Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.latimes.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Ex-Aide Ties Eisenhower to Fate of POWs Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 06:17:07 EST Message-ID: HEADLINE: Ex-Aide Ties Eisenhower to Fate of POWs Publication Date: Wednesday November 11, 1992 BYLINE: MICHAEL ROSS A former intelligence officer and White House aide to President Dwight D. Eisenhower testified Tuesday that Eisenhower agreed to suppress U.S. intelligence information about the fate of at least 900 servicemen secretly transferred to the Soviet Union after their capture in the Korean War. Philip Corso, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who served in Army intelligence and, from 1953 to 1957, on the National Security Council, said he prepared a 1954 report based on eyewitness accounts by defectors and other sources. It indicated that between 900 and 1,200 U.S. prisoners of war from Korea were turned over to the Soviets by the Chinese and North Koreans and confined in Siberia. Corso, whose voice nearly cracked with emotion when he spoke of "living with this information for nearly 40 years," said Eisenhower decided to withhold the information from families because he agreed with Corso that "the POWs should be given up for dead because the Soviets would never relinquish them." The President also apparently feared that revelations about the men's true fate could lead to war with the Soviet Union, Corso added. His assertions were disputed by Defense Department officials who said there is no evidence in U.S. files to indicate that POWs from Korea were imprisoned in the Soviet Union. The testimony was the highlight of two days of hearings by a special Senate committee investigating the fate of America's missing servicemen. Although the committee has devoted most of its yearlong investigation to servicemen missing from the Vietnam War, it turned its attention this week to Americans missing from earlier conflicts and to the possibility, raised in admissions earlier this year by Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, of Soviet involvement in their fate. Officially, 8,177 Americans are still listed as missing in Korea--nearly four times the number who remain unaccounted for in Vietnam. The true number of "discrepancy" cases, however--those involving servicemen who were known either to have been captured or lost in North Korean territory--is 389, according to Pentagon figures. This smaller figure represents the number of cases "about whom the North Koreans should have knowledge," Alan Ptak, deputy assistant secretary of state for POW/MIA affairs, told the committee. Today the committee's star witness will be retired Gen. Dmitri Volkogonov, who with U.S. envoy Malcolm Toon is co-chairman of a commission established in March to search for information about missing servicemen. Ptak said that, while the commission still has "a long way to go" in gaining access to classified records, nothing it has uncovered so far amounts to "conclusive evidence" that POWs from either Vietnam or Korea were transferred to Soviet prison camps. That judgment, however, was sharply disputed by Sen. Robert C. Smith (R-N.H.), the committee's vice chairman, who said evidence uncovered by Senate investigators strongly indicates that POWs from Korea were transferred to the Soviet Union and that the U.S. government long covered up its knowledge of the transfers with "a pattern of denial, misleading statements and outright lies." He also complained that, although the "pattern of denial is finally beginning to change," committee investigators in Moscow are still being "intentionally stonewalled" by Russian officials who have denied them access to critical documents. This article is copyright 1992 The Los Angeles Times Home Edition. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM