Korean Peace Talks Recess till March -- After two days of talks, on December 9th, and 10th, 1997, the four party negotating team recessed talks till March. This gives us two months to push for the inclusion of an exchange of live POWs as part of the negoatiated agreement. Support in Congress is growing.

Contact your senators and congressmen at 800-522-6721. Our Prisoners and Missing from the Korean War must be made part of the Peace Negotations.

In the August 16th, 1997, edition of "Bits 'n' Pieces we wrote of servicemen abandoned during the Korean War. Based on a declassified Air Force Report, Robert Burns of the Associated Press wrote of a 5 crewmen from a B-29 "known to be alive in communist hands at the close of the Korean Conflict, July '53."

In a follow up to his initial article Mr. Burns wrote, on December 28th, 1997, of the rescue mission to recover this crew. "WASHINGTON (AP) -- Flying deep into enemy territory in the dim light of daybreak, Air Force Maj. David M. Taylor was about to execute an airborne "snatch" of five escaped American POWs waiting to be rescued. All had gone without a hitch, but Taylor sensed trouble as he flew his propeller-driven C-47 up a North Korean mountainside at treetop level."

"It just didn't look right to me," Taylor recalled of that moment on May 24, 1953, two months before the Korean War would end with an armistice that sealed the fate of an undetermined number of U.S. POWs. Over the radio came the clearly recognizable voice of one of five American flyers on the ground, B-29 bomber pilot 1st Lt. Gilbert L. Ashley Jr., guiding Taylor's approach to a mountaintop clearing for the pickup..."

"...Among the missing thousands are Ashley, who was from Rock Hall, Md., and the four from his B-29 crew: Airman 2nd Class Hidemaro Ishida, of Richmond, Calif.; 1st Lt. Arthur R. Olsen, of Chicago; 2nd Lt. John P. Shaddick, of Coral Gables, Fla.; and 1st Lt. Harold P. Turner, whose hometown could not be determined. The U.S. government long ago declared them dead, although relatives still wonder."

"...Because the Korean War ended with an armistice agreement and not a peace treaty, the communist North and U.S.-backed South remain technically at war. Only in the past 18 months has reclusive North Korea begun allowing the United States to search for remains of its war dead and to seek answers from North Korean war records of what happened to missing Americans.

The families of Ashley, Olsen, Shaddick, Ishida and Turner were never told of the aborted rescue mission -- or even that the five were alive in captivity. "The Air Force told my parents they never had evidence that the men ever hit the ground" after their B-29 was shot down over North Korea on Jan. 29, 1953, said David R. Olsen, brother of the plane's navigator-bombardier. "It was a rotten thing" of the Air Force to keep from the families that the men survived, Olsen said.

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

Korea, Vietnam, The Gulf, nothing changed.

What really happened to the Gulf War's first MIA, Lt. Comdr. Michael Scott Speicher - According to a New York Times article dated December 7, 1997, by Tim Weiner, Cmdr Speicher may have survived his loss incident. Mr. Weiner reports that according to a Pentagon document overhead satellite reconnaissance of the crash site "detected a man-made symbol in the area of the ejection seat,"

According to Mr. Weiner "Some senior officers thought Commander Speicher might have survived the crash. They said they had a moral obligation to bring him back, dead or alive, no matter how long it took...."

Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, scrubbed the plan, saying, "I do not want to have to write the parents and tell them that their son or daughter died looking for old bones," according to Timothy G. Connolly, then principal assistant deputy secretary of Defense for special operations, and other senior officers who witnessed the general's statement in December 1994.

"...Two years after the discovery of the wreckage, and a year after General Shalikashvili's decision, a Pentagon team entered Iraq openly, with Saddam Hussein's permission, under the banner of the Red Cross. The searchers still do not know if Commander Speicher bailed out successfully. They still do not know if he could have survived the crash.

They found to their dismay that, just as the advocates of a secret military mission had feared, the crash site had been excavated, most likely by Iraqi officers, during the months that the Pentagon searched for a safe route to the wreckage."

