circumstances, discussed below, both would have been likely candidates for transportation to the Soviet Union.

The Case of Captain Albert G. Tenney, USAF. Information on one of the pilots mentioned on Table 1, Capt. Albert G. Tenney has recently come to light. This information indicates that he and his aircraft may well have been transferred to the Soviet Union.

Several months ago, a Task Force Russia-Moscow interview revealed that in the early 1950's, an F-86 was captured intact in North Korea. This plane was shipped intact to the Soviet Union for technical exploitation by the MiG and Sukhoi design bureaus in Moscow. The interviews also stated that, at the time of delivery, the fuselage of the F-86 was filled with sand, indicating that the plane had made a forced landing on a beach. He also stated that the pilot of this aircraft accompanied the F-86 to Moscow, where he underwent debriefing.

The Joint Commission Support Branch recently interviewed former Korean era prisoner of war Brigadier General Michael Dearmond, USAF, ret. General Dearmond was an F-86 pilot who was shot down and subsequently interrogated by the Russians. He stated that he had never heard of pilots disappearing but recounted that one incident was mystifying to him. Dearmond's interrogator once brought an identification card and a "chitbook" (officer's club purchase coupon book) from an F-86 pilot and asked Dearmond to explain the "chitbook." Dearmond asked about the fate of the pilot and the Korean interrogator stated that the pilot had crashed into the Yalu River and died. Dearborn remembers that the pilot was a Lieutenant (Tenney was promoted to Captain while in MIA status). The mystery came in Dearmond's observation that given the fact that the pilot ostensibly died in the Yalu River, the "chitbook" was not, and appeared never to have been wet. Dearmond stated that he completely disbelieved the North Korean's account of the fate of the unidentified pilot.(45)

On 21 December 1992, 72 pages of Korean-era documents (TFR 76) were passed to Task Force Russia-Moscow by the Russian side of the Joint Commission. These documents dealt exclusively with the Korean War period. Among these documents were inventories of personal effects, documents, etc. taken from shot down pilots. Only one of these inventory lists (TFR 76-37) has an identification care and a "chitbook" (listed as: an Officer's club ticket with coupons for mess. Consisting of 7 pages in two booklets). This is the inventory list for the F-86 pilot Captain Albert G. Tenney.

Captain Tenney (see Appendix B for circumstances of loss) crashed in the water at the mouth of the Yalu River on 3 May 52. The circumstances of his crash lead analysts to believe that he could have survived the crash. If the Koreans had tried to salvage his plane, they most likely would have towed it to shore and onto the beach. Since the landing gear was up at the time of Captain Tenney's crash, the plane would have been dragged onto the beach nose first, accounting for the mass of sand in the fuselage.

One final piece of evidence is provided through material provided by the Russian side of the Joint Commission. Captain Tenney's name appears on the "List of 59" entitled "A List of United States Air Force Personnel Shot Down in Aerial Combat and by Anti-Aircraft Artillery During Military Operations in Korea, Who Transited Through an Interrogation Point."

The Case of First Lieutenant Roland Parks, USAF. The case of 1Lt Roland Parks, one of the repatriated F-86 pilots, is particularly interesting. In this instance, the Soviets directly interrogated an F-86 pilot, but because he had inadvertently violated Chinese airspace, eventually turned him over to the Chinese.

In an operation over North Korea his aircraft compass gyros became inoperative and he became separated from his flight. He finally ejected over the Liaotung Peninsula when he ran out of fuel somewhere between the Soviet military zone around Port Arthur and the Chinese city of Dairen. He was captured by Chinese peasants and picked up by Soviet personnel. He was taken to a Soviet airfield and briefly interrogated. Then he was taken to Port Arthur and rigorously interrogated by:

relatiely high-ranking Soviet military personnel. They went over the same questions, got the same answers but then extended the interrogation to a regular military intelligence interrogation. No question was raised as to the wrongfulness of his landing in Port Arthur. He recalled that the interpreter, whom he described as a wizened hunchback, had at one point said to him that `we may tell the United States Government that you were killed in a crash.' No reason was given him for turning him over to the Chinese Communists. (46)

1Lt Parks' experience was recounted in his own words in U.S. News & World Report:

17 Sep 52. The Russians told me they were taking me to Moscow. I had told them I did not want to be turned over to the Chinese, and that's probably why they told me they were taking me to Russia. I thought they were taking me to the Siberian salt mines. I had made up my mind taht if we kept going north toward Siberia I was going to go over the hill [escape] at all costs.

18 Sep 52. We . . . finally arrived in Antung about 3 p.m. Near Antung airfield we stopped. A Russian officer went away and came back in about an hour with some Chinese officers. Then I was blindfolded while we drove about 30 minutes more, stopping at what I learned later was a Chinese military base . . . The Russians took away from me everything Russian that they had given me, destroying any evidence that I had been in Russian hands."(47)

In the absence of 1Lt Parks' official debriefings(48), the JCSB reinterviewed him recently. He provided the following information:

About two weeks after Parks arrived at this compound [at the Port Arthur naval base], he was issued a full set of cold weather clothing: boots, overcoat, and shirts. Parks was told to put them on by the senior officer who questioned him. Parks was told, "We are leaving." Parks asked where he was being taken, and the Naval officer stated, "to Russia." Parks asked again, and the officer states, "Siberia, where your situation can be properly resolved for you to return to the U.S." Parks stated he did not want to go to Siberia because he had heard of the salt mines. The Naval officer stated that there were no salt mines in Siberia, and that he (the Naval officer) was certain becuase he was from Siberia. Parks asked why he was going to Siberia and was told, "because diplomats must resolve these cases, but you will go and be with other Americans like you." Parks was loaded onto a truck and never saw the Navy personnel again . . . For reasons that were not explained to Parks, he was taken by vehicle along the coastal road to the POW collection point in Antung, and was turned over to Chinese custody. Parks believes that they "changed their minds" about sending him to the Soviet Union because of his youth and lack of significant information.(49)

In this case, we have first-hand evidence that the Soviets interrogated an F-86 pilot directly with no Chinese or North Korean participation. Not only did they taunt him with hiding his POW status behind the plausible story that he had crashed but they also frankly stated that he would be transported to the Soviet Union. Only some unknown understanding with the Chinese resulted in his transfer to their custody. One can speculate that the Chinese would naturally be sensitive, as a matter of sovereigntu, about the custody of a U.S. pilot who landed on their territory. Since 1Lt Parks figured in the subsequent major propaganda campaign built around the so-called `Arnold B-29 Crew', the Chinese were probably eager to acquire U.S. pilots who could fill the bill of indictment that the U.S. had criminally violated Chinese sovereignty.

The Case of Corporal Nick Flores, USMC. Our most persuasive argument comes from the debriefing and recent personal account of former POW Corporal Nick A. Flores, USMC. (50) In Corporal Flores' case, we have a foot soldier who was interrogated by the Soviets at Antung because he was mistaken for an F-86 pilot.

Taken prisoner at Koto-ri in November 1950, Corporal Flores spent almost three years in a prisoner of war cmp. Corporal Flores resisted his captors at every opportunity and attempted to escape three times. On the last occasion, he stayed at liberty for approximately ten days. His fellow prisoners had outfitted him with uniform parts that would give him he best chance at survival: USAF boots, coveralls, and flight jacket, the latter with `U.S. Air Force' written on the front. Corporal Flores led a dozen men out of Camp One at Chang Song on 22 July 1952. The majority of the men returned to the camp due to sickness, wounds or illness, or fear, but Corporal Flores and one other POW pressed on. On 28 July they agreed to split up in order to increase the chance that one would escape to UN lines. Corporal Flores pushed on westward toward the coast since he had heard the U.S. Navy was operating off shore near Sinuiju.

On the morning of 1 August, however, he blundered into a camouflaged anti-aircraft position overlooking Sinuiju. There he surprised a group of Caucasians wearing `clean' uniforms and speaking Russian. Confronted by an apparent officer in English: "You are the American pilot," Flores was bound and blindfolded. Instead of being returned to his POW camp, he was bundled into a truck and taken across the twin bridges at Sinuiju to Antung in Manchuria. He was taken into a building where his escort officer turned him over to someone else, saying again in English, "Here is the American F-86 pilot." He then met a translator and an interrogator who introduced himself as a Soviet colonel whose name he cannot remember. During the interrogation, he heard the noise of several other people who appeared to have been listening.

Over the ensuing four-hour interrogation, Corporal Flores continued to maintain that he was a Marine enlisted man and an escaped POW but realized that his U.S. Air Force uniform clearly identified him as an aviator. What he did not know was that, shortly before he had stumbled upon the anti-aircraft position, another American had been in that vicinity. At 0920 hours, Major Felix Asla, USAF, piloting his F-86 in the vicinity of Sinuiju's twin bridges, was jumped by MIGs and was last seen spinning toward the southeast. Major Asla was never seen again.

During the four hours of interrogation, Corporal Flores was repeatedly told to confess that he was an F-86 pilot and was asked the indentity of his unit and the location of its operating base. The interrogator also pursued another line of questioning by asking repeatedly about his knowledge of germ warfare. Omniously, the interrogator said that "all the other pilots had confessed," so he should as well.

After approximately four hours, in which he was never physically mistreated or abused, another person came into the room and interrupted the interrogation with a message in Russian. The Soviet colonel was audibly distressed and upset with whatever information he had just received and broke off the interrogation. Corporal Flores was taken to another room and asked by someone identified as a nurse if he needed any medical help. She asked several questions posed as if he were a pilot, but left when he maintained he was not. After about 18 hours he was loaded aboard a truck, still blindfolded. The blindfold was then removed, and he was able to see the earth-covered bunker where he had been. It was located on a major airfield with rows of MiGs parked nearby. He was then driven back under guard across the Yalu river and turned over to North Korean authorities who returned him to Camp One.

The significance of Corporal Flores' experience in Soviet hands is that it demonstrates that the Soviets had a special handling procedure for pilots, especially F-86 pilots. This special procedure involved taking the captured pilot directly to a Soviet interrogation site, completely bypassing the normal POW camp processing procedures. This procedure confirms statements of Shu Ping Wa, who described the direct transfer of American pilots from capture to Soviet custody. There were three key elements of this special handling procedure illustrated in the experience of Corporal Flores:

1. He was taken drectly from capture to Soviet custody for interrogation.

2. He was believed to be the pilot of an F-86.

3. There was no mistreatment, in expectation of potential cooperation in the fulifllment of intelligence collection requirements.

Conclusions

The Soviets had a program of the highest priority to capture F-86 aircraft and pilots for technical exploitation.

The Soviet forces in North Korea had 70 teams whose mission was the recovery of U.S. pilots. The Chinese turned pilots over to Soviet officers as a matter of policy.

Soviet policy was to establish a veil of deniability over the transfer of prisoners by taking them directly after capture to the Soviet Union. Such prisoners were never mixed with the general POW population in North Korean or Chinese hands.

There is no record of repatriated U.S. POWs who were transported to the Soviet Union for technical exploitation and then repatraited.

The Soviet forces in Korea devised and executed a plan to force down at least one F-86 intact.

Intact F-86 aircraft and at least one pilot were delivered to the Sukhoi and Mikoyan Design Bureaus for exploitation.

A number of POWs, notably including F-86 pilots, were transferred by air to the Soviet Union for exploitation of their technical knowledge.

The evidence suggests that the Soviets had a special interest in the MIAs shown on Table 1 and specifically Capt Albert Tenney and 1Lt Robert Neimann. There is a good chance that Capt Tenney and his aircraft were transferred to the Soviet Union for exploitation.

Part II

The Hostage Connection

POW Exploitation. By the middle of 1050 when Stalin ordered the invasion of South Korea, the Soviet Union already had extensive experience with the transfer and incarceration of large numbers of prisoners. Tens of millions of its own citizens had been consigned to the GULAG as well as millions of German and Japanese POWs and POWs from other armies allied to the Axis. The Axis POWs, in particular, were specifically exploited as labor, much of it skilled, to rebuild the war-ravaged and labor-short Soviet Union. The labor camp system had become an industrial empire of Beria's NKVD within the Soviet Union, an empire constantly in need of fresh workers to replenish and expand the work force.

In 1950 the MVD produced a thousand-page study on the exploitation of foreign POWs. This Top Secret document was entitled, About Spies, Operative Work with POWs and Internees taken Prisoner During the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet People, 1041 - 1945. "This document surrarizes and assesses the methods and results of programs used to exploit foreign POWs on Soviet terrtory." (51) As part of this exploitation program, Soviet security agencies heavily recruited agents among these POWs to be activated upon their eventual return to their homelands. Additionally, the Soviet Union used the possession of these POWs to exact important political and economic concessions from the new governments of Germany and Japan. Therefore, by the middle of 1950, the Soviet Union had at hand a vast, well- practiced, efficiently-operating, and profitable system for the collection, incarceration, and exploitation of POWs.

The Stalin - Chou En-Lai Meeting. The exploitation of POWs as Soviet state policy was blatantly contained in the minutes of a 19 September 1952 meeting between Stalin and Chinese Foreign Minister Chou En-Lai in which he recommended that the Communists keep back twenty percent of United Nations POWs as hostages.

Stalin. "Concerning the proposal that both sides temporarily withhold twenty percent of the prisoners of war and that they return all the remaining prisoners of war - the Soviet delegation will not touch this proposal, and it remains in reserve for Mao Tse-tung." (52) This letter was provided by the Russian side of the Joint Commission. We believe that large numbers of United Nations POWs, the overwhelming number of whom were soldiers of the Republic of Korea Army (ROKA), were already being secreted away in camps throughout the Soviet Union, as will be shown by the statements of Lieutenant General Khan San Kho and Zygmunt Nagorski.

Lieutenant General Khan San Kho. The essence of the Stalin-Chou En-Lai meeting was corroborated by a senior retired Soviet officer, Khan San Kho, who had been seconded to the North Korean People's Army, promoted to the rank of lieutenant general, and who eventually served as the deputy chief of the North Korean MVD. He stated in November 1992 that he assisted in the transfer of thousands of South Korean POWs into 300 to 400 camps in the Soviet Union, most in the taiga but some in Central Asia as well. LTG Kahn's testimony shows the POW element of the GULAG was operating efficiently at this time in absorbing large numbers of UN POWs. Although LTG Khan admitted only to knowledge of Korean prisoners, his interview strongly suggests the possibility that other UN POWs, including Americans, could also have been condenmned to the camp system. (53)

Colonel Gavril I. Korotkov. Another Soviet source is retired Soviet Army Colonel Gavril Ivanovich Korotkov, who served from July 1950 to mid-1954 as part of a general staff-based analytical group reporting to Marshal Rodion Malinovskiy, then commander-in-chief, Far East Military District, on developments in intelligence (tactical and technical) gained from the ongoing war in Korea. Specifically, Korotkov's political section was responsible for reporting on political information, the morale and psychological well-being of U.S. units engaged in Korea. This information was to be used in support of propaganda activities and possibly the refinement of operational/contingency plans. Colonel Korotkov provided the following information in an interview in August 1992:

Soviet military specialists had been given approval to interrogate U.S. POWs. There were two stages to this process:

Stage 1, Interrogations in North Korea. These were conducted at the front, immediately after POWs had been transferred into the hands of the North Korea-based Soviet forces. Initial contact focused on gaining operational and tactical intelligence, such as order-of-battle, etc.

Stage 2, Transfer to the Soviet Union. Korotkov was not aware of exactly who selected which American POWs for transfer to the Soviet Union for further interrogation, or which criteria were used in the selection process, but the most likely characteristics were experience, i.e., seniority - field grade officers and above. Two separate groups handled these military interrogations, the GRU-subordinated intelligence group which was interested in detailed tactical and technical intelligence, and the main political directorate-subordinated group, which was interested in political intelligence.

Korotkov had only limited knowledge of the procedures for the movement of Americans to and through the USSR. He did not know where the processing facilities or camps were located in North Korea. On several occasions he had visited the Soviet naval base at Pos'yet which served as a transit point for the movement of American POWs north to Khabarovsk. Although there was an airfield nearby, he believed that the bulk of the Americans were transported from Pos'yet to Khabarovsk by rail, but most likely at least some of the POWs were moved from North Korea or China by air.

Korotkov stated that the American POWs were kept under the control of the MGB. Generally, military interrogations had only a few hours with the Americans, although they sometimes had up to a few days, depending on the nature and perceived value of the information or source. While the POWs were at Khabarovsk, the MGB controlled them when they were not being interrogated. Once the process was completed, the POWs were returned to the control of the MGB. Therefore, Korotkov stated, he had no direct knowledge of the fate of these personnel. Although Korotkov did not know the exact number, he felt that the number of Americans processed through Khabarovsk was in the hundreds. Despite the fact that his political group had access to only a portion of the total number of POWs interrogated by the analytical group, he felt confident in this high estimate. Following the rout of the 24th Infantry Division in July and August 1950, there were "tens of American POWs" as Colonel Korotkov put it, but the number climbed quickly through the first months of the war. Furthermore, he indicated that operational directives said that Americans caught behind North Korean lines should be taken alive. Moreover, Korotkov indicated that the Koreans were quite willing to allow the Soviets direct access and eventual control over U.S. POWs. By contrast, the Chinese, according to Colonel Korotkov, were very reluctant to release control over Americans who came into their hands.

Colonel Korotkov (above name hand written note: NOT TRUE-was ORLOV) further stated that he had personally interrogated two American POWs, one of whom was a LTC Black. He could not remember the names of any other of the American POWs who had been processed through Khabarovsk. All reports on U.S. POW interrogatins from Colonel Korotkov's analytical group were forwarded to the Headquarters, Far East Military District. The political group's report were also sent directly to the Soviet Army's Main Political Administration, 7th Directorate, and the technical group's reports were sent through GRU (Military Intelligence) channels to Moscow. An effort was made to gain the cooperation of POWs and turn their allegiance. Those prisoners who demonstrated a willingness to cooperate were separated from the majority and given favorable treatment. However, as he remembers it, the number of Americans who cooperated was very small, in contrast with the Soviet experience with German POWs in World War II, of whom a higher percentage was willing to cooperate. An overall report was compiled which assessed the morale of U.S. servicemen in Korea. Colonel Korotkov stated that he had seen a copy of this report in the GRU archives at Podol'sk.(54)

In his first interview, Colonel Korotkov stated that he had interviewed a U.S. officer, LTC Black. We believe that this may have been USAF LTC Vance Eugene Black who was reported by other POWs to have died of mistreatment and malnutrition in a North Korean POW camp. (55) Another retired Soviet officer, GRU Colonel Aleksandr Semyonovich Orlov, stated that he had arranged for an interview by a Pravda correspondent with LTC Vince Black. (56) In his subsequent interivew with MG-Loeffke, Colonel Korotkov denied having interrogated LTC Black, stating that he perhaps we had confused the name with a black POW. Task Force Russia interviewers, however, were adamant that he had been referring to the family name "Black" rather than to a black race. In this second interview, Colonel Korotkov remembered that the first officer he interviewed had been an Army first Lieutenant, most likely from the 24th. Infantry Division, but that he could remember nothing else. He had better recall about an Air Force pilot because he found much in common with him, such as color of hair (light), height (about 6'2"), rank (captain). He also said the pilot was about 28 to 30 years old. Colonel Korotkov also stated that while he was assigned to the project of interrogating Americans in the Far East during the Korean War, he also interrogated Japanese POWs, captured in World War II, and still held in Soviet custody. Here is an admission that foreign POWs were part of an overall system of exploitation.(57)

Colonel Korotkov changed his statement in the subsequent interview [with Major General Bernard Loeffke, former Director of Task Force Russia (now Joint Commission Support Branch - JCSB), in September 1992] after being contacted by a member of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. He then stated that the interrogations took place somewhere undefined, which he could not remember, in the Chinese-Korean-Soviet tri-border area. In MG Loeffke's words:

Since that encounter, the colonel changed his story as to the location where he interrogated U.S. POWs. Even after having been contacted by the KGB official, COL Korotkov agreed to answer questions on tape in front of Russian LTC Osipov, General Volkogonov's assistant. This interview took place on September 29. He said he and other Soviet officers in Soviet and at times Chinese uniforms had interrogated U.S. POWs over a 1-2 year period (1951-52) in an area near the borders of USSR, Korea and China. In this new version, Korotkov claims that he did not know if that particular location was in Russia or not. The important point is that he would not say that it was not inside Russia. In all previous interviews he had specifically said that these interrogations took place in Khabarovsk. The colonel was obviously willing to oblige the security services by not saying that it took place in Khabarovsk; but he was not willing to say that it did not take place on Russian soil. The colonel's official statement on tape, and in front of a Russian officer assigned to the Joint POW/MIA Commission cannot easily be refuted. Korotkov is a respected military officer with prestigious academic credentials.(58)

What Colonel Kortkov did not do was to deny that Soviet military personnel, including himself, were directly involved in the interrogation of a "large" number of American POWs during the Korean War.(59) In a subsequent videotaped interview recorded by Mr.Ted Landreth, an Australian journalist, Colonel Korotkov clearly stated that American POWs had been taken "through Khabarovsk" into the camp system. Their ultimate destination he did not know.

Later, in discussions with Colonel Stuart Herrington during the December 1992 Joint Commission meeting in Moscow, he restated that the prisoners were escorted by a female Soviet Border Guards Officer in Soviet uniform. He also stated that he conducted his interrogations in Soviet uniform. During the Korean War, as the Russian side has explained, the Soviets attempted to establish deniability of involvement by a policy of dressing its military personnel, who served in Korea, in Chinese or North Korean uniforms. U.S. intelligence reporting during the Korean War as well as the testimony of a number of POWs who had contact with Soviet personnel tends to confirm this policy. There are also some examples of the Soviets' failure to adhere to this policy, usually involving hasty interrogations conducted shortly after capture. However, these examples of Soviet officers wearing Soviet uniforms participating in formal interrogations with the exceptions of the cases of 1Lt Parks and Cpl Flores, cited in Part I. For Soviet personnel to have worn their uniforms during the interrogation of U.S. POWs argues at a minimum that the POWs were in the Soviet Union and that the Soviet authorities may have considered the issue of deniability to be irrelevant for men who were never going home.

Lieutenant Colonel Philip J. Corso. Further evidence comes from contemporary U.S. intelligence sources. LTC Philip Corso who served as Chief, Special Projects Branch of the Intelligence Division, Far East Command, under Generals Douglas MacArthur, Matthew Ridgeway and Mark Clark during the Korean War. One of his primary duties was to keep track of enemy POW camps in North Korea, their location, the conditions at these camps, the estimated number of U.S. and other UN POWs held at each camp, and their treatment at the hands of the enemy. He has stated emphatically under oath before the U.S. Senate that U.S. POWs were taken to the Soviet Union. He stated that his information came from hundreds of intelligence reports from agents, defectors, North Korean and Chinese POWs, civilians, and repatriated U.S. POWs.(60) He also stated that at least two and possibly three trainloads of U.S. POWs were transferred from Chinese to Soviet custody at the rail transshipment point of Manchouli on the Manchurian-Chinese Oblast border of China and the Soviet Union. He estimated that each trainload could carry a maximum of 450 POWs. His information formed the basis of a major national policy decision by President Eisenhower in 1954. LTC Corso's professional determination of the situation was based on the concentrated application of the intelligence resources of the United States.(61)

LTC Corso stated during a videotaped interview with Task Force Russia in January 1993:

I secured this information from I'd say, hundreds of prisoner of war reports, from Chinese and North Korea, who actually saw these prisoners being transported and later I talked to a few high level Soviet defectors who confirmed it - that this transfer was going on... And that they were being taken to the Soviet Union. We estimated they were taken there for intelligence purposes. The operation, as far as we were concerned, was a GRU/NKVD operation in those days. And it was mostly to elicit information from them, possibly take over their identities or use them as agents, or... to assume their identities. And we had information along this line that this was being done... Also, we had information that once the information was taken from them, they were eliminated, and they would never come back. Which actually happened - they never came back. They were killed, which was Soviet policy, also.

The source of this information, as I said, was hundreds of prisoner reports, North Korean and Chinese prisoners that we took, defectors and other intelligence that I can't describe for certain reasons. And, as I say, photographs, because we photographed the camps, and so we saw movements, and the people on the ground, civilians, also would come through. This was the intelligence process, put together very, very carefully, for a long period of time, matching all information and putting them together to show a pattern in the picture.(62)

LTC Corso's single most dramatic source was North Korean Lieutenant General Pak San Yang. Pak was a Soviet colonel of Korean ethnicity who had been seconded to the North Korean People's Army and promoted to lieutenant general. He was also a member of the North Korean Communist Central Committee. Pak had been captured and disguised himself as a private but had been denounced by anti-Communist fellow prisoners. Under interrogation, he revealed that U.S. POWs had been sent to the Soviet Union and that they had been prioritized by specialty and that he had a list of those specialities. Pak had no information on the number of POWs sent to the Soviet Union. (63)

In response to a question on how closely the defector information paralleled the information from POWs, LTC Corso responded:

Very close, in fact. What I was seeking from the defectors was the KGB/GRU operation. Not so much that prisoners were being taken to the Soviet Union, because we already knew that. But I wanted to learn more of the method of the operation of the GRU/KGB on how they used these prisoners, because that was the intelligence aspect of this. We knew that some were being used for espionage and maybe some for sabotage and we wanted to know what we could find out. So, mostly, my information on numbers and the transfer of prisoners was not taken from defectors. I didn't need that from defectors - we had that information, but operations within the Soviet Union, and the way they treated and what they did with these prisoners - that was where we were lacking in a lot of our information. And that I tried to get - and I got it - from defectors.(64)

LTC Corso's concern that U.S. POWs were being recruited and trained for espionage missions was born out in June 1954 when the U.S Army advised the Air Force that

evidence had been uncovered which concerned the assignment of Sabotage and Espionage missions to repatriated American prisoners of war during "Big and Little Switch," and that quite recently new cases of this type have been discovered.(65)

The memorandum further stated that "Army intelligence could not rule out the possibility that POWs had accepted `sleeper' missions." The Army took this seriously enough to bar repatriated POWs from accepting overseas assignments for eighteen months after their return to the United States. (66)

Lieutenant Colonel Delk Simpson. LTC Corso's determination and that of the Far East Command were corroborated in part by a more humble source in March 1954 when a former Soviet railway worker made an extensive statement to the U.S. Air Force Liaison Officer, LTC Delk Simpson, in Hong Kong. He also described his observation of the transfer of several trainloads of U.S. POWs from Chinese to Soviet custody at Manchouli, his place of work, in 1951 and 1952. He first observed POWs in the railroad station the Spring of 1951. About three months later, he observed a second shipment and was impressed with the large number of blacks among the POWs. He was also able to identify OD outer clothing and the field jacket M1943, the very uniform item that the mass of U.S. POWs would be wearing. The railway worker further stated that he was told by a close Russian friend whose job was numbering railroad cars passing through Man-chu-li that numerous other POW trains passed through Man-chu-li. These shipments were reported often and when United Nations forces were on the offensive."(67)

John Foster Dulles. Based on the Hong Kong report and other information that the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, sent a message to Ambassador Boylan in Moscow on 19 April 1954 stating, "This report corroborates previous indications UNC POWs might have been shipped to Siberia during Korean hostilities." He then instructed Ambassador Boylan to approach the highest available level Foreign Ministry official with an Aide-Memoire.(68)

On 5 May, the following message was delivered to the Soviet Foreign Ministry:

The United States Government has recently received reports which support earlier indications that American prisoners of war who had seen action in Korea have been transported to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and that they are now in Soviet custody. The United States desires to receive urgently all information available to the Soviet Government concerning these American personnel and to arrange for their repatriation at the earliest possible time.(69)

The Soviet Foreign Ministry responded with a dismissive note on 13 May 1954:

The assertions in the note of the United States Government that American prisoners of war, participants in military action in Korea, have been transferred to the Soviet Union and are at the present time maintained under Soviet guard are without and kind of basis and are clearly invented, as there are not and have not been any such persons in the Soviet Union.(70)

Captain Mel Gile. Echoing the claims of both LTC Corso and LTC Simpson, was the information provided by CAPT Mel Gile, Far East Command Liaison Group, during the Korean War. In interviews in 1990, CAPT Gile maintained that one of his agents had found that 63 U.S. POWs were being shipped by truck and rail from Pyongyang, North Korea to Chita, in the Soviet Union in January 1952. Gile insisted that the report was considered so credible that the U.S. command cancelled air strikes on the railway that would be carrying the POWs.(71)

CCRAK. An example of the reporting sources described by LTC Corso was an Army Combined Command for Reconnaissance Activities Korea (CCRAK) memorandum of 24 February 1953 which reported:

The following information was received from Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Korea Government. Report originated from the Nationalist Chinese Embassy - -

According to reliable information, the Communist Chinese Force have transferred UN POWs to Russia in violation of the Geneva Conference. These POWs will be specially trained at Moscow for espionage work. POWs transferred to Moscow are grouped as follows: British 5, Americans 10, Canadians 3, and 50 more from various countries.

Russia has established a Higher Informant Training Team at Uran, Hodasong (phonetic) in Siberia in October 1942. 500 persons are receiving training, one third of them women. Korean, Filiponos, Burmese, and American.

