September 1996
Summary of news for the entire month.
For recent and daily news, please go to: InterNetwork
01 SEP 96: In an AP story, we read that a 18-year-old private, six days in the front, was captured by the North Koreans, and for the next three years, Wayne Johnson recorded upon death, the "name, rank, Army unit, date of birth and hometown" of nearly 500 of the original 758 captured in July 1950. The sad aspect of this is that Johnson had given this information to Army debriefers after the war. It fell through the cracks. Not until 1995 was Johnson tracked down and asked for "the List." From this list, many families will now that their loved ones' were POWs and not missing. The Pentagon has added this information to their incomplete database.
03 SEP 96: AP reports that Bob Dole speaking to the American Legion remarked: "And finally, there is the continuing tragedies of our POWs and MIAs. And I am not convinced yet that we still have a full accounting. Now America has one last duty to them and their families, and that is to discover the fate of every last POW and every last MIA, no matter how much effort and how much money it costs."
Speaking at the American Legion Convention, Dino Carluccio, on the staff of Senator Bob Smith, "cited the case of Americans captured and held in northern Laos." He told of wartime photographs and radio interceptions held as evidence by the CIA, which verifies the POWs existence. Also speaking was Carl Ford, a former Defense Department official. Ford told that the Clinton Administration had rewritten the rules that determine what a country must do to qualify for normal relations. Ford ended by saying: "What they have done is shameful."
04 SEP 96: AFP reports President Clinton's nominee to be U.S. ambassador in Hanoi will not be confirmed until next year. At issue is a sentence in the U.S. Constitution, know as the "emoluments clause," which bars legislators from taking up government jobs that were created or whose salaries were increased during their congressional terms. Petersen will leave Congress at the conclusion of this session and will, therefore, be eligible to receive the nomination next year.
Senator Bob Smith protested the provision in H.R. 3540, the Foreign Operations bill, which authorizes an appropriation of $1.5 million in assistance to Vietnam.
05 SEP 96: In a press release of the Military Personnel Subcommittee, chaired by Bob Dornan, a hearing will be held on September 10 to receive testimony on H.R. 4000, the POW/MIA Protection Act. This legislation would restore provisions of the Dole-Gilman Missing Service Personnel Act (Public Law 104-106). H.R. 4000 codifies accountability measures for American military service personnel who become missing in action or prisoners of war.
07 SEP 96: AP reports that DPMO has scoured more than 14,000 pages of documents in a search for the 89 crew members lost from a total of 10 planes during the Cold War Era (1950 - 1965). Danz Blasser, a senior analyst said that: the Soviets played an active combat role against the U.S. during the Korean War. We feel there was an active policy of the Soviet Union to take captured American pilots back to the Soviet Union. U.S. officials believe that the Soviets had extensive contact with American prisoners of war in Vietnam.
08 SEP 96: The New York Times reports that Oh Young-nam, a 33 year-old North Korean police official who escaped to China last October and then came to South Korea, said that from 1982 to 1993 he repeatedly visited a camp housing American POWs, in a sealed-off area just north of Pyongyang. Oh said he never saw more than 20 to 30 Americans at one time, but others were in the dormitories. Oh's descriptions are by far the most detailed to have emerged so far, and there is growing sense in the intelligence community that the notion of surviving American prisoners, however outlandish it sounds at first, is a serious possibility. Oh was the son of a bodyguard to the country's late "Great Leader," Kim II-Sung and he himself graduated from the elite police academy and joined the secret police.
09 SEP 96: Speaking at a reception for Congressman Pete Peterson, President Clinton remarked: Our success in getting them (Vietnam) to account for those people whom we haven't accounted for who served in Vietnam and who are missing... is a huge emotional event... and has enormous political and commercial implications...
10 SEP 96: Congressman Dornan Chairs the Military Personnel Subcommittee. He receives testimony from Congressmen Ben Gilman, Sam Johnson, Pete Peterson and Ron Packard. The second panel consisted of Mike Benge, Larry Stark, Carol Hrdlicka, Donna Downes Knox and Tom Burch.
11 SEP 96: AP reports that Vietnam Veterans of America President, Jim Brazee presented a briefcase of information to Maj. Gen. Nguyen Trong Ving, deputy head of the Vietnam Veterans Association. VVA believes that these documents, donated by former U.S. servicemen, could provide hints to the location of a mass grave with the remains of some 600 North Vietnamese soldiers missing from a 1969 battle in Quang Tri province. The Vietnamese turned over information and paperwork on the location and time of battles where at least four or five Americans are believed to be buried.
12 SEP 96: The Defense Department is now in Vietnam investigating a report that more than a third of $11.2 million used on the MIA program could not be accounted for in 1995. The report further stated that the Vietnamese government was renting American military vehicles maintained at U.S. expense to tourists. The investigation also found that the Vietnamese government was charging the U.S. fees for services above market price and taking pay intended for Vietnamese workers at excavation sites.
The House Committee on National Security favorably reported H.R. 4000, the POW/MIA Protection Act, to the floor with a unanimous 49-0 vote. The bill currently has 272 co-sponsors.
14 SEP 96: The Military Personnel Subcommittee, Chaired by Bob Dornan, announced that it will meet on Sept. 17, to receive testimony on the subject of American Prisoners of War and Missing in Action from both the Korean and Vietnam War.
17 SEP 96: In testimony before the Military Personnel Subcommittee, retired Army Col. Phillip Corso, testified that 500 hundred sick and wounded American prisoners were being held within ten miles of the site where the armistice was signed. Also presented was a Defense Department document that was written within months after the Korean War armistice (July 1953) detailing the 610 Army and 300 Air Force prisoners still held in North Korea. In addition, two trains, possibly three, each carrying 450 American prisoners were sent to the Soviet Union. Corso was in charge of the POW/MIA office under Eisenhower.
In related testimony, Jan Sejna (the highest ranking defector from the Eastern block countries), a Czech, who now works for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency testified that Russian and Czech doctors conducted medical experiments on American prisoners. The prisoners were subsequently executed and their remains sent to the crematorium.
18 SEP 96: Reuter reports that Defense Secretary William Perry said that "... in spite of years of investigation... we have found no evidence of living American POWs in North Korea." Perry also stated that American deserters from the Korean War still live in North Korea.
20 SEP 96: NATIONAL POW/MIA RECOGNITION DAY: A Proclamation (in part) by the President of the U.S.: "Now, Therefore, I, William J. Clinton, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim September 20, 1996, as National POW/MIA Recognition Day. I ask all Americans to join me in honoring former American POWs and those still unaccounted for as the result of their service to our great Nation. I also encourage the American people to express their gratitude to the families of these missing Americans for their perseverance through the many years of waiting."
22 SEP 96: The New York Times in an editorial has called for "A careful, bipartisan Congressional investigation... (to) help clarify the record and guide appropriate responses to these issues." The issues - American POWs knowingly and willfully left behind.
23 SEP 96: In a U.S. News & World Report article, KOREA: AN OLD WAR'S DARK NEW SECRETS, we read: "The evidence, on the face of it, seems persuasive." The most explosive testimony was given by Jan Sejna. While attempts to discredit Sejna abound, it is with interest that an internal DIA memo, dated April 27, 1992 and signed by the then DIA director, Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr., "noted that Sejna, after testifying about the fate of POWs, submitted to a polygraph examination 'during which no deception was indicated' ".
24 SEP 96: Recently released declassified documents show internal debate within the Eisenhower administration over unaccounted-for prisoners after the close of the Korean War. One document, dated Dec. 22, 1953 recounts a conversation between Pres. Eisenhower and Army Sec. Robert T. Stevens remarking: "The president made the statement that he was not sure that if he had fully appreciated the situation he would have felt it wise to go into the forthcoming conference. Perhaps we should have insisted on their return as a precondition to the conference."
27 SEP 96: AP reports that the House voted 404-0 to restore provisions requiring a military field commander to file an initial report within 48 hours of a service member who is missing in action. The measure would restore legislation that was enacted into law last February but eliminated in the 1997 Defense Department authorization bill signed by President Clinton.
29 SEP 96: H.R. 4000, the POW/MIA PROTECTION ACT, has been attached to the Suspension bill. Supporters of this measure failed to have it attached to the Omnibus Appropriation Bill. The bill has now moved over to the Senate. Even with a 404-0 vote in the House, H.R. 4000 CAN BE DEFEATED WITH A SINGLE NO VOTE OF ONE SENATOR. Should this defeat occur, re-introduction will have to wait for the 105th Congress.
POW-MIA Issue Update October 1996