"In December 1995, two years after the Qatari officer's discovery and one year after General Shalikashvili's decision, the team arrived at the crash site. The site had been scavenged. "It appeared that people had been there before we arrived," Mr. Smith said in an interview on Friday. There was no ejection seat. There were no bones.

"Bedouin nomads handed the team a tattered flight uniform. Mr. Smith would not discuss what a subsequent analysis of the suit showed. An officer familiar with the team's findings said that it recovered one of the plane's data recorders from the Bedouins. "The evidence showed the pilot successfully ejected from the aircraft," he said.

Mr. Smith and Mr. Liotta would not confirm or deny that. They said only that the team had emerged with a clearer picture of what happened to Commander Speicher. That picture, like everything else about the case, remains officially secret.

"Could he have survived the crash? We don't know," Mr. Liotta said. The investigation continues. Commander Speicher is still listed as "killed in action -- body not recovered."

In a follow-up article dated December 12, 1997, Mr. Weiner reported "At the request of two senators who say the Pentagon may have misled them, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will inquire into the fate of the only Persian Gulf war pilot who remains unaccounted for, intelligence committee staff members said on Thursday.

The senators, Rod Grams of Minnesota and Robert C. Smith of New Hampshire, both Republicans, asked the committee to look into what U.S. intelligence services know about the disappearance of Navy Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher, the first American to fall in the gulf war... "

"In a letter to the chairman of the intelligence committee, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the senators said they "may have been misled" by Pentagon officials who had previously told them "that there was no evidence which indicated Commander Speicher may have survived."

"In an interview, Smith -- who has a longstanding interest in American soldiers thought to be prisoners of war or missing in action -- said that he had been asking Defense Department officials about Speicher for two years. In 1995, he said, he was told unofficially "that there was intelligence that indicated that Speicher may have ejected" from his F-18 fighter jet before it crashed in western Iraq during the first hours of the war.

"Smith said he received a classified Pentagon briefing about Speicher in January 1996. He said he came away from the briefing believing that there was no chance Speicher could have ejected, that the Pentagon had never planned a covert operation to search the crash site, and that there was no evidence that the pilot could have sent a distress signal to rescuers after his crash."

"But according to Pentagon documents and Pentagon officials interviewed last week, there was a chance that Speicher could have ejected and survived; there was a plan -- never executed -- to launch a covert mission to search the crash site; and there was some kind of "man-made symbol" at the crash site, which was detected by a Pentagon spy satellite in 1994. "Apparently I was misled," Smith said on Thursday.

"Grams, prompted by members of a Minnesota prisoners-of-war and missing-in-action advocacy group, wrote the Pentagon twice this year about Speicher. In a second letter, seeking a clarification, he asked if "any symbols were found in the area" where Speicher's plane crashed. Downed pilots are taught to make a specific symbol seeking assistance from rescuers -- or any kind of symbol that can be read from the sky as a cry for help.

Pentagon officials wrote back to the senator saying that their investigation had found "no symbols that correlate to civilian or military distress symbols or evasion codes."

But in a secret memorandum dated May 11, 1994, more than three years after the plane went down, Pentagon officials noted that a U.S. spy satellite had photographed "a man-made symbol" at the crash site earlier that year. Although it was not the distress symbol Speicher had been trained to make, some military officers said they interpreted it as a sign that he might have survived.

If all of this information sounds familiar, it is. The story of Michael Scott Speicher and the "man made symbol in the area of the ejection seat" was first reported in the Dec. 1995/Jan./Feb. 1996 edition of The U.S. Veteran Dispatch. Once again, the U.S. Veteran was ahead of the pack.

From the LA Times December 27, 1997 - "Issue of MIAs in Vietnam Losing Steam." The article by David Lamb stated in part "...some U.S. officials and veterans groups are privately raising a question no politician would dare ask publicly: At what point should the United States say it has done everything possible to account for its missing and start winding down a campaign that has cost hundreds of millions of dollars?"

"To a large extent, the whole MIA issue was manufactured," said Michael Leaveck, associate director of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation in Washington. "The Reagan administration used it for political purposes; the Bush administration perpetuated it; a cottage industry profited from it; some political forces used it as leverage for a broader agenda."

