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: Korean War POWs sent to Siberia, aide to Ike says Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 15:13:22 EST Message-ID: \SE A;NATION \HD Korean War POWs sent to Siberia, aide to Ike says \BY Carleton R. Bryant \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES The U.S. government "wrote off" American POWs during the Korean War and knew that many U.S. servicemen were shipped to the Soviet Union, a national security aide under President Eisenhower said yesterday. In fact, retired Army Lt. Col. Philip Corso said he recommended to Eisenhower the policy in which the administration declared soldiers dead when they were known to have been captured alive. "The fate of our prisoners fell through the cracks. . . . It wasn't an accident. It was policy" that kept live Americans in enemy hands after the war, Col. Corso, 77, said at a news conference. The retired intelligence officer previewed testimony he is expected to give today to the Senate Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs. With its end-of-the-year deadline looming, the Senate panel - having concentrated its efforts on POWs from the Vietnam War - has turned its attention to the more than 8,000 servicemen unaccounted for from the Korean War. As chief of special projects during that war, Col. Corso was ordered to keep track of American POWs in North Korea and report his findings to Eisenhower, he said. "I kept getting reports that some of our men were being shipped to Manchuria and then into the Soviet Union," Col. Corso said. But during truce talks at Panmunjom, North Korea, the American delegation asked North Korean and Chinese officials about the men only once - and unofficially at that, said Col. Corso, one of the negotiators. Fighting ended in July 1953. After the postwar exchange of prisoners, Pentagon officials were flabbergasted to discover that hundreds of U.S. soldiers known to have been taken prisoner were not returned, Col. Corso said. "I definitely know of two trainloads of American prisoners - about a thousand men - taken to China and then switched to Russian trains and shipped into Siberia," he said. "None of those boys ever came back." He added that he had "good information" that a third trainload of POWs had made a similar trip. Col. Corso said the prisoners were "dead men" because they were unlikely to survive and the Soviets would deny holding them. He added that the communists used personal data from POWs to create false identities for their spies. To conceal the fate of prisoners from the public, Col. Corso said, he suggested in 1955 that Eisenhower declare the men dead. "He said: 'I think you're right. I accept your recommendation,' " the retired colonel said. The American public was not made aware of the matter until this year, when Russian President Boris Yeltsin said Soviet archives showed that dozens of U.S. fliers had been interrogated and jailed in the former Soviet Union. Russian Gen. Dmitri Volkogonov, Mr. Yeltsin's military adviser and official archivist, is expected to testify tomorrow before the Senate POW committee on his examination of Soviet records. At yesterday's news conference, a former military intelligence officer supported Col. Corso's account before bitterly scolding him for creating a "policy to forget all American prisoners." Retired Air Force Col. O'Wighton Delk Simpson, who also is expected to testify today, said he served as a military attache in Hong Kong in the early 1950s. He said that in 1953 a Polish refugee born in Manchuria told him he had been "in close contact with two trainloads of American prisoners on their way to the Soviet Union." Pentagon officials called him "senile" when he reported the incident, Col. Simpson said. 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