If there is any doubt that the US government has the propensity to leave men behind, this 44 page document, declassified in June 1997, should remove that doubt altogether. At the end of the Korean War, during Operations Big & Little Switch we exchanged Prisoners of War with North Korea. Or so we thought. . . US returnees immediately told US authorities that men were pulled off the line and not repatriated.
In 1996, a DPMO analyst claimed that North Korea was holding 15 Americans as Prisoner of War. Once word leaked out about the "working paper," DPMO flip-flopped on the claim. Since the early 90's no less than six South Korean's that had been held POW in North Korea escaped. Are American POWs less resilient than South Korean POWs?
While we covered this document in another section, it is one of the most important comprehensive reports ever issued on the US Government policy toward Prisoners of War and Missing in Action. Much, if not all, of what was written back in 1991 still holds very much true today. This not only proves that we had/have the propensity to leave men behind, by the preponderance of evidence, I'd say that it proves that we did leave men behind, that they were in captivity and that there were [are] those in government service whose only job it is to obfuscate the truth.
PROJECT CHECO was a report written about a TACAN site in Laos that was overrun. The men of Lima Site 85 were "sheep dipped," which means they were taken out of the military and became employed by a Defense Department Contractor.
Commodore Brooks took over the Defense Intelligence Agency Special Office for POW/MIA Affairs after the resignation of Col. Millard Peck. Among the things (and there were many!) that Brooks found was that there was a "mindset to debunk" live sighting reports. He also found an office in shambles and saw a need to conduct damage control on the Hill. If accounting for our missing service personnel was truly such a priority, why would Brooks have had to detail the incompetence?
In 1997, Dr. Timothy Castle, a DPMO analyst, wrote a blistering memorandum detailing negligence, incompetence, interference with honest analysis from those with no analytical experience and, what's worse, he detailed the fact that senior DPMO personnel were actually faxing Hanoi from DPMO advising Hanoi the activities of US search teams in SE Asia. Yes, he detailed a criminal act. Treason. Yet, it was Dr. Castle and his family that had to be spirited out of Washington.
Ann Holland is the wife of SSgt. Mel Holland, a casualty of the Fall of Lima Site 85. Ann has spent the better portion of her life pursuing the truth, demanding it of our government and making sure that she passes it on to all who are interested. I am honored to call her friend. After reading the Castle Memorandum, Ann wrote a statement of her own. On 3 November 1999, the Washington Times printed a story detailing the fact that the Kremlin was refusing to turn over a secret document that suggested captured Americans were taken from SE Asia to the [former] Soviet Union in the late 1960's for intelligence gathering purposes. We asked several officials and former officials of DPMO about this and their response would have been comical, had it not been so sad.
They belong walking on or planted in American Soil, nothing less! Steve Golding |