The date of this information is October - 22 December 1952. The U.S. Army Combined Command for Reconnaissance Activities, Korea, comments in this memorandum:

This office has received sporadic reports of POWs being moved to the USSR since the very inception of the hostilities in Korea. These reports came in great volume through the earlier months of the war, and then tapered off to a standstill in early 1951, being revived by a report from January of this year (1953). It is definitely possible that such action is being taken as evidenced by past experience with Soviet authorities. All previous reports state POWs who are moved to the USSR are technical specialists who are employed in mines, factories, etc. This is the first report that they are being used as espionage agents that is carried by this office.(72)

Zygmunt Nagorski. In addition to the Man-chu-li transit point, other routes for POW transfer to the Soviet Union have been identified. The journalist, Zygmunt Nagorski, obtained this information from two members of the MVD and an employee of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. This other POW transit point was through the North Korean-Soviet border at Pos'yet between November 1951 and April 1952 when ice closed the Pacific coast and the Tatar Straits. These POWs were taken from Pos'yet through Chita by rail to Molotov (new Perm). The dates of this operation coincide exactly with the dates for the transfer of POWs in the Hong Kong report, November 1951 to April 1952.(73)

Another route was by sea when the ice receded. POWs, apparently mostly South Koreans from the Republic of Korea Army (ROKA) and other South Korean political prisoners, were transported by sea to Soviet Far Eastern ports such as Magadan and Okhotsk from which they were moved to the infamous Kolyma complexes around Yakutsk and to Vankarem on the Chukotsk Sea and to Ust Maisk on the Aldan River. These prisoners apparently were selected because of their anti-communist attitudes. The POWs sent to the Yakutsk ASSR were forced to build and staff coal mines, earth works, and dams and were under the supervision of the Ministry of Coal Production and the Ministry of Forests. The camps were under the command of an MVD officer named Sorotchuk. The POWs sent to the Chukotsk Peninsula, apparently to the number of at least 12,000, were used to build roads, electric power plants, and airfields. A civilian party functionary, probably a member of the MGB, was in charge of political education and indoctrination. He appeared to have been an ethnic Korean Soviet named Chinbo. There was a high mortality rate among all these prisoners.(74)

From Pos'yet and possibly Man-chu-li about 300 U.S. and/or European POWs reportedly were transported by rail to Chita and from there to Molotov (now Perm) in February 1952 under heavy MVD guard. In the previous August and November of 1951, there had also been the movement of POWs from Chita. These latter POWs had been sent to Arkhangelsk Oblast to camps at Kotlas on the Northern Dvina and to Lalsk. In March of 1952, POWs passed through Khabarovsk and Chita to Molotov about every two weeks in small groups of up to 50 men. Chita appears to hve been a concentration point for the POWs where they were incarcerated in the local MVD prisons, and when a significant number had been collected, then sent on to Molotov. The POWs may have been undergoing a selection process at this time. From December 1951 through the end of April 1952, trains of U.S. and European (probably British) POWs passed at intervals into the Komi-Permysk National District to Molotov, Gubakha, Kudymkar, and Chermoz. In April 1952, a number of U.S. officer POWs, referred to informally as the `American General Staff', were kept under strict isolation in Molotov. In the town of Gubakha and in the industrial regions of Kudymkar and Chermoz, there were three isolated camps and one interrogation prison for U.S. POWs. At a camp called Gaysk about 200 POWs were kept and forced to work in workshops assembling rails and doing various techinical jobs. These camps were completely isolated. Political education and indoctrination was carried out by the local Party organization headed by a functionary named Edovin, a delegate from the Obkom of the Komi- Perm National District. All these camps were under the command of an officer named Kalypin. Every few days several of the POWs were removed from the camps and not returned. (75)

In 1990 Nagorski was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as stating that in the 1950s his foreign reporters had an extensive `source network' of truck drivers and other working-class Soviets employed at or near prisons in Molotov, Khabarovsk, Chita, Omsk, Chermoz and elsewhere. Nagorski claimed his sources informed him that there were still up to 1,000 Americans POWs in Siberia from the Korean War when he last had contact with them in the late 1950s. (76)

Other Foreign Sources. Over the years reports of American POWs in Soviet custody were provided by a number of foreign sources which are described below:

Turkish Traveler. On 5 February 1954 a reliable, friendly foreign intelligence service reported to an agency of the U.S. information they had received from a Turkish source traveling in Central Asia. The source, who had been interrogated in Turkey, states that while at Mukden, Manchuria, he "saw several coaches full of Europeans who were also taken to the USSR. They were not Russians. Source passed the coaches several times and heard talk in a language unknown to him." The source stated that one of the coaches was full of wounded Caucasians who were not speaking at all.(77)