Last Seen Alive        The Search for Missing POWs                                               From the Korean War

         

         

 NEWSPAGE SPECIAL

Pentagon Ditches Prisoner-of-War Evidence

POW/MIA Head Denies
Corporal Roger Dumas              
"Ever Captured" in Korea

New DPMO Ruling Sets Aside Even the Army’s
Own Analysts in Landmark Korean War Case

By Laurence Jolidon
Copyright @ Ink-Slinger Press                            (Posted 31 March)

WASHINGTON, D.C. – (31/3/00) – Dismissing decades of accumulated evidence in one of the most prominent high-priority POW/MIA cases from the Korean War, the chief of the Pentagon’s office for POW/MIA affairs has decided that the U.S. government  has no proof thatArmy   Cpl. Roger Dumas of Connecticut  "was ever captured and held prisoner."
Robert L. Jones, deputy assistant secretary of defense for missing personnel affairs, issued his surprising finding in a Feb. 23 letter to Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), who forwarded it with a cover letter concurring in the decision to Robert Dumas, of Canterbury, Conn., a brother of the missing soldier and a longtime activist in the POW/MIA movement.  (TEXT OF LETTERS BELOW.)
"This is unbelievable and outrageous," said Robert Dumas. "For  years, the government blocked families and the press from finding out the truth about our  guys.  And now when we finally have some information, they just go into denial and say it doesn't exist. It's a sorry day for the families, I'll tell you. And for the men we left behind."
In his letter, Jones wrote that, despite a post-war  determination by the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission and a 1986
judgment by a federal court ordering Roger Dumas’ status changed from missing-in-action to prisoner-of-war,  "neither my agency nor any other Government agency has uncovered evidence, other than that which was solicited by Corporal Dumas’ family, to indicate that he was ever captured and held prisoner by communist forces during the Korean War."
"If he thinks there’s no evidence," said Dumas, "he must not read his own department’s reports."
A database of the more than 8,000 men still unaccounted for from the Korean War, created by military and civilian investigators in the POW/MIA affairs office Jones oversees and often touted as a major achievement lists Cpl. Roger Dumas as a POW. The listings are based on the most current information gathered by the Pentagon’s agencies.
The negative ruling by the head of the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) also appears to contradict the order of a federal court in Hartford in 1986, which ruled in Robert Dumas' favor after ordering previously-closed POW files turned over to him and hearing the testimony of ex-POWs who saw his younger brother Roger in prison camps.
Over U.S. government objections, Judge Emmet Clairie directed the Army’s board of military review to grant Dumas a new hearing that would change Cpl. Dumas’ status. The decision, which the U.S. attorney's office declined to appeal, effectively made Roger Dumas the Korean War’s only "official" POW out of more than 8,200 men still-unaccounted for.
Since winning that prolonged court battle, Robert Dumas has tried to leverage it to win back pay and monetary damages for his long struggle and to keep the issue of unreturned Korean War POWs in the spotlight.
With the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of fighting in Korea approaching in June, he hoped to use his case’s visibility to pressure the U.S. government into mounting a more determined effort to account for his brother and thousands of other American and other allied POWs who never came home after the 1953 armistice was signed.
Just last year, President Clinton asked the Chinese premier to look into the case of Korean War POW/MIAs, specifically naming Roger Dumas and two other U.S. soldiers, Richard Desautels of New Hampshire and Gerald Glasser of Pennsylvania. Army investigators singled out those three, saying the evidence that they were alive in enemy hands when others were repatriated was especially strong and compelling.
But if anything, the Pentagon’s reversal in the Dumas case sends a conciliatory signal and threatens to undermine whatever motivation the governments of China and North Korea might have to release information or return any surviving prisoners.
The U.S. government "declared all these men dead in 1953 and 1954 without a shred of evidence," said Dumas. The declarations were signed under a Missing Persons law that permitted the presumptive finding of death after one year’s absence.
"And every North Korean diplomat I ever talked to told me that was just what they wanted. Nobody looks for a dead man, they told me."
The ruling by Jones cites two POW lists – one issued by the Communists in December 1951 and another compiled in 1953 by the U.S. military – in arguing that "there is little reliable information regarding the loss of Corporal Dumas." His name is not on either list.
But Jones’ letter fails to mention numerous other lists of U.S. soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen believed to have been captured that were compiled by U.S. and United Nations authorities during and after the 36-month conflict that do include his name.
His letter also claims that no repatriated POWs reported seeing Roger Dumas in a POW camp until they were "solicited" by the Dumas family.  There is evidence to the contrary.
A debriefing by Sgt. Cecil Preston, released during the Little Switch exchange in April 1953 named Roger Dumas as being alive then in captivity. But that report, like many other debriefings of ex-POWs in Korea, was kept classified for decades. Robert Dumas only learned of it during his federal suit when the Army was ordered to turn over hundreds of "POW data sheets" and other documents he had been denied access to.
Other repatriated POWs who eventually heard or read of the Dumas case have also come forward since then – putting aside warnings from government officials when they were released not to talk about their prison camp experiences – with reports of seeing Roger Dumas alive years after he was reported missing in November 1950. He was seen only yards from the repatriation point during the larger POW exchange, Big Switch, in August 1953, being led away by Chinese guards.
EFFECT ON OTHER POW/MIA CASES
If it stands, Jones’ reversal of opinion   in the Dumas case has direct, negative implications for hundreds of still-active POW/MIA cases from the Korean War, Cold War and Vietnam.   Few have the documentation, longevity or prominence of the Dumas case.
The importance Jones and the Pentagon place on the Dumas case is evident in the scope of the three-page letter to Lieberman. (see text.) In it, Jones not only dismisses the evidence in the Dumas case, he takes the opportunity to spell out what have become two standard denials on two contentious POW/MIA issues:
The U.S. government possesses "no credible (ital.) evidence that Americans are in captivity as POWs anywhere in the world."
"We also have been unable to prove speculation that American POWs were transferred to the former Soviet Union."
But it’s the Pentagon’s reversal of its stand in his brother’s case that mostly troubles Robert Dumas.
"It flies in the face of fifty years of facts," he said. "Plus it’s an insult to the people who have worked so hard to get to the truth.
"If this guy Jones even looked at my case, he’d know better than to write something like this. Either that, or he thinks he can just sweep all the evidence under the rug - including an investigation by his own department."
Dumas said the letter came through Sen. Lieberman because he wrote his office several weeks ago trying to enlist his help in his cause, just as he has sought the assistance of other public officials in the past.
"I’m very disappointed in the way he (Lieberman) has handled this," he said. "I sent him about 50 documents outlining all the evidence in my brother’s case, and I asked for a chance to talk to him about it. But all he did was pass along this letter that’s full of mistakes. (see text of Jones and Lieberman letters.) He obviously never checked it out for himself, or he’d know this is bunk."
Among the wrong statements in Jones’ letter, said Dumas, is the assertion that his late mother "filed suit with the Foreign Claims Commission" seeking payment. Under a law signed by President Eisenhower just as U.S. repatriates were returning, some POWs were eligible for compensation - $2.50 for each day spent in a prison camp.
"This same lie came up in the federal trial," said Dumas. "They said my mother filed a claim. I know she never did. They just saw Roger’s name on a POW list and sent her $300. When I asked for the file, and asked them to show me the claim form, they said that part of those records had been destroyed. Sound familiar?"
Dumas said he suspects the sudden reversal of the Pentagon’s view of his landmark case could be connected to what some see as a Clinton Administration campaign to carry out a fast-track resumption of relations between the U.S. and North Korea.
Former defense secretary William Perry, appointed by Clinton last year to review U.S. policy toward North Korea, has recommended an early resumption of normal relations with the Stalinist regime in Pyongyang.  North Korea's leadership in recent months has stepped up efforts for recognition by democratic countries, and demanded removal from the U.S. list of "terrorist" nations as a minimum condition for continuing talks with Washington.
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KOREAN WAR POW LISTS THAT INCLUDE NAME
OF CPL. ROGER DUMAS:

1. "Supplemental List of UN Personnel Believed to Be in the Hands of the Enemy" 17 July 1953; Headquarters U.S. Army Forces Far East.
(Supplement to Master List dated 20 July 1952.)

2. "List of US and other UN Personnel Believed to be in Communist Custody" Sept. 2, 1953; Commander in Chief Far East.

3. "List of US and other UN Personnel Believed to be in Communist Custody" 17 Aug. 1954.

4. "List of US and other UN Personnel Believed to be in Communist Custody." Dec. 6, 1954.

5. List of US and other UN Personnel Handed to Chinese by US Ambassador to the UN U. Alexis Johnson at the Geneva Conference on the Korean War. July 1955.

6. List of (188) U.S. Army Personnel for Whom POW "Data Sheets" Were Prepared. 27 June 1956; Submitted by Army Intelligence to Assistant Secretary of the Army responding to Pres. Eisenhower's Executive Order of 17 Aug. 1955 committing the government to "establish contact with, support and obtain the release of all of our prisoners of war."

7. List of 621 Foreign Nationals (259 U.S.) Prepared by International Red Cross for submission to North Korean Red Cross. February 1957.
List was returned and forwarded to U.S. State Dept. with notations that all those named Were "dead" "escaped" or North Korean Red Cross had "no materials available" on them.

8. List of 389 U.S. POWs Submitted to Chinese government by U.S. State Department and made part of the record of a hearing in 1957 by a House of Representatives Committee but not released to families or the public.

9. List of Unaccounted for Korean War Servicemen Prepared by U.S. Defense Department. 29 Aug. 1961.

10. Personnel Missing Korean War (PMKOR) Database Prepared by U.S. Defense Department’s POW/MIA and casualty affairs agencies. First made public in 1999.

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DUMAS CASE LETTERS FROM SEN. LIEBERMAN AND DASD ROBERT JONES

United States Senate

Washington, D.C.20510

JIL:sdh

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OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

2400 DEFENSE PENTAGON

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20301-2400

Robert L. Jones

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense

(POW/Missing Personnel Affairs)

Cc: Army casualty office