The article continued "Actually, it may be nature itself that determines the eventual end of the MIA campaign, because before long there won't be anything left to find. In Vietnam's acidic soil, bones disappear in 30 years or less. Of all the body parts that can be used for identification, only teeth have an indefinite life span--and, in the new-growth tangle of thick jungles, they can be impossible to find."

"...Although returns are diminishing with the passage of time and there has never been any credible evidence of Americans being held prisoner in Vietnam since McCain, Peterson and the other POWs were released in 1973..." As usual Senator John Mc Cain was quoted throught the article.

In a letter to the editor National Alliance of Families Chairperson Dolores Alfond pointed out several glaring errors. Most notable was "Mr. Lamb's statement that "there has never been any credible evidence of Americans being held prisoner in Vietnam since McCain, Peterson and the other POWs were released in 1973" is completely false. In 1993, the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, of which Senator John Mc Cain was a member, concluded a small number of American POWs had been left behind at the end of the Vietnam War."

Are we running our of steam? You might want to let the L.A. Times know the answer to that. letters to the editor - fax 213-237-7679.

Questions we'd like answered - Perhaps someone can explain how the "acidic" Vietnamese soil can destroy bones yet leave a flight suit in such excelent condition that after 23 years in Vietnamese soil, it could be worn today. Just asking?

U.S. moves closer to normal trade with Vietnam - From Reuters by By Jonathan Wright - "WASHINGTON - The United States has moved one step closer towards normal trade relations with Vietnam, rewarding its old enemy for liberalizing emigration policies, senior officials said Thursday. The U.S. administration is starting consultations with Congress this week on declaring Vietnam exempt from provisions of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which restricts business with communist countries that limit emigration, they said."

"A waiver, coupled with a bilateral trade agreement yet to be completed, would make exporters to Vietnam eligible for financial backing through the Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and other programs. "We are consulting with Congress about the possibility of making a Jackson-Vanik waiver," National Security Adviser Sandy Berger told reporters. "If those consultations go well I would expect that we would go forward."

"But the conservative who chairs the Senate Foreign Committee, Jesse Helms of North Carolina, sent a signal that he would probably oppose a waiver."

"State Department spokesman James Foley said the decision was based on an acceleration of emigration for Amerasians -- people of mixed American and Vietnamese parentage...."

" But Helms, in a letter sent to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in November and released by his office on Thursday, questioned the extent of progress on emigration. He said he doubted the United States should extend full trade benefits to a one-party communist state like Vietnam under any circumstances. "Although the Vietnamese government now has agreed to issue exit visas for individuals in the ROVR (Resettlement Opportunity for Vietnamese Returnees) program, compliance has been slow. In addition this program does not include many other eligible people," he said."

No mention was made about our POW/MIAs. We left men behind alive, in Vietnam Laos and Cambodia. We know it. The Vietnamese know it and the U.S. government knows it. The message is simple no further trade consessions to Vietnam until they provide all the information they hold on the men they held back in 1973.

Contact Senator Helms - He can not ignore our POWs! Fax him at 202-228-1339.

Even we had trouble believing this one! -- Recently, a Vietnam POW/MIA family member submitted blood for mt-DNA testing, should remains associated with her brother be recovered. On December 2nd, 1997, she received a letter from the Dept. of Defense Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. The letter was signed by the Supervisory DNA Technologist DoD DNA Registry. The letter acknowledged receipt of the blood sample "to be used as a reference specimen when compared to a case presumed to be associated with your brother Jesse J. Traughber."

Don't go running for your list of Vietnam era POW/MIAs. Don't even bother looking for the list of Vietnam era KIA's. You won't find his name. Cpl. Jesse J. Traughber went missing during the Korean War

We have told you mt-DNA testing is inaccurate and can not be trusted. Now we know they can't even get the paperwork correct. Was this a clerical error or was the blood sample really mis-associated? How many more errors have been made. You'd be surprised!

On December 30th, 1997, the Pentagon announced that three servicemen missing from the Vietnam War had been accounted for. They are Air Force Maj. Glenn A. Belcher of Fessendon, N.D.; Air Force Maj. Ronald N. Sittner of South Euclid, Ohio; and Marine 1st Lt. Brent E. Davis of Santa Clara, Calif.

Glen Belcher was shot down over Laos on Dec. 31, 1967. U.S.-Laotian teams recovered bone fragments and other items from the crash site in 1994 and 1995, and the remains were later identified as those of Belcher.

Ronald Sittner was shot down on Aug. 23, 1967. JTF-FA recovered remains that had been buried by villagers. They were "identified" as Ronald Sittner.

Brent Davis was lost over North Vietnam on March 18, 1966. Tests showed bone fragments recovered from the crash area belonged to Davis.

To the families involved we hold you in our hearts and prayers during this difficult time. It is our hope that you truly have the answers you have waited so long for.

Did you know that both Britian and Austrialia have 30 year declassification rules.

From Austrialian Associated Press - By Max Blenkin "CANBERRA, Jan 1 AAP - At a time when the war in Vietnam was becoming more controversial by the day, the government of Prime Minister Harold Holt increased the commitment by another 1,200 troops."

"But it warned the United States that Australia had how reached the limit of its possible military commitment, according to cabinet papers released by the Australian Archives under the 30-year rule. "This I can assure you puts us at the full stretch of our present and planned military capacity," Holt said in a letter to US President Lyndon Johnson in October 1967...."

"Holt announced the increased commitment on October 17. That included an additional infantry battalion making a three battalion task force, a tank squadron, extra helicopters and pilots plus support personnel."

"...A note from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet concluded that Australia had little choice but to send more troops. "It is clear that our position as an ally of the United States is being tested ... and that test may well have a considerable effect on the future course of United States policy towards us and towards this region," it said.

From Britian - Jan. 1, 1998 Associated Press reports " LONDON (AP) -- In the late 1960s, then-British Prime Minister Harold Wilson proposed a joint mission to Hanoi with Soviet leader Alexei Kosygin to try to end the Vietnam War, government documents released today show."

"The previously-classified papers, released by the government's Record Office as required after 30 years, also show abortive efforts by Wilson to act as a go-between with Washington. According to minutes written by a civil servant, Kosygin dismissed the suggestion, made by Wilson in February 1967 while the Soviet leader was visiting London."

",,,According to the official minutes, Wilson said "he could undertake to deliver his friends (the Americans) if Mr. Kosygin could deliver his (the North Vietnamese)." Wilson had been encouraged by a message from Washington that he interpreted as meaning that if the North Vietnamese leaders promised, publicly or in private, to stop incursions into South Vietnam, the Americans would not resume bombing the North."

"However, when the cable of the actual text of the American offer came through, Wilson believed the U.S. position had hardened."

",,, Wilson then cabled President Lyndon Johnson complaining he had been left in "a hell of a position," the minutes showed. When Kosygin returned from Scotland before heading home, Wilson met him at London's Claridges Hotel and tried again to persuade him to bring his influence to bear on the North Vietnamese. Kosygin balked at a deadline set by Washington for a reply, but reluctantly agreed to pass on the American offer to the North Vietnamese."

"Although nothing came of it, Johnson's foreign policy adviser, Walt Rostow, thanked Wilson for his "virtually continuous struggle" for peace during the Kosygin visit. According to the minutes, Wilson retorted that "there had been times during the week when he wondered with whom he was struggling."

If the British and Austrialian governments have not colloapsed under the weight of a 30 year declassificiation rule, why doesn't the United States Governement have such a rule. Do we have more to hide? Perhaps our next legislative project should be getting a 30 year declassification law for the United States. Maybe we can find a congressman willing to introduce such a law.

Under the British and Austrialian rules of declassification, our next windfall of POW/MIA related material may come between 2003 and 2005 during the span of the 30 years anniversary of the Paris Accords in 1973 and U.S. withdrawal in 1975. Wouldn't it be ironic if the specific documentation of POWs left behind in Vietnam comes from our allies.

Mark your calendars - The Ninth Annual Meeting of the National Alliance of Families will be held in Washington, D.C., June 18th, 19th and 20th, 1998.