Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: MIA's son asks Clinton for special prosecutor Date: Sat, 7 Nov 92 19:23:58 EST Message-ID: \SE A;WORLD \HD MIA's son asks Clinton for special prosecutor \BY Gerald Nadler \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES \DT MOSCOW MOSCOW - An American who believes his combat pilot father was brought to Russia appealed to President-elect Bill Clinton yesterday to appoint a special prosecutor and end "wink-and-nod diplomacy" on MIAs. Bruce Mack Brown, 33, of Highland, Calif., has been in Moscow two weeks to seek clues about his father, Lt. Col. Robert Mack Brown, whose F-111 fighter-bomber was shot down over Vietnam 20 years ago today. Janice Pennington, whose first husband, world record mountain climber Fritz Stamberger, disappeared on Tirich Mir mountain in September 1975 in a restricted area of Afghanistan, joined Mr. Brown in "appealing directly" to Mr. Clinton for a new effort to find the truth. Ms. Pennington believes her German-born husband was a CIA contract worker and that he might have been captured and taken to Russia. Mr. Brown said he was frustrated by the lack of progress being made by a joint U.S.-Russian commission formed after Russian President Boris Yeltsin said in June that live American POWs might be in Russia. He also blamed U.S. intelligence agencies for not being more cooperative and U.S. congressmen for not using their legal right of access to secret information. "If we have to, let's renew the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIAs," Mr. Brown said. "If that is not a viable option, let's get our points across to the intelligence committee in the Senate. If not, let's get a special prosecutor appointed, or a special investigator. Something that can accomplish this goal." Mr. Brown said two National Security Agency radio operators, now retired, recorded Vietnamese radio traffic on Nov. 7, 1972, saying that his father was captured alive and to prepare to "transport the hulk" of the downed U.S. airplane to Russia. He also said he received further unofficial confirmation during his visit that the aircraft came to Russia. He said his father also may have come with the wreck. "I just want to know what happened to my dad," Mr. Brown said. "Is he alive or dead? Is he buried in Southeast Asia? Is he buried in Russia? Is he alive in Russia? I am positive this information can be found." Mr. Brown's father, a Naval Academy graduate, was a veteran combat pilot with 299 missions during his first tour in Vietnam in 1967 and received three Distinguished Flying Crosses. He also was a distinguished scientist who worked at NASA on the Apollo and Gemini space programs and on the anti-ballistic missile system at Cambridge Research Labs in Massachusetts. "He wrote the final report on the Mercury Project for the secretary of defense and was backup network controller on the Gemini Project," he recalled. "That was precisely his background when he came floating out of the sky [in Vietnam]." As evidence that his father may have been taken to Russia and made to talk, he cited a breakthrough in 1973 in the Soviet space program after years of docking failures and rocket explosions. He also said that the Sukhoi-24 Soviet aircraft was developed shortly after his father's F-111 jet was downed. After one of Mr. Brown's interviews on a Radio Russia talk show this month with an appeal for information, a woman called in and said she worked on copying the designs of such an F-111. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM