Where is Matt Maupin – Alive or Dead, we need to bring him home.

41 and Counting - That’s the number of South Korean POWs to escape North Korea.- On October 4^th Agence France-Presse reported on the 41^st escape of a South Korean soldier, since the agreement to end armed hostilities was signed in 1953. According to the article:

“A 76-year-old South Korean former soldier has escaped from North Korea after being held for more than half a century as a prisoner of war, the Yonhap news agency reported Sunday. The former soldier, known only by his family name Lee, arrived at a South Korean diplomatic office in China on Friday after escaping from the North, Yonhap said, citing the Families of the Abducted and Detained in North Korea, an association for people abducted by Pyongyang.....

“Lee was captured by North Korean troops in 1951 during the 1950-53 Korean War. He worked down mines for 20 years in the North before moving to work at a cultural center in Sariwon city, capital of North Hwanghae province...... After 53 years in the North, Lee started his bid for freedom by leaving the city in August and successfully crossing the border to China early last month, Yonghap said.”

538 More to Go — The South Korean news agency Yonhap reports “Up to 538 South Korean prisoners of war (POWs) from the 1950-53 Korean War are still living in North Korea, an opposition lawmaker said Sunday [3 October]. Rep Jun Yeo-ok of the major opposition Grand National Party (GNP) said 1,365 South Korean POWs are still unaccounted for, citing statistics from the ministries of national unification, defense and other government agencies.”

“"Out of the total, 538 are still presumed to be alive in the North, 636 are presumed dead and 191 missing," Jun said. Since the defection of Cho Chang-ho to South Korea in 1994, 41 former South Korean POWs came to the South, she said. There have been 3,790 South Koreans taken to the North since 1953, the lawmaker said.”

We’ll Ask The Question Again – What about American POWs? North Korea held back South Korean POWs. Why wouldn’t they hold back American POWs? South Korean POWs survived the brutal captivity of the North. Why not American POWs?

DPMO Misleading the Media...Again – A recent article reporting on the identification of a missing soldier contained the following: “Dental records are as a good as a fingerprint and as accurate as fingerprint in identifying somebody,” said Larry Greer, spokesman for the Pentagon’s POW/MIA office. “You can take a single tooth and rotate it in space and have it match — or not — the records of an individual. Even if that person had not had a dental X-ray, there’s still dental charts.”

Dental charts..... come on! We know of at least two cases where the dental charting DID NOT match the teeth recovered. The solution.... declare the charts wrong and make the identification. Dental Charting is open to human error, as the families involved in these two cases were told. For Mr. Greer to imply that dental charting is as good as dental X-rays is misleading..... but what else is new.

Why does Johnie Webb still have a job?

Speicher, A Lesser Noted Mission – an October 6^th Associated Press article by Bob Burns stated: “No clues to the fate of missing Navy pilot Capt. Michael Scott Speicher have surfaced since a U.S. search team left Iraq in May, a senior U.S. officer said Wednesday. Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Joseph J. McMenamin, military commander of the Iraq Survey Group, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that results of the effort in Iraq have been turned over to the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is writing a report on the 13-year Speicher case.”

''The Speicher team exhausted all in-country leads regarding the fate of Captain Speicher,'' McMenamin said. ''No new leads have been developed since their departure.'' He added that the Pentagon would ''immediately pursue any new leads or data generated in Iraq on the status of Captain Speicher.''

“Later, however, under questioning by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., McMenamin said some leads could not be pursued to their end because of the security threat posed by the Iraq insurgency. ''It's extremely difficult to get about in parts of the country right now to follow up on some of those leads,'' McMenamin said. He did not say whether this was why the search team left in May. McMenamin said some items missing from Speicher's aircraft, including his identification badge and pistol, have yet to be found.....”

“McMenamin indicated he believed there are people in Iraq who know where the missing items can be found. ''It involves tracking down people somewhere in the country. Some are afraid to come forward. They're there. It's just going to involve getting to them and finding them and finding out what the answers are,'' he said.”

“The search for evidence on Speicher was a lesser-noted mission of the Iraq Survey Group, whose primary effort was focused on the search for weapons of mass destruction inside Iraq. McMenamin testified briefly as part of a broader presentation on the survey group's weapons findings.”

U.S. Wants Broader Search for Missing POWs – from the Associated Press by Vladimir Isachenkov: “The American co-chair of a U.S.-Russian commission working to determine the fate of missing servicemen said that a more extensive search through Russian government archives is needed to determine if any American prisoners from the Korean and Vietnam wars were taken to the Soviet Union.”

“Jerry D. Jennings, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense in charge of the worldwide search for missing American servicemen, praised Russia's contribution to the painstaking effort to determine the fate of American servicemen missing from World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the Cold War. None have been found alive.”

“But a key question has remained unanswered since the Joint Commission on POW/MIAs was set up in 1992: Were any American prisoners from the Korean and Vietnam wars taken to the Soviet Union?”

"I think if there were high-value prisoners, they would have taken them out" to the Soviet Union, said Jennings, who served as a CIA intelligence officer in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam war. "There have been clues, the problem is there is no hard evidence." A hint emerged when researchers found a brief memoir written by the late Russian military historian and the commission's co-chair, Dmitry Volkogonov, shortly before his death in 1995, in which he said he had discovered in Russian archives a Vietnam-era document assigning the KGB the task of "delivering knowledgeable Americans to the USSR for intelligence purposes."

“Russian officials said there was no such directive and that they are convinced such transfers did not take place. If such transfers occurred, relevant documents would likely reside in KGB archives, which unlike some of the Russian Defense Ministry's files, remain classified and off-limits to U.S. researchers, Jennings said in an interview.”

“It's likely that the answers are in the KGB files, it's likely that they would hold these special prisoners if they were brought in the country," Jennings told The Associated Press. With Russian officials stonewalling U.S. requests for access to KGB archives, a possible solution could be engaging retired Russian officers to rummage through the sensitive files on behalf of U.S. officials, Jennings said.”

“A similar approach had been negotiated with Vietnam where retired senior intelligence officers were recruited to search through classified files for clues to the fate of missing American servicemen, Jennings said. He said that he got assurances from senior Russian officials that the Kremlin would continue providing strong support to the POW/MIAs panel despite a recent government reshuffle that left the status of its Russian part uncertain.”

“The Russian government has allowed the commission's researchers to review thousands of pages of documents from the Russian Defense Ministry's Central Archives relating to U.S. combat losses in Korea. The search helped clarify the fate of 264 Americans who went missing from the Korean war.”

“The Russians have also provided extracts from classified documents relating to the downing of U.S. aircraft in Vietnam and helped find remains or determine the fate of American airmen whose planes were shot down on spy missions over the former Soviet Union during the Cold War.”

“The United States, in turn, has given Russia archival documents shedding light on the fates of about 450,000 Soviet displaced persons from World War II and 163 Soviet soldiers who went missing during the war in Afghanistan. It has also provided information on many Russians missing during the Cold War. "This is a very sensitive, very important issue to the veterans on both sides and to the families of the missing on both sides,"

Jennings said of the commission's work.”

We’re Still Waiting – DPMO has yet to produce the Dept. of Defense Directive governing a Prisoner of War status/designation. This directive should detail the conditions under which American service personnel may be listed as Prisoner of War. We have DOD Directive 1300.18 detailing all classifications for service personnel held by hostile forces or whose whereabouts are unknown the only classification missing from Directive 1300.18 is

Prisoner of War.

DPMO says the status/designation exists. Yet, in spite of numerous requests, they have failed to produce the directive.

In his October 2002 memo, changing Capt. Scott Speicher’s status from Missing In Action to Missing-Captured, Secretary of the Navy Gordon England wrote: “the controlling missing person statute and directives do not use the term Prisoner of War....” The controlling directive Secretary England referred to was DOD Directive 1300.18.

So, where is the directive allowing for a POW status? It doesn’t exist..... we know it..... our readers know it and DPMO knows it. Isn’t it about time they admit it? Instead, they continue to say it exists, misleading the media, and the American public.

If the directive exists..... produce it. It’s that simple!

We’re staying out of the Politics - However, we can not let incorrect statements on one candidate or the others actions on the POW/MIA issue go unchallenged. Vice Presidential candidate John Edward said, of John Kerry during the recent Vice Presidential debate, "went with John McCain to Vietnam to find out what happened to our POWs."

Edwards forgot to mention that John Kerry abdicated his responsibilities as Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIAs, in order to push his agenda for trade and diplomatic relations with Vietnam.. Kerry did nothing to find out what happened to our POWs and MIAs and allowed the Vietnamese to present false information on POW/MIA and left that information unchallenged in order to close at least one case.

No one should be allowed to forget the conclusions fo the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs:

"Nixon, Ford and Carter Administration officials all dismissed the possibility that American POWs had survived in Southeast Asia after Operation Homecoming. This Committee has uncovered evidence that precludes it from taking the same view. We acknowledge that there is no proof that U.S. POWs survived, but neither is there proof that all of those who did not return had died. There is evidence, moreover, that indicates the possibility of survival, at least for a small number, after Operation Homecoming.”

If you read the September 11^th Bits and Pieces you know that “small number” may be as large as 185. Instead Kerry devoted his efforts to opening both trade and diplomatic relations with Vietnam.

With regard to Korean War POW/MIA's the committee concluded " the Committee has reviewed information and heard testimony which we believe constitutes strong evidence that some unaccounted for American POWs from the Korean Conflict were transferred to the former Soviet Union in the early 1950's.... The Committee further believes it is possible that one or more POWs from the Korean Conflict could still be alive on the territory of the former Soviet Union."

In the years since the committee published its conclusions..... What has John Kerry done to find out what happened to that "small number" left in Southeast Asia or the men left behind at the end of the Korean War?

What has John Kerry done to get these answers? The answer is simple.........Nothing

For more on John Kerry and the POW/MIA issue visit www.powmiafamiliesagainstjohnkerry.com In the interest of fairness should anyone find a site POW/MIA Families for John Kerry, we’d be happy to share that site with